I think ZK would be a more interesting and diverse game if gunships had an antisub option. Here we had a symmetric situation where each player's commander was ambushed by a combination of enemy assets in a lonely corner of the map. @Sparkles' commander jumped into water, escaping from Scorchers, but was then pursued by Ravens (which i had to complement with an Owl for reasons). My commander was attacked by two Revenants and was able to walk away because neither Gunship nor Rover has any antisub.

Also in B771713 2 on Crubick Plains v1.2, Godde uses his commander to plop turrets on the cliff. @Sparkles has gunships and rovers, and is unable to counteract this except by committing a several times superior amount of materiel to watch out for the popping lotuses.

Urchin being how it is, it's not even possible to defend against seacliff constructor attacks like these using the antisub turret.

One could argue that picking a factory that has no antisub is your own choice and you should live with the consequences. But i find this kind of echoes how Light Vehicles used to have no AA because that was also a choice you could make.

I think it's worth a try, especially since forever always suggested it

quote: What unit does antisub go on? The only real contenders IMO are Harpy, Revenant and Trident and even those are not really great aesthetically.

Harpy is probably the easiest to make work both aesthetically and balance-wise.

Aesthetics:
- Drop vertically an unpowered torpedo as an alternative to firing the purple missile.

- Like with Duck, firing this torpedo enters reload and prevents the normal weapon firing until reloaded.

- When torpedo enters water, it arrests a large share of its inertia, activates its engines, and becomes more or less Seawolf torpedo locked at the same target at which it was fired.

- Rule of cool is satisfied in a two-stage weapon with clear physics.

Balance:
- Amph AA sucks against heavy gunships because it is very burst based. Harpy is light, so it won't be that hard to burst dead with an Angler.

- Harpy does not do that much alpha or DPS, and if it shoots at amphs in water, that DPS will further be reduced by innate amph regen.

- The antisub version of the weapon can be inferior to the anti-surface weapon for reasons. Could even be a normal torpedo, really. Kind of a last ditch measure, though.

- Harpy is already kind of the jack of all trades, master of none in the gunship factory. Anti-ground, anti-air, anti-raider, anti-heavy. If it's also meager anti-sub, that's just what it tends to do elsewhere.

quote: All of the reasons advanced pertain to commander interactions rather than amphfac. I don't think sea-Amphfac is in need of a nerf at present.

I am not sure this will be that much of a sea-Amph nerf. If it turns out to be too meaningful though, i guess sea amph can be buffed somewhere else in return; but i am not sure how that would play out at all.

Will people start gunships in 1v1? If the projected outcome is people fac switching later in game to gunship instead of plane because plane is no longer the only way to kill underwater targets from above, or picking gunships as a second factory more often in teamgames, i count that as a win for game quality in general.

Both Duck and Seawolf still remain immune to radar, so intercepting them without an Owl simply by having Harpies around is not going to be that simple.

Of course, because neither Seawolf nor Duck can retaliate against Torp!Harpy in water (like Duck can sometimes do on land), when these interceptions happen, they are going to be quite brutal.

We've got flares that work underwater, so I'm sure futuristic robots could come up with a hotter version for cooking bad robots. Blastwing isn't good for much except rushing anyway so a bit more utility wouldn't hurt it.

That said, unless its stats got tweaked, would it do anything meaningful against a comm anyway?

Anarchid, why not make Revenant rockets water capable?

Whatever you do (or don't), pls no water-capable rockets. Scalpel used to have those for a while and it just looked and felt wrong to have one unit ignore the sea surface like that.

Torpedo sidearms are cool tho. Or boiling blastwings.

release the explosion fuel into a toxic water oilspill. make it more dangerous by giving it a longer DOT. most amphs can just regen it out. or are you saying that the mid piece looks like a KINETIC DAMAGE BASED torpedo?

quote: This is not like the case of Rover AA because Gunships is a secondary factory and the usefulness of antisub is dependent on the terrain.

In case of a mixed map like this, i think that it's pretty much a non-choice. You should expect the need for antisub to arise, therefore you should not pick a factory that lacks the option.

Revenant anti-uw could could (automatically) drop the missiles with non-ignited engines as depth charges.

This would not require the weapon to be two-stage except maybe to generate splashes when traversing air/water boundary and maybe increasing drag.

It would still be inaccurate and unguided, but it would be ballistic, and thus not subject to losing that much accuracy from added distance to seafloor.