Official counter to pene by ships

Please, opinions, what is the math on Pene vs ships in general? What is the most effective counter (aside from facswitch into air/hover, of course). As far as I can see it the most obvious answer is frontline assault with typhoons to snipe it, but that can be effectively denied if a sufficient mass of hovers is present and ships can not get through. So, ideas?

pene has high alpha high reload, low hp and low rof. counter to raw pene is spam small things with high rof.

so. if pene is defended well with maces/scalpels, maybe halberds too, you have no chance with typhoons or those small nerving "whats their name" shits. in this case your oponent has a large amount of metal already invested, you should have about the same metal.

several options (trolling included)
1)get your 60bp buildcom under the pene(hope there are no sonar/torp units around). do a terrorform spike to immobilize it. then crusader it.
2)get a cloaker to get close enough with enforcer to 1-shot it.
3)back and forth with crusaders to kill maces/scalpels. hope not to loose too many crusaders. then clear the rest with typhoons and smaller (includes the pene)
4)ofc bombarding constantly with crusaders and shield support forces them either to retreat or to die slowly.
5)warlord/reef? i personally prefer warlord because of the awesome sound. with reef you might have a disadvantage as rockets suck if the oponent moves and gulls die to AA too fast.
6)call your friendly and competent planes player to give you a hand
7) ???
8)profit.

I agree with Pxtl on this one, sea balance is horrible and clinically unfun. seeking the science within is not a worthwhile activity - sea comes down to stalemate then battleship, grizzly or peneball

quote: That's a facswitch.

he specifically said hover/planes facswitch. also, i believe reef and warlord are ships somehow. and i assume my friendly and competent planes player did start with planes, therefor not a facswitch.

quote: Sonar ignores cloak.

true but irrelevant. nobody said something about a sonat. also, you have snipersub. and no, they got no vulture, that would be a facswitch, you remember?



that was easy, @anarchid

quote: also, you have snipersub.

guess who you are:



hijacking thread topic 100% complete.

Thanks, @[RD]Godde, for the advice. In the early stage when you are dealing with 1 pene it indeed works, and is remarkably punishing for hovers, but the real issues begin when 3 penes arrive. The particular situation is typical on maps like small supreme battlefield and Folsom, where sea player must do eco and at the same time hold assaults from amph and hovers.

If micro'd (focus fire), 3 penes usually 1-shot 2-3 ships at a time (cuz the projectile keeps flying), forcing you to lose ground. There is no way in hell skeeters/typhoons can make it through maces and halberds at that point, and if they are pushing from the shore you are basically fucked. Therefore, the only reasonable answer ships have to pene is, in fact, warlord. However, it dies to 1-shot from 4x pene if they catch him (and he does not have a shitload of range or speed advantage on them).

So, question remains, do we need to buff range of ships or maybe give them shields or something like that? Maybe allow jammers to jam sonar? I remember in OTA it was fine to give very basic ships such a shitoad of range they really raped anything like pene with ease. Would it be an issue if crusader's range is upgradeable? or maybe the enforcer's range? IDK, just make it so that moving ships lose some range, while stationary they fire further?

PS: Pene does not need radar to rape, u can afford to send a few scrubbers for a pene shot to make sense. Screening ships dont pay off since pene shots kill them first and then keep on flying to rape your important ships that you tried to screen.

Ships follow a natural escalation, where Vettes beat Scrubbers, Mace/Scalpel beats Vette, Cruiser beats Mace/Scalpel, Penetrator beats Cruiser, Warlord beats Penetrator. Without the Warlord trump card (Which can be beaten by Halberds and Pene, but not easily) it reaches a stable meta-game there where it comes down to micro, tanking Cruiser shots with your Halberds, stopping your penes getting overrun, etc.

Ships have the advantage. If cruisers get in range of any unit but the Halberd they will 1-shot your whole pack. Penes are also way more vulnerable to Air than Cruisers (Or any ship, due to Shredders) are.

The only time Penes are a problem is when you are in some crazy slow defense creep situation, where you should be going Warlord, Serpent, Carrier or something.

It is less of a 'fac switch' than you think because a player with a Warlord must control the underwater domain. Hovers cannot do that.

O_o
Someone is actually arguing to buff ships.

The biggest problem with Penetrators is keeping them alive. They are primary targets for bombers, gunships, Scrubbers, Skeeters and Thypoons. A ship player can basically always run down your Penetrators for cost with Thypoons or Skeeters unless you have a much more expensive force than the ship player. The ship player also have the mobility advantage so you have to be very careful with the placement of your defending hovers.
Then you also have to fear enemy Grizzlies that can surface and kill 1 Penetrator in every salvo.

The range advantage given by a Warlord or Reef means that they will always be bombarding your defending Maces and Scalpels and that you have to risk exposing your Penetrators to get a shot at the Warlord.

Oh, I was expecting UW areacloak to fail similar to UW cloak. If it doesn't, then gogogo abuse it!

@anarchid,
i said torps kill sonar.

i claim snipersub has torps.

do you claim snipersub or anything thats equipped with trololopedo does not kill sonar too(note:no other silly things involved)? because i did not speak of urichin at any point. at least i claim to not have done such a mad thing.

say im right. my argument is superior to yours because i have 34,5 times more sharebear awards than you have.


interesting ID i had:
is sonar also seaing things if dead, terrorformlifted and rezzed?