The Super Helpful Naval Thread That Will Totally Help You

Disclaimer: Following on from my first attempt at a helpful thread on getting the most from the game's economy, I thought I'd turn my attention to another part of the game that I enjoy but seems to be creating problems for other people. There's no denying that the current naval game needs work, but I thought that, before declaring it utterly broken, it might be nice to try and explain a little of how to play the naval game currently stands for those who've not given it much time as yet. This is, as usual, aimed at average players like myself who want to win a few extra games once in a while, not for the brilliant hive-minds who already know this stuff. Note that as with any guide to playing an unfinished game, things will change, and I'm bound to get things wrong: let me know what needs fixing and I'll try to fix it! Those of you with more wisdom to impart than me, please do correct my errors and add your own tips for naval play in the thread.

1. Getting Started

The first thing that a naval (or largely naval) map will affect is your start. On the whole, I'd suggest that when you're picking start locations, land starts are better than water starts due to the overwhelming cost-effectiveness and energy efficiency of T1 bot fabbers; controlling a solid landmass with enough room to hide T2 energy plants out of range of enemy ships can also be a decisive advantage as the game develops. That said, it's perfectly possible to build a fully functional base entirely on water, complete with orbital launchers and nuke defence, without ever building land units. It'll cost a bit more energy to put together, but crucially you'll have no access to catapults, holkins, or nukes. Note also that some planets will have a number of large lakes/ponds separated by land bridges; in putting your start together you'll need to think about which ponds you'll want to control and which you can concede to your opponent(s).

In any water-dominated map, you'll want to ensure that you have both naval and air factories early. An enemy bluebottle turning up in the wrong place and sniping your first naval factory can effectively end a naval duel within the first few minutes of play. However, on larger planets you can easily afford to prioritise economic structures, and making early offensive units (especially something as expensive as a bluebottle) is a risk: they are less likely to reach your opponent early enough to do lasting damage but will definitely delay your economy. Be sure to understand the risk you're taking by building early aggressive units.

Lastly, remember that on many maps the naval game is only part of your strategy: you will still need to win land wars, and your naval units will always need to be complemented by higher-tech structures like nukes and orbital. Don't let victory at sea blind you to the fact that your opponent has been teching nukes for the past 5 minutes.

2. Tools of the Trade

So, assuming you've committed to taking over an ocean or large lake, what sort of things can you use in your play for naval dominance? Here's a brief run-down, with links to the relevant stat pages on PADB.

Factories:

• T1 Naval Factory: produces T1 naval units. You will need a lot of these; it's often good to try and synchronise their production so that you produce large waves of units all at once. It's also a good idea to build some right on the shoreline so that you can assist them with small numbers of T1 bot fabricators, improving their build power for a rather minimal extra metal cost.
• T2 Naval Factory: produces T2 naval units. You won't need nearly as many of these, mostly because it's much more cost efficient to assist them with T1 bots (if they're near the shore) or T1 construction subs (if they're out at sea) to increase the rate at which you can pump out your naval T2. 53 bots and 21 subs in the optimal number of assisters, as calculated here.
• T1 Air Factory: you can build these on water! Air is rather crucial in naval play, as you'll need it for scouting at the very least. Neglect it at your peril.
• T2 Air Factory: buildable on water and surprisingly useful in naval play, T2 air is an expensive investment but can pay off against an unprepared opponent. Just be sure not to use too many T1 air fabbers in building it, otherwise you'll likely stall on energy. Assisting the T2 air factory to produce units is also effective.

Naval Units:

