floating mex vs underwater mex

[hunterw]

Suggesting something without any argument supporting it (raiding sea is already overpowered)

Argue or support this

[Pxtl]

Balance should aim to fine-tuning the maps that are liked right now,

Done. Maps that are liked right now have no water, or are SoW.

Plenty of popular teamplay maps include sea. SmallSup, Tropical, FolsomDamDeluxe, Tabula 3, etc.

[Gota]

Tabula 3 Oo anyone plays that?

[1v0ry_k1ng]

I assosiate all those maps with long, long porcy laggy games that seem to never end until someone combombs or nukes the landchoke/main eco

[pintle]

Suggesting something without any argument supporting it (raiding sea is already overpowered) and several arguments against it is no way to get your point across successfully.

Like you suggesting that raiding is overpowered? Care to elaborate on the OP raiding in the sea game, particularly in direct comparison to the cost/micro effectiveness of raiding in a roughly comparable land game?

[hunterw]

Plenty of popular teamplay maps include sea. SmallSup, Tropical, FolsomDamDeluxe, Tabula 3, etc.

I made half of those maps, and the other two I already mentioned

3. ocean players have limited means of assaulting land players, and to a certain extent, vice versa. No bertha ships and no nukes means no long range means of assailing a land opponent late-game. in land/water maps, water is virtually always the last area to die in every single game. land is always highly contested since its more valuable, and sea just lingers on and is a pain in the ass to wipe out after the inevitable end of the game as soon as all land is conquered. I will admit other scenarios occur, such as in FFA games and the like where one player sits in the sea and ecospams, all of which isn't easily raidable. This fulfills the vice versa scenario - now neither land nor water can successfully raid each other which leads to super boring porc which, when given equal footing, land should nearly always win.

Unlesss ocean is rebalanced, it is best used sparingly for amphib and hover routes in team maps as far as I'm concerned. Look at all the most popular team maps and you'll notice that very few have any appreciable amount of ocean (meant for ship building). SSB, and new folsom are the only two that come to my mind.

I'm not arguing that team sea maps don't ever get played, but there is a pretty huge disparity when compared with land maps. Check out the ratio of sea vs land maps on here for BA replays:

http://replays.adune.nl/?sort=11

[Regret]

Suggesting something without any argument supporting it (raiding sea is already overpowered)

Argue or support this

When a player fails to defend against raid by corvette at start he already lost sea unless he gets support from allies.

Single t1 sub kills any mex expansion early on as torpedo defense is expensive.

Hovers can safely rush through any sea defense aside from dt right to tasty tidals at back.

Few torpedo bombers annihilate large sea fleets or assassinate commanders/underwater eco with ease.

T2 air is vastly superior to seaplanes by quality (stats) and quantity (nano towers vs slow sea con deploy) so sea can be attacked at any place without much effort unless sea gets massive flak spam.

particularly in direct comparison to the cost/micro effectiveness of raiding in a roughly comparable land game?

Land has completely different mechanics than sea. No.

[hunterw]

When a player fails to defend against raid by corvette at start he already lost sea unless he gets support from allies.

Single t1 sub kills any mex expansion early on as torpedo defense is expensive.

Both of these examples stem from the comm being nearly immobile, having no attack, and limited means of building static defense. All of these problems would have to be addressed as well, as making mex float by itself is not a solution to ocean's shitty gameplay.

On land, mex are what drives expansions, and also raids. Raiding a factory early is often a useless proposition due to comm's dgun and LLTs. In sea this paradigm is ass backwards, as the comm can't defend the shipyard for shit, but the mex are invincible to anything but a 500m slow as fuck submarine.

Hovers can safely rush through any sea defense aside from dt right to tasty tidals at back.

Vettes are supposed to counter this

Few torpedo bombers annihilate large sea fleets or assassinate commanders/underwater eco with ease.

By T2 air sea can easily spam 50-100 skeeters

T2 air is vastly superior to seaplanes by quality (stats) and quantity (nano towers vs slow sea con deploy) so sea can be attacked at any place without much effort unless sea gets massive flak spam.

Land > sea in nearly all facets of late game, problem is that by this time it's almost always a pretty uneventful porcfest until nuke/commbomb/etc.

Sea vs. sea should be fun before balancing land vs. sea.

[pintle]

When a player fails to defend against raid by corvette at start he already lost sea unless he gets support from allies.

Single t1 sub kills any mex expansion early on as torpedo defense is expensive.

Hovers can safely rush through any sea defense aside from dt right to tasty tidals at back.

Few torpedo bombers annihilate large sea fleets or assassinate commanders/underwater eco with ease.

T2 air is vastly superior to seaplanes by quality (stats) and quantity (nano towers vs slow sea con deploy) so sea can be attacked at any place without much effort unless sea gets massive flak spam.

An all in vette rush is not raiding, its rushing. It also becomes much harder as maps get larger (stop playing SoW).

