Sea

quote: as long as there is no torpedo launcher spam, amphibs are dominating nowadays

So spam Urchin then?

quote: Buoy hardcounters Torpedo Frigates

It's immobile when surfaced. Get a Crusader?

quote: I didn't really consider Hover here, though.

Claymore should work wonders against balls; castrated amphs should be easy to deal with.

quote: But I see no problem with torpedo launcher as it was before.

Newbies could not be competitive.

quote: every com could be given a torpedo launcher

That creates a powerful torpedo strider which doesn't otherwise exist, makeing the commander irreplacable.

Give comms surface-to-attack and amphiregen? That would make them slightly-less-completely-defenseless in water. But that approach probably creates more problems than it solves.

In my experience (speaking of the two factories as starting plops) current Ship does a lot better than current Amph on most sea maps. Hunter is indeed pretty meh but Snake wrecks Ducks and avoids Scallops until you switch to Hover for Claymore, which wrecks everything up to Grizzly (and by the time Grizzlies are viable the sea striders enter the picture).

If Urchin were removed from the game underwater units would totally dominate sea meta without sweeping changes.

maybe a torpedo spewing strider is worth considering

quote: Removing Urchin is not a good solution imo, because it also serves the role of a light defense for expansion.

Nope. Its not a light defense. Its anything defense no matter what you do. Why? Because this is the only single type of good sea turret and that means spam of Urchin all around the map which is... not very fun is it? Like you said it doesn't make for cool games.

Regarding commander: pretty much the same as Urchin. You don't get to have a choice. Either have a torp launcher or lose the game regardless of balance of said module.

quote: The commander should be irreplacable to a certain extent. The nerfed form of torpedo launcher could be used to avoid sea troll coms.

Wrong game. Its not mine nor Sprungs' idea either but GFs'. Commanders are supposed to be able to fill other roles but be worse cost effectively than units.

Aquanim, it's true that I have not built a single Leviathan in a long long time, but last time I remember (tell me if i'm wrong), Leviathan was also antinuke? So it's a mobile antinuke ... MOBILE ANTINUKE ... which happens to be able to fire eos. Otherwise, if it isn't an antinuke then I maybe agree with you :)
Have a nice day

Just give lvl 0 com two weapons, some weak torpedo and pew-pew, then reimplement old torpedo and gauss...

If player morphs commander and it's 1st weapon is a land weapon (or gauss) it replaces pewpew, if its water only weapon - it replaces torpedo... As simple as that.

quote: Aquanim, it's true that I have not built a single Leviathan in a long long time, but last time I remember (tell me if i'm wrong), Leviathan was also antinuke? So it's a mobile antinuke ... MOBILE ANTINUKE ... which happens to be able to fire eos. Otherwise, if it isn't an antinuke then I maybe agree with you :) Have a nice day

Last time I played ZK Reef was a mobile antinuke, and Leviatan coudln't fire at targets that weren't directly visible (forget about radar marks).

Leviathan targetting is fixed and it is no longer an antinuke. But reef still is.

How 2 Improve Sea:

1.) Remove sonar. Frustrating.
2.) Remove Reef spam from the picture. Annoying.
3.) Remove urchin spam. This is a stalemate generator. Boring.
4.) Remove sea-based mono spam game. Boring AND annoying.
5.) Allow coms to defend themselves. Annoying.

Ships vs hovers seems fine. Dagger is strong enough to make snakes non-monospamable while the surface play seems varied enough to remain interesting. The troubling line ups are Hover vs Amph and Amph vs Ships. What would be nice:

A.) Scallop's riot attack underwater can only target other underwater things. Force it to surface to attack surface targets. This will force users to make a more varied strike force. However in turn, increase scallop speed minorly.

B.) Introduce an amph skirmisher. Improve serpent turn rate and speed a little or allow it to move backwards.
Increase claymore range/turn rate/speed slightly to improve usability. Decrease projectile homing/speed so fast units can run away without being a guarenteed kill while also improving usability.

C.) Improve hunter turnrate/speed a little to counter underwater scallops (if A is not considered). Hunter needs to be facing away from scallopball to not instantly die. Even then it takes some time to get out of scallop range.

D.) RENAME SCALLOP OR SCALPEL.

E.) Duck HP nerf. Urchin dmg nerf.

F.) Addition of a cheap amph artillery(SURFACE)/skirmisher(UW)

In my view Hover is a strictly utility factory on sea (mostly Claymore and Penetrator). I would not initially plop Hover unless there was a lot of flat land to work with (like Cull, or Indonesia if it didn't have those stupid cliffs. Why is that map still featured.)

(If you're having problems with the ship v hover matchup, try Typhoons and Enforcers.)

My further opinion is that most of the problems with Sea in terms of it being interesting and fun are due to Amphfac.