• T1 Fabrication Ship: your basic naval construction unit. Although less efficient in its energy use than the construction sub, the T1 fab ship can build all the key economic and defense structures you'll need in T1, with the crucial exception of T1 radar. Note that it's not as energy-efficient or cost-efficient as T1 bot fabbers, so scale up your energy output if you plan to use them en masse.
• Fabrication Sub: although underwater combat hasn't been implemented yet, this still has its uses. Its improved energy efficiency over the fab ship make it great for use in assisting seaborne construction projects; it can build naval factories and defences on its own but is mostly there to assist other fabbers.
• Bluebottle: the workhorse of the current naval game; expect to build them by the tens and hundreds. It has good hp, range, and rate of fire, and is sufficiently mobile to dodge pelter shots if carefully micro'd. The most important feature of the bluebottle, however, is that its weapon range exceeds its vision range: this means that any navy with an advantage in radar coverage or air scouting can destroy an enemy fleet whilst keeping them at arms' length. The other important feature of the bluebottle is the slow turning speed of its turrets, making it vulnerable to encirclement/pincer attack when in small groups.
• Sun Fish: billed as a scout, its low hp and relatively high cost make this an (at best) highly situational unit. Potentially useful early on for picking off unprotected fab ships, its only late-game use is as a radar false-positive, fooling catapults and other 1-hit-kill units into attacking them instead of your bluebottles and stingrays.
• Narwhal: another highly situational unit, the Narwhal is intended to provide air cover for your fleets whilst packing a moderate surface-to-surface punch. However, the T1 fighter is better at the former and the bluebottle is better at the latter. Only useful if you really, really need to win an air battle above your fleet or you can't rely on fighter cover for some reason: for a mobile air defence, it's not a cost-effective buy.
• Dolphin: packing a hefty punch, the Dolphin would be a great unit if it could actually submerge. As it is, however, being outranged by the bluebottle is a fairly serious handicap when combined with its high cost. I'd advise you to spend your metal on something else.
• T2 Fabrication Ship: the floating equivalent of the other T2 fabbers, the T2 fabrication ship gives you access to the usual T2 eco/orbital gubbins, plus the surprisingly effective T2 Torpedo Launcher. Its energy efficiency is respectable but not as good as its land-based equivalents; in the short term it also gives you access to floating Advanced Radar, which can be extremely powerful in a pinch. Note that because nuke launchers cannot currently be built as floating structures, it takes quite a bit of fiddly microing to get them close enough in against the shoreline to actually build a nuke launcher. If you want to put down structures on a new landmass, it's mostly quicker to get air fabbers to plant that first bot factory for you.
• Leviathan: the hitpoints of 9 bluebottles and the dps of 3, all for the cost of 10 bluebottles! The Leviathan is potentially a floating turkey, but has the redeeming feature of outranging all T1 naval units by a small but significant margin. If you really need a damage-sink to accompany your bluebottles into battle, the Leviathan isn't the worst thing you could build in your T2 naval yard - but it dies in one hit to guided missile fire, so you'd mostly be better off with...
• Stingray: a mobile, floating catapult, the Stingray is the real reason for building a T2 navy. They provide a homing, one-hit-kill on any unit (apart from commanders) or defense structure, and dramatically outrange all other naval units. Actual catapults outrange them, as do holkins, but when combined with good scouting/radar coverage they can kite massed bluebottles/leviathans indefinitely. They are made of papier-maché, however, and are very vulnerable to being swarmed, so keep them out of your front-line bluebottle blobs if you can. Their impressive weapon range but low sight range means that superior intel and the ability to locate and destroy enemy stingrays without jeopardising your own is key to winning a late-game naval war (at least until the nukes really start flying).
• Barracuda: An expensive dolphin, it packs a real punch but is severely hampered by its thin hitpoint count and inability to actually submerge in the way the term 'submarine' implies. Expect reworks in future patches, but save your metal until then.

3. Bread and Butter: your basic tactics

By and large, naval wars are most easily won by exerting early pressure on a wide front using good numbers of bluebottles, preferably in areas not yet locked down by large amounts of static torpedo launchers. Set up good numbers of factories and pump them out as you would with ants or doxes. Because few naval units have vision ranges equal to or greater than their weapon ranges, using aerial scouts to hover over enemies or tracking them with radar is the key to breaking down both enemy fleets and fortified positions. In general, superior scouting and radar coverage is more important to your naval strategy than bulk weight of bluebottles - though having lots of units is rarely a disadvantage.

When on the defensive, the torpedo launcher is generally more effective for its cost than the pelter, but short vision ranges on these units means neither is truly effective without supporting intel. Use air fabbers to erect floating T1 radar just behind your defence lines early on: ships can't build T1 radar, so air fabbers make a good workaround. Do your best to deny enemy aerial scouting with your own fighters or, if you really can't avoid it, small numbers of AA turrets. Note that static defence is only effective if you can force your opponent to come through it, so try to defend areas where the terrain (i.e. land unpathable to ships) forces them to attack you. However, since torpedo launchers cannot fire through the ground but enemy ships can definitely fire over it, avoid positioning your torp launchers where land will block their shots.

Air units are absolutely crucial in the naval game, mostly due to their ability to gain scouting for yourself and deny it to the enemy. Make sure to have a good number (5 is probably a minimum) of T1 air factories pumping out fighters, as well as occasional fabber aircraft to extend your radar cover; if land space is at a premium, make sure you build your air factories on water. Don't be fooled into spamming T1 bombers though: their damage output against the high-hp naval units (not to mention buildings) is rather laughable: testing this in the current build it took 8 T1 bombers to kill a bluebottle in a single pass. Moreover, the natural tendency of bluebottles to spread out when they move means you'll rarely catch more than two bluebottles in a single bomber strike. T2 bombers, however, are surprisingly lethal against naval units due to their hefty damage and fast reload rate, so if a commander snipe isn't on the cards then harassing the enemy fleet might be. And indeed in general T2 air is very strong in an all-out naval war, provided you can gain enough air dominance to allow your T2 bombers a free hand.

There are some things that you should avoid, though: both T1 and T2 sonar, the jellyfish mine, as well as submarine units in general, don't seem to work at present. Spend your metal on bluebottles, get control of the air, and force your opponent to fight you within your own radar coverage.

4. Advanced Tactics

If you can get as far as T2 naval units (this is much more likely in team games), be sure to make use of stingrays to put pressure on your opponents, especially their defence lines; on an all-water map they are almost the pinnacle offensive unit as nothing can outrange them (nukes, catapults and holkins aren't buildable on water). T2 fabrication ships are of course essential for expanding your T2 economy into the ocean, but they also grant you access to the crucial orbital tech; intel is the key to naval warfare, so orbital radars are even more valuable than normal (if that's possible). Denying your opponent access to orbital radar can be a game-winning play.


