Subs

A single sub blocks access to the opponents battleships, unless they are escorted by cruisers/other subs. It provides lots of "free kills" because the opponent is mindlessly spamming.

Air gives you the opportunity to chase down whatever made it through the net.

The difference is that hovering bombers is a bad tactic because a fighter sweep clears the way.

Subs mean they have to do a frigate/cruiser sweep. Which is keeping the focus on naval.

Id love to have the subs be detectable if they get too close, but then to also have that detection range be their max firing range.

So that subs need to get close to deal their great damage, but if they get caught, they get blowed up.

Since mines float on the surface, maybe subs should be immune? Or am I remembering it wrong?

If anything, mines should be the best defence, as they should be able to detect a sub that is in their aoe range, and thus detonating.

How about depth charge launchers? Or having sub-fabbers build underwater mines so sub-fabbers have something to do besides thinking "when I grow up I want to be a boat fabber!"

Mines vs. slow/ranged always results in the same outcome. The enemy has a million years to find and destroy the mines without taking any losses. It's simply fundamentally bad and can ONLY work by having some kind of absurd stat line.

Only if they can't be seen, or don't want to be seen taking them out.

That's going into stealth/detector territory, a discussion which has happened many times before. Detection doesn't scale, and in a game about massive armies that's a big red flag.

The best place to put mines are where they are least expected, or where the enemy has a hard time dealing with them. That fails to be true for every situation on the ground or water. Mines can be anticipated with a single detector, and they can be answered by everything in the game with range (that's just about everything BTW). It gives mines an unavoidably low chance of success, which is simply bad. Broken odds can only be answered with broken stats to compensate.

Yeah you are probably right.

Why exactly doesn't detection scale? Evidence? Stats? Lay it down Bobucles. Otherwise I don't see any reason why mines cant be cloaked on land and submerged in water if they ever fix the submarine issue, detector units are neseary then of course but its not like they can't be stopped, if you see a detector on range you kill it before it reveals too much, simple; Likewise you protect your detectors I don't see the problem here.

Actually this is a good point. Mines are stealth units by design.