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Anti sub options

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There are three things that I would like to have. I don't know if any of them would be game breaking though so feel free to weigh in with your thoughts.

  • An anti sub option for gunships
  • An underwater weapon available to commanders in the form of a module
  • Something better than the urchin

Also heavy subs would be cool too, more in the vein of ota subs.
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quote:
An anti sub option for gunships

This seems like it would force amphbots in a pretty boring direction. Since amphbots would not be able to shoot back against gunships without surfacing, and the amph AA is much better suited to fighting planes than gunships, introducing amph AA seems like it would make Duck runbys and generally mobile play much weaker and force Amph into only pushing forward in a slow crawl backed by Razors. Amph tends a lot in that direction as it is and doesn't really need to go even further IMO.

quote:
An underwater weapon available to commanders in the form of a module

This seems like it would require a wider range of anti-underwater-heavy units to be sensible. Also it would be the boringly always correct choice on water maps.

quote:
Something better than the urchin

Depends what you mean. Gauss exists, though.

quote:
Also heavy subs would be cool too, more in the vein of ota subs.

I don't know much about OTA subs, but
- high-HP subs run into a similar problem to commanders where they require anti-underwater-heavies to exist to be sensible
- subs which are longer range than the viable surface-to-underwater units (i.e. Serpent) tend to lead to pretty cancerous gameplay since in sufficient densities they are likely to be effectively uncounterable.
+1 / -0
charon snitch is a really good way to counter duck spam if your opponent arent careful 24/7
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3 years ago
quote:
An anti sub option for gunships


There was disscusiion about that. As subs cant retaliaate against gunsips then it would be unfair maybe. Krow can be antisub option on shallow water.


quote:
An underwater weapon available to commanders in the form of a module


There was such modules and they was removed. There was torpedo module which as removed even before i started to play and gauss module which was removed shortry i started to play, But i cant remeber if gauss at that time was able to shhot at water though. And i also sparged once such disscusion that we need such weapon module at least to defend vs lonely unit.


quote:
Something better than the urchin


You are free to suggest something but do we really need that sea becoming total porc fest? You can anyway terraform in shallow water to build standart porc vs nonsubmerged units. And also terraform urchin so subs cant reach it. AA like razors can build unpon water anyway as meat shield.
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I agree that an anti-sub option for gunships would be nice.

The AA problem can probably be worked around. Only the tough gunships really endure burst AA well, the rest are too expensive for health to do that. So the anti-sub gunship could be of the expensive lightweight variety.

Attack method could be dropping depth charges on top of the target, which slowly sink and explode upon hitting something. That would make it hard to hit fast targets like ducks. It would also make it easy to shot back at the gunship since it needs to get close.
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quote:
This seems like it would require a wider range of anti-underwater-heavy units to be sensible. Also it would be the boringly always correct choice on water maps.

While true, some configurations of such would alleviate the commander's total vulnerability in sea, making the game a lot less weird.

Separately, a floatation module could allow the com to defend at least against surface-to-underwater attackers such as Archer, leaving only Seawolf, Duck and Scallop to worry about as U2U threats.

Combining the weapon and the float in one package would seem to solve most of the issues with the weapon. Or even making floatation a default thing for commanders.
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3 years ago
Maybe make an anti-sub gunship difficult to use? I'm thinking something like a flying gauss with recoil that launches them back decently far.
+1 / -0

3 years ago
quote:
Maybe make an anti-sub gunship difficult to use?


Gunships in sea is already hard to use because all sea factory aa is pretty good vs them.
Deep charges could be usable vs duck swarms. And also it would be limited use vs units who submerge to attack like amph units. Low flying antisub gunship who throw deep charges would be hard enough to use. I would no be even against it could hit also floating units because close proximity could be ded for slow moving gunship. We dont need fast moving locust vs subs.
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3 years ago
Perhaps don't give gunships anti-sub direct weapons, but stealth sonar buoys and mines that they could drop for scouting subs. Frankly, the Owl is very tedious to micro around subs to allow other units to hit the subs.
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This is because Owl's Sonar is not equal to its LOS (it's only equal to half its vision.)
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3 years ago
I understand it's sonar is limited, but it's circle mechanics are odd. It is very difficult to keep it circling in the small circles that it is capable of doing - it always wants to do larger circles - even if I set in in patrol it constantly wants to exceed those limits.
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3 years ago
There was a heavier artillery sub and Scallop used to have more range and underwater power. They were removed because it turns out that versatility/power for the underwater domain causes the entire sea game to move underwater.

Playing underwater is enticing because surface units are vulnerable to a much wider range of counters. A ball of Scallops with decent torpedoes and around 400 range has very few counters, and all its counters have to contend with artillery. I expect a heavy sub with any sort of range to have a similar issue.

Arming commanders underwater has some of the issues of creating a ranged underwater heavy unit. I think it also runs into the issues around letting commanders diversify into extreme roles. Currently, all commanders have some reasonable average ability to fight on land and no ability to fight underwater. Adding underwater morph options would break this, giving commanders a greater impact on overall strategic RPS relations.

I think anti-sub for gunships would be harmful. It is very hard for Amph to interact with gunships so Amph raids could easily be removed from the game by a depthcharge gunship.

In what way does something need to be better than Urchin?
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Well being able to engage against lance/sea pillager would be a good start. Being tough enough to take on Siren/Envoy combo or cheap enough to screen against cloaked surface bs would be nice.
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3 years ago
You can build aegis and cornea on the sea, as well as stinger and stardust.

I think urchin is pretty good, nothing can kill it efficiently from underwater.

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3 years ago
quote:
In what way does something need to be better than Urchin?


Just comparing it to the lotus on land. I think lotus is more effective at stopping raids than an urchin when faced with a similar cost in raiders, and the lotus is cheaper. I could be wrong about the effectiveness though. I haven't actually tested it out methodically.
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3 years ago
quote:
Arming commanders underwater has some of the issues of creating a ranged underwater heavy unit. I think it also runs into the issues around letting commanders diversify into extreme roles. Currently, all commanders have some reasonable average ability to fight on land and no ability to fight underwater. Adding underwater morph options would break this, giving commanders a greater impact on overall strategic RPS relations.

Again, giving commanders float (either unconditional or as a module) and a surface-to-depths weapon option with inferior dps would seem to solve this.

- There is no obvious nobrainer of "pick water gun" if water gun is stronger against Duck but weaker vs Hunter.
- The floating heavy commander cannot be worse than Grizzly, which already exists.
+1 / -0
A surface-to-depths weapon is a better solution, but doesn't fully solve the problem. The big remaining issue is that there is a massive difference between killing a single Duck and being killed by a single Duck. Basically, adding the ability to kill Duck with a particular weapon choice increases commander role diversity. Doing that requires more consideration and possibly some testing.
+1 / -0
3 years ago
There's the possibility of giving all commanders an innate, non-upgradeable anti-sub weapon. Then commander can be capable of defending itself underwater without becoming an underwater powerhouse.

I think it would be beneficial for the game, because the inability of commanders to defend themselves underwater has always been something that makes sea gameplay something of a noob trap, even all the way back in BA.
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