Single t1 sub is slow expensive and vunerable, all great characteristics for a raider unit I hear. I appreciate you may not have considered abandoning porc in favour of mobile interceptors, but I sympathise with your approach: covering all my mex on comet with HLTs is how I normally roll on land maps, stands to reason it should work on sea equivalents...

Hovers are not an opening lab, there is no way they are gonna have an impact until you already have an established economy/are already getting raped.

Torp bombers are t2 air, again very little impact on the early game t1 eco, they have 0 relevance on "op raiding" in the context of t1 eco.

I never suggested eliminating uw mex, I actually think that a combination of cheap floating mex, and more expensive (build cost and e consumption when running) uw mex could be a good option.

Sea's "totally different mechanic" stems pretty much entirely from the underwater or not aspect, and the lack of porc, otherwise it is closely comparable to a land game. Oh yeah and floating nanos lol.

The only point you made that I feel stands up to scrutiny can be effectively summarized as "corvette rush fucks 90% of sea games".

[1v0ry_k1ng]

...which stems from a lack of anti rush defence due to underwater commander

[Tribulex]

This brings us back the xta discussion of TORPEDO COM UPGRADE :D :D :D

[Niobium]

Or people could just build some ships of their own to defend themselves...

[Regret]

An all in vette rush is not raiding, its rushing. It also becomes much harder as maps get larger (stop playing SoW).

What you call it matters not. It is easy to pull off and very rewarding even on larger maps. And I never played SoW as far as I remember.

Single t1 sub is slow expensive and vunerable, all great characteristics for a raider unit I hear. I appreciate you may not have considered abandoning porc in favour of mobile interceptors

The only mobile interceptor available in t1 to sea against sub is either another sub or a more expensive destroyer.

Hovers are not an opening lab, there is no way they are gonna have an impact until you already have an established economy/are already getting raped.

That fits for 1v1. In team games hovers are built early on and can raid sea without much effort.

Torp bombers are t2 air, again very little impact on the early game t1 eco, they have 0 relevance on "op raiding" in the context of t1 eco.

There was no talk about a specific timeframe for raiding. Discussion was about raiding sea without specifying when and with what. To restate: T2 bombers are assassins and can take out any sea target with ease.

I never suggested eliminating uw mex, I actually think that a combination of cheap floating mex, and more expensive (build cost and e consumption when running) uw mex could be a good option.

Feel free to make a renamed fork of BA with said changes included and see how well it plays and how people like it.

The only point you made that I feel stands up to scrutiny can be effectively summarized as "corvette rush fucks 90% of sea games".

Unnecessary straw man.

[JohannesH]

Hovers are not an opening lab, there is no way they are gonna have an impact until you already have an established economy/are already getting raped.

That fits for 1v1. In team games hovers are built early on and can raid sea without much effort.

No that doesnt fit for 1v1

[Saktoth]

Hovers are almost useless on SoW, they are a highly deprecated strategy, a cheese akin to an air or amph starts, which is possible, but will lose more than it wins. And this is on a map where all the metal is on the land! With sea mexes, they are worse.

And I never played SoW as far as I remember.

Then why are you talking like you know anything about sea? Thats like saying you know land because you've played lots of DSD, but never any comet.

That fits for 1v1. In team games hovers are built early on and can raid sea without much effort.

They cannot raid mex expansion, only tidals, which vettes should be able to cover, or land mexes, which has more to do with the land players than it is sea vs sea.

No that doesnt fit for 1v1

Whats your lobby name? I want to see this hover start of yours.

[hunterw]

Ships are good on SoW because:

1. Comm doesnt have to be underwater to build a shipyard. it can therefore defend the shipyard from shore with LLT, jellyfish, dgun, and comm laser.

2. All land targets are within range of ships. All mex are as well. Since there are no UW mex, the TA mainstay of raiding mex with cheap spaem units remains, therefore fun remains.

Amph start is less risky than air start. In air start vs. sea start, sea start wins due to skeeter AA.

BA sea is balanced perfectly for SoW and hardly anything else. Any sea vs. sea map, especially with UW mex generally has shitty gameplay. No one thinks SoW sea balance sucks, and if they do they are noob.

I don't like the idea of comm torpedo since this changes the game too much. How about floating LLT? It still leaves vulnerability from sub, but it prevents the vette shipyard rush, a strat which is too valuable since there is no cheap counter for it. It therefore happens in a huge percentage of sea vs sea games which is monotonous, predictable, boring, and therefore another reason sea vs. sea is not popular.

If chess had a particular opening which the only way to NOT LOSE was to counter with doing the same thing, everyone would just use that opening every time and chess would suck cock. That's sea vs. sea.

[Saktoth]

1. Comm doesnt have to be underwater to build a shipyard. it can therefore defend the shipyard from shore with LLT, jellyfish, dgun, and comm laser.

Mostly, it does this with reclaim, capture, and repair.

2. All land targets are within range of ships. All mex are as well.

Only destroyers, only one or two are vette-raidable.

