The Udaloy-class has been given three different loadouts on the public beta branch, one approximately dated 1980, one dated 1985, and one dated 1988. This is a welcome change because the Udaloy-class as it is configured on the main branch of Sea Power basically never existed in real life, and this brings the class closer to how it would've been in reality (not to mention, it's a welcome nerf for the Udaloy and its frankly oppressive interception capability against Harpoons). For those wondering, this is what the loadouts change compared to how the Udaloy is on the current main branch:

• Early Loadout (1980)
  • No SA-N-9 Gauntlet, instead receives two four-round launchers for SA-N-10 Grouse (basically Igla MANPADS on a turret). Also has no Cross Sword radar suites, as they have no purpose without SA-N-9.
• Default Loadout (1985)
  • Retains SA-N-9, but loses one Cross Sword radar suite (cutting interception capability in half). Instead of two Strut Pair air search radar, the default loadout now has a singular Top Plate air and surface search radar, which is comparable to the Top Steer that equips the Sovremenny-class, but has a lower minimum altitude that can track sea-skimmer missiles.
• Late Loadout (1988)
  • Retains SA-N-9 and both Cross Sword radar suites. Retains the forward Strut Pair radar, but substitutes the aft Strut Pair for a Top Plate. This is the closest to the Udaloy as it is on the main branch, just with a more capable air search radar.

TL:DR; Early loadout is a significant nerf to the Udaloy, default loadout is a shifting of the Udaloy's capability (not as many interceptors, but can track sea-skimmers better), and late loadout is a slight buff.

Jamie Hyneman skin for Sylas when?

For those who don’t know, MythBusters was a reality show from the 2000’s where a pair of special effects artists, Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, test various urban legends. This screenshot comes from the episode “Phone Book Friction”, where Jamie and Adam test the idea that two phone books with interleaved pages are impossible to separate due to the immense friction between them. Ultimately, they had to resort to a pair of tanks, which managed to separate the books with power to spare. To ensure the clamps on the books wouldn’t be torn off, they upgraded to metal clamps and heavy chains, which Jamie is dragging toward the tanks in the screenshot.

Also, as an aside, if Riot did actually spoof MythBusters for some skins and gave the Jamie skin to Sylas, who do you think should get the Adam Savage skin?

One of the things that Sea Power is less transparent about is how many missiles you need to saturate a target ship's air defenses to guarantee at least some of your missiles hit. Well, with the addition of an automated point cost generator for Task Force Mode in update 0.8.2, we can now guesstimate the amount of missiles required. As such, I put together a Google Sheets table that shows the rough number of missiles you'd need in order to breach a specific ship class' air defenses.

For those who want to understand my process, I acquired the raw numbers from pointvalues.csv, located in AppData/LocalLow/Triassic_Games/Sea_Power/cache. These numbers are re-generated by the game every time you run it, which is how the automated point cost generator is able to account for modded units. Of particular interest are the aa_k_subskim, aa_k_supskim, and aa_k_diver fields. Each of these refer to one of three types of anti-ship missiles: subsonic sea skimmers (RGM-84C Harpoon, SY-1A Scrubbrush, and SS-N-2 Styx), supersonic sea skimmers (SS-N-19 Shipwreck, SS-N-12 Sandbox, and SS-N-22 Sunburn), and supersonic divers (AS-4 Kitchen and AS-6 Kingfish), and more specifically, how many the ship is likely to kill before the missiles impact it. I took the raw numbers from these fields, rounded them to the nearest whole number, then multiplied by 1.5 to acquire the number of missiles needed to saturate a specific ship's air defenses.

Interesting Data Points

• Other Information about the table
  • If a ship class doesn't appear on the table, it is either because 1), it has no missile defenses to begin with, 2), it does have missile defenses, but they are woefully inadequate for the missile types currently in the game, or 3), it shares a class designation with another ship that has an identical or superior missile defense rating (I.E, the various Adams-classes).
  • If a ship has multiple loadouts, the one with the strongest missile defenses is referred to in its final score (I.E, late loadouts for many USN surface combatants).
  • The original scores the table is based on do not account for the presence of soft-kill systems like chaff and ECM (at least not to my knowledge).
• General patterns
  • The missile type that gives the most trouble across the board consist of supersonic sea-skimmers like the SS-N-19. This makes sense: they fly below the horizon until they're close enough to go into terminal guidance, and combined with their speed, you have the least time to react of the three.
  • The RIM-7E, while better than nothing, isn't likely to shoot down any missiles: no ship that had RIM-7E made it onto the final version of the list. Even late models of the Knox-class with CIWS performed better than versions with early sea sparrows (and yet still didn't make it onto the list).
  • SA-N-1C performed similarly poorly: Goas are only marginally more effective than early Sea Sparrows. Unlike RIM-7E, however, some ships with SA-N-1C did make it onto the final list, though they're still quite poor at missile defense compared to the alternatives.
  • RIM-8 Talos is also extremely poor at missile interception. Despite being the longest-ranged ship-based SAM in the game, RIM-8 performed so poorly that Galveston-class missile cruisers, which use RIM-8 as their main SAM, barely made the list.
• Subsonic sea skimmer defense
  • Unsurprisingly, the ship that had the highest score against subsonic sea skimmers was the Udaloy-class, which will require an estimated 29 missiles to saturate its air defenses. However, it is tied for that score with the USN's Ticonderoga and Alaska-class missile cruisers, which will also require 29 subsonic sea skimmers to saturate their defenses despite having slower-firing rail launchers compared to the Udaloy's VLS.
  • Ships without CIWS tend to have more trouble intercepting subsonic sea skimmers.
• Supersonic sea skimmer defense
  • As mentioned above, supersonic sea skimmers are the hardest missile type to intercept. The most effective ships against them are USN Aegis cruisers (Ticonderoga and Alaska-class). Each will require 21 to guarantee a hit.
  • The best-performing ship against supersonic sea skimmers on the side of the Warsaw Pact was still the Udaloy class, tied for this position with the Kirov-class. So if NATO ever gets supersonic sea-skimmers in the future and you're playing Pact, you know which ships to grab.
• Supersonic diver defense
  • The ship with the strongest defense against supersonic divers was the Alaska-class CGN, requiring a total of 89 to saturate its defenses. The Ticonderoga-class is a close second, requiring 83. The discrepancy between them in this instance is likely because Alaska has a 50% greater magazine depth than Ticonderoga, which matters more when shooting at supersonic high-altitude targets.
  • Just as ships without CIWS tended to struggle with dealing with subsonic sea skimmers, ships without long-range air defenses tended to struggle with dealing with supersonic divers.
• Anomalies
  • The PLAN's Jianghu II-class frigate is more effective than Jiangdong-class frigates at missile defense. However, this is only true if you give them PL-5C. Without PL-5C, the two ships are about equal.
  • Interestingly, the Jianghu II-class with PL-5C is the only ship class in the game to be more effective at stopping supersonic sea skimmers than both subsonic sea skimmers AND supersonic divers (most ships are either/or). I have a couple theories about why this might be the case, but the most basic theory is that the specific missile used to model supersonic sea skimmers is SS-N-19, which relies on ECM to soft-kill incoming SAMs, and PL-5C is a heat-seeker, which the SS-N-19 can't jam.