Although nukes aren't buildable on water, anti-nukes are, so it's possible to protect key infrastructure from both intra-and extra-orbital nukes. That said, the generally high cost and hitpoints of naval units make them a very, very good target for any nukes of your own: most good players will secure their commander against a nuke strike but few can afford to do the same for their fleets. The slow turn rate and acceleration of naval units makes it hard for them to dodge, so if you can bait large enemy fleets into a nuke strike, your chances of inflicting crippling casualties are very good. Where nukes are available, be sure to use them, and it's wise to make enemy nuke launchers into priority targets if you spot them.

Despite being profligate in their energy consumption, T2 air fabbers are an excellent choice if you need to go island-hopping; catapults are very effective against naval units and outrange stingrays, so don't be afraid to throw some down to help secure outlying islands and deny your enemy's fleets freedom of movement. If you need to establish a bridgehead on an enemy island, using air fabbers to sneak out a bot factory under the cover of some bluebottles is also a risky but plausible option. Boat fabbers can theoretically do the same thing but need a lot of persuasion to bring them close enough to the coast to build the factories. The energy is probably easier to come by than your time in this case.

It is also technically possible to skip T2 naval entirely and build the much cheaper T2 air factory using assisting construction subs. This would mean you would lose access to the T2 torpedo launcher, but would allow quicker access to T2 economy buildings on all- or mainly-water maps, assisting T2 air fabbers with T1 naval constructors/your commander to reduce the energy costs.

Finally, be aware that commanders can now be targeted by any and all naval units, even when completely submerged. This means that if you can get into range of an enemy com with a couple of stingrays you will almost certainly get the kill. Don't let this happen to you.

5. Roundup

The core of the naval game is scouting and intel, not massing fleets. T1 torpedo launchers can be extremely cost-effective against an enemy fleet that's attacking outside friendly radar range and scout cover. Even if you do succeed in massing significant numbers of bluebottles you can't afford to just throw them away; your goal should not be just to wipe out your enemy's production, but also to deny them the economic benefits that the ocean can offer whilst reaping them for yourself. If you can pin down an opponent into a narrow scrap of water while you cover Poseidon's face with your metal extractors, you're well on your way to victory. However, don't become complacent: PA isn't just a game about controlling the sea, it's about controlling the land and the heavens as well; don't rest on your laurels until they're yours, and press your advantages until all enemy commanders are smoking craters. Likewise, never underestimate the value of allowing your opponent to think that they're winning: sometimes it's more effective to make a fighting retreat inland and move into nuclear and orbital tech than it is to throw all your resources into an already lost naval war. You're not dead until the fat man goes boom.

TL;DR: Radar and intel win games. Build ships and air, don't build subs.

And I'm gonna reserve this post for the inevitable corrections!

I just want to point out something for the early game section -

NEVER build a Bluebottle first thing out of your first naval factory. It will kill your eco and you will not expand as fast as someone who builds even one fab ship before you.

Yes, if you know where they are and you think you can harass them for as much resources as the ship cost you, then by all means build one. But, it is so risky that it just doesn't make sense.

Also - though Leviathans seem less powerful on paper, they are fantastic at cutting through bluebottle blobs when defending.

It's like having a mobile pelter nest with walls and everything attached

I just can't wait for the barracuda's apparent "long-range ballistic nuclear missile" part.
That's going to really change naval, whether it's for better or worse will be debatable.

Correction:amphibious start if you can is much superior to naval start. Early expansion with bots is simply superior to naval or air

Sunfish are quite good at extending range of Leviathans, and not as fragile as air units.

So what is the advantage of bots?

Can we not simply make the boat builders just build so much faster for their cost?

And as for aircraft, I actually quite like them as they stand, as otherwise you mighty just use them universally, But if their only weakness is having hornets snipe them, then that just good raiding play.

Edit: Also I have found Narwalls to be more useful in large scale naval battles as you can fit more of them in compared to the bluebottles larger size, and the ability to cover both surface and air targets (As we have no subs) makes them a superior meat shield for battleships.

I feel like currently a cluster of Narwalls is better then a cluster of bluebottles.

With mixed units narwhals may indeed be better, but in a pure t1 fight you REALLY need to use bluebottles.

I like doing a 1:1 mix of narwhals to bluebottles. They are pretty cheap, add lots of targets for catapults and stingrays to shoot at, provide decent AA in large numbers and still contribute to direct fire as well.

But I guess this starts degenerating into matters of preference.

You can..



The problem is to get your bot factory up and running without crashing your eco you need 2 metal extractors, and to support your commander you need an additional 3 metal extractors. Plus power gens. So that's spending 42 metal, earning 45.

The naval factory and commander combo requires an extra metal extractors, to spend 48 metal, earn 49.

Then the amount of power that the naval factory costs is much more expensive than the bot factory

So discounting the fabbers, the naval player is already behind. If they built fabbers too the amount of power they need to build to support additional fabbers is much more than with bots.

I agree with air. Air has much too much mobility to be equally as efficient as bots.