Since there are no UW mex, the TA mainstay of raiding mex with cheap spaem units remains, therefore fun remains.

Nope, you have to raid with destroyers, which is the same as with UW mexes.

I don't like the idea of comm torpedo since this changes the game too much. How about floating LLT?

How many times do we have to go over this: It takes 3 of them to even kill a vette. How will that solve the problem? The only advantage of floating llts is vs hovers, not vettes. By all means, have floating LLT's, but thats not going to solve anything to do with vettes.

It still leaves vulnerability from sub, but it prevents the vette shipyard rush, a strat which is too valuable since there is no cheap counter for it. It therefore happens in a huge percentage of sea vs sea games which is monotonous, predictable, boring, and therefore another reason sea vs. sea is not popular.

Rush your own. If he dives in, even if he does a lot of damage to your tidals, if he does die near your shipyard you get a lotof metal. He cant afford to do this, it becomes a standoff, and is then mostly about economy. This is unless some noob starts con or 4 skeeters (cuz skeeters rule yo) or starts land and doesnt make shipyard until the sea is already full of vettes (90% of games).

If chess had a particular opening which the only way to NOT LOSE was to counter with doing the same thing, everyone would just use that opening every time and chess would suck cock. That's sea vs. sea.

A TL start is fine, as is a sub or destroyer rush. By the time his first vette arrives, you can actually get one of the more expensive units up quite easily, as long as you have enough metal to start (1 uw mex start in the water is not enough, just as it would be on land). Remember even if he surprises your sub/roy half built, you can almost always finish it well before he kills the shipyard, and out-repair any econ snipe he tries to do.

So whats the problem with sea games? No 3 mex-starts! This encourages starting land (late or no shipyard), low econ builds that are easily destroyed, etc.

You in the lobby, hunter? We should try some DSD-water (just 1v1, not playing with the land at all). It has a 3 mex start, and is fairly straightforward, its probably a good candidate for testing sea play.

I also suggest people blue comet. It plays pretty whacky at first, but i'd love to see the gameplay on that mature into something decent.

You want to fix sea? Play it. A lot. Get other experienced 1v1 players to play it. Explore every strategy. Get good at it, until it really breaks, so we know what to fix. Or hell, it might just turn out you're all playing it wrong.

At this point, the only mature sea game is SoW, and it doesnt need changing.

[Regret]

Then why are you talking like you know anything about sea? Thats like saying you know land because you've played lots of DSD, but never any comet.

I am talking from my experience of playing sea / seeing sea play in teamgames. Whether or not I played on specific map is completely irrelevant to the value of my arguments.

The approach of balancing whole tier around play on a single map is foolish. Not to mention you're suggesting testing purely sea without interaction with other tiers. You can't take out a single part of BA and try to balance it by itself.

They cannot raid mex expansion, only tidals, which vettes should be able to cover

Tidals, metal makers, torpedo launchers, shipyards. Yes, corvettes are a good counter.

[hunterw]

Then why are you talking like you know anything about sea? Thats like saying you know land because you've played lots of DSD, but never any comet.

I am talking from my experience of playing sea / seeing sea play in teamgames. Whether or not I played on specific map is completely irrelevant to the value of my arguments.

Correct on both accounts...SoW is a very important map because it is the only example of balanced BA sea gameplay. It's where the discussion should start when discussing sea balance.

I haven't played it nearly enough, as is evidenced by Saktoth's various corrections of my assessments. I did beat him on it though years ago iirc muhahah, one of like 6 1v1s I ever played cause Im teamgame noob

That being said, it is foolish to only have balance for one map, which is certainly why this thread was made. The trick is to rebalance in such a way that
1. Makes current sea maps playable, makes sea vs. sea fun
2. Doesn't fuck up the balance of SoW

I don't play at the moment but I'd love to watch some replays of sea vs. sea on blue comet/deltasiege/etc

[Saktoth]

I am talking from my experience of playing sea / seeing sea play in teamgames. Whether or not I played on specific map is completely irrelevant to the value of my arguments.

Team games? Isolate your variables noob. BA is balanced for 1v1 comet before anything else. You can critique that method (and i would) but its how it was done. If i were making CA, id say pull the guts out of sea and start again. But we're talking BA, which means lots of playtesting, lots of 1v1, and change as little as possible. Its useless to offer suggestions that dont match the design philosophy.

Tidals, metal makers, torpedo launchers, shipyards. Yes, corvettes are a good counter.

Who starts metalmakers? Seriously, we're talking about how the sea game ends too quickly in this initial corvette rush or whatever, and you're talking about metalmakers and torpedo bombers? In a 1v1 situation, torpedo launchers wont be a problem unless you started them blind. In a game with more players than that, you should presumably have backup by your own air, hover or another sea players.

I don't play at the moment but I'd love to watch some replays of sea vs. sea on blue comet/deltasiege/etc

Not much chance, nobody plays sea, which is half the problem.