SirCake wrote: ↑@Kiraye: So I build two or more of your missile subs, put them into 2 groups and position the groups ~10 cells apart. Once I have locked down naval with my regular subs now I can remove air threats over the seas by shooting group A and if the player moves their air fleet there, I fire group B. The subs will recloak faster than anyone can react (and they can reposition stealthed) so the other palyer loses aircraft over time quickly and I have the seas locked down with no way of the other player coming back to it.
It will take a lot of time and micro to do and really I would have intended to use the missile sub for bombarding the shore instead and now the game forces me to use it for AA abuse.
Additionaly I now have a 16 range anti-air artilellry unit at the shoreline.
Im sorry but this doesn't seem to me that this is the way to go.
It does exactly what zinc warned about: It alienates the role of the original unit too much.
Even now players simply don't expect the missile sub to have any AA capabilities.
The situation you described
WILL happen if Soviets have an
effective AA platform to support navy units whether it is:
1.) A Missile Sub with a better AA
2.) A flak sub
3. )A flak boat
4.) or to a certain extent even a Mig that can attack Air.
1.) We will need raw numbers to analyze this scenario.
1 Missile Sub still not able to kill 1 Heli in 1 burst, so 2 group with 1 Missile Sub each will not be effective in killing (Allied) Air units unless you will order the other group to fire on the same Heli, in which case you will reveal it, and it takes only 1 Hind to kill a Missile Sub so it would be a bad trade.
So lets go with the assumption that you have 2 Missile Sub per group. This way you can kill 1 Heli the way you described every 12 seconds (thats the Missile Subs reload time).
So if we add you had to lock down naval with regular subs to this to work effectively we hovering around well over 10k assets on water, depending on the amount of subs you needed to wrestle control on water, this number might be much higher (15k-20k).
Since we have finite resources available at times, that amount of assets is going to be missing from the ground, and in an even game you may have naval control but your ass is gonna be whipped on the ground front.
Anyway lets be generous again and assume you are ahead by a similar amount.
Why not invest in ground and air troops and end the game right there and then, instead of investing in navy and prolong the inevitable at that point. Also some variables depend on map, for example you could easily place a Naval Yard or Sub pen on big Navy maps such as Pool Party and start producing navy before you are discovered(and you are not locked in you main island,but if you are, you probably lost at that point anyway), unless you have a vast number of subs sitting everywhere which will result in even more assets on water.
On maps that have connected landmasses with some kind of lake, you would be just steamrolled by ground troops.
Also in Soviet mirror it could be a bit different since their Air units are a lot faster (Missile Subs rockets speed is 234 and the MIGs speed is 223 and a Yak is a bit slower with 178) so the MIG at the very least is very hard to catch and can easily reposition itself, but can die in 1 volley and cannot burst down Subs as Helis, but over time it could provide more stable dps since it can attack them before they submerge at very long distances and can outrun the AA missiles.
Subs have sight range of 6 so if you have no planes to scout for them, they can be flanked easily.
2.) and 3.)
In this case, it will result in the same issue in the situation you described. You could extract 1 Missile sub (2k) and replace it with Flak Subs or ships.
I will assume for effectiveness sake they will be similar in performance and pricing as the Flak Truck. No micro or attention is needed in this case, just blob them, Missile Subs will bombard the ground, AA ships will make short work of any Air units, unless you want them to be somewhat ineffective against Air. You already secured naval as you said so nothing will prevent the Flak based naval units from doing their job.
If they will be somewhat inneffective to address this issue, they will be probably cheap, so you can spam them and they will be effective in numbers. If they are expensive they should be effective, the outcome is going to be the same.
Only if they are a bit expensive and ineffective at the same then this hipotetical scenario will be somewhat addressed. But in this case we are back to where we started before we added them.
4.)
This will affect ground combat anyway you slice it, and you still have Longbows (or other Migs) that will ruin your day. Assuming you want them to be effective mainly against Hinds, but than the other player would invest in Longbows instead, resulting in naval Air dominance once again.
Also this example you gave me could be used against new Flak based water units moreso, by the time you secured naval, you also kind of secured naval AA at the same time (I assume the Flak subs and boats don't have high tech requirements), since you can roll out Flak AA without the need to tech up as much as you need to Missile Subs.
Which leads us to an important part:
Proggression
The progression to that point also very important. The way to the Missile Sub is time and resource consuming. I doubt you could pull that type of scenario in a competitve match, since the opposition wouldn't let you to have it that easy. In practice the range change would make it useable to a certain degree, but you still need to invest time and resources to get that point and I highly doubt it you could just mass them unpunished.
The Flak Subs or Boats would be a bigger issue as I mentioned, since in theory Soviets need AA on water mostly for supporting the Missile Sub attacks vs ground units, and having it before you get to the Missile Sub would make the example you mentioned much more commonplace since less time and resources are needed to achive complete naval based air dominance.
After that point even if you have to pay and wait a bit more for Missile Subs to arrive (since you invested some for Flak Subs or Boats) the way is already paved for the Missile Subs, and you will need much less of them to make the enemy suffer.
But I doubt this was an issue on your map, or am I wrong? If you didn't encounter this problem yourself, in practice the Missile Subs range increase will less likely to cause something like that.
That was an illustrative hipotetical suggestion anyways, that you can play with other variables not just flat damage values.