Sea Change

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Timeline

Models (tentative order):

  1. Core shipyard
  2. Core torpedo boat
  3. Arm shipyard
  4. Core monitor

...

Special Abilities

What units should have these (if at all), should a unit have more than one of these and/or with other weapons, and if so, which, etc.

  • Radar
  • Antinuke
  • Shield/cloak
  • Drones
  • Tac/EMP launcher
  • Air repair pad
    • Is fuel going to stay around?

Techtree Discussion

Evil4Zerggin:

  • I would prefer to have ships beyond a single factory (either T2 or perhaps a few large ships in the T3 fac).
    • If there is no T2/T3, what do we do about naval antinukes?
    • I would personally like to see sea gain a more even footing with land in the minds of players and mappers. I would say that most players are not nearly as good in sea as they are on land; while most land players can handle a flash rush, a single-corv rush will cripple many sea players.
    • Another problem is that there doesn't seem to be much attention paid to water depths, the way that slopes are taken into consideration on land maps. This reduces the value of draft as a distinction between ships.

Saktoth:

  • We dont have 'tiers' anymore. Honestly, id rather most facs not be striated by power level at all. Each fac must be unique, there shouldnt be redundancy. If we have a dedicated Amph and Hover fac (with under-water combat amphs) that is like having 3 sea facs, not counting air. Thats enough, and each option is genuinely unique (Different combat domains, terrains, weapons, interactions, etc etc). You'd have one large ship, the Carrier/Battleship (Like modern carrier battlefleets, the carrier is the only large vessel) which is mostly something you build to bombard far inland and make a beachhead once you've secured the sea (IE, prettymuch what t2 sea used to be). Obviously you can build it to fight sea units too but it would be vulnerable to subs, especially.
    • Naval antinukes can go on a special 'support' vessel, or the Carrier/Battleship can be made into a sort of mega-ship with all the bells and whistles (sorta like a NOTA ship, but fewer weapons). Failing that, floating antinuke.
    • You cant change the minds of mappers, just getting them to respect the new hovercraft slopes is impossible (Even on scorpio, a map I DESIGNED and said specifically that hovercraft should be able to access the islands). Its a shame because id really love a broader range of slope tolerances. I think the best way to get people used to sea is to offer more overlap between the two, IE, hovers, amphs and other crossover units.
    • I dont know how interesting draught is as a dynamic. Its a flat binary 'can go here, cant go here'. It doesnt give you bonuses to range or speed with height, doesnt allow you to hide in sonar shadows or undersea crevasses with subs, and usually blocks off access to whole swathes of the map. If we had a proper amph lab with torpedo amphs, you could use undersea features and slopes to your advantage (You see why i wanted this, now?).

Evil4Zerggin:

  • Regarding unit cost/power: Currently, unit costs are still very striated; in this sense we still have tiers, though with much less obsolescence:
    • The cheapest T2 land combat unit is the Zipper. Only five T1 land combat units are more expensive: Warrior, Janus, Leveler, Ravager, and Outlaw. Meanwhile, the most expensive T1 land combat unit is the Outlaw. Only five T2 land combat units are cheaper: Gremlin, Pyro, Venom, Morty, and Zipper. If only vehicles are considered, the difference is even more stark--no T1 combat vehicle is more expensive than the cheapest T2 combat vehicle!
    • Of course, the cheapest T3 land combat unit is far more expensive than the most expensive T2 land combat unit.
    • To some degree this can be changed, but I'm not sure how much flexibility there really is, especially between vehicles.
    • I like the feel of the NOTA ships' greater scale. Granted, I think NOTA goes too far in terms of gameplay--3.5-4k metal for the cheapest "ship of the line" makes things slooow, especially given NOTA's weak extractors--but I like the concept.
Arm Kbot Arm Vehicle Core Kbot Core Vehicle
Zipper(188) Morty(189)
Venom(202) Pyro(215)
Warrior(216)
Janus(220) Leveler(233)
Ravager(239)
Gremlin(250)
Outlaw(253)
D. Egg (534)
  • After some thought, it appears that there is one draft that mappers commonly respect: shallow crossings. Land units in both BA and CA have a maxWaterDepth of 22--therefore, several maps have shallow crossings of 20 depth, including Tropical, Tempest, Scorpio Battleground, Amazon Delta, and Splintered Tropics (although the mapmaker for this one screwed up and made some of the crossings too deep). Apart from shallows, all the sea maps I've seen have fairly deep water, so it's unlikely a draft of 40 or so would get stuck in unpredicatble places.
  • I'm not too sure a greater variety of slope tolerances is such a good thing. For one thing, slopes aren't the easiest thing for a mapmaker to control or players to see with fine precision, since mappers make heightmaps, not slopemaps. Especially when players are playing on a new map, it may be difficult to tell whether a unit can cross a given slope before building a factory; a greater number of different maxslopes would exacerbate this problem, and I'm not sure how much it would add to the depth of the game.
  • I do think more overlap between land and sea via amphs and hovers is a good idea.
  • As for distinguishing factories:
    • By the same count, land has 7 factories (vehicles x2, kbots x2, T3, hover, amph). Furthermore, the difference between hover, amphs, and land units on land is much less than the difference between hovers, amphs, and floating units in the water.
    • There is no movetype difference between vehicles, and not much between most kbots (T1, T2, T3) either (the exceptions being all-terrain and jump).
    • In addition to movetypes, we can also make differences using maxVelocity, turnRate and acceleration, similar to how kbots are more maneuverable while vehicles are faster.
    • While the T1 plan covers the essentials, I don't think it comes close to exhausting the possibilities of interesting floating sea units. With a second factory we can explore different weapons and abilities, different combinations of weapons and movement characteristics, and so forth.
  • Once we get the new boats running, I think we should remove T2 sea until we decide what to do with it (whether we should have ships or not, and if we do, what form they will take).
  • Come to think of it, it is possible to vary speed by depth via COB. For example, we could make boats move slower in deep water, and ships move slower in shallow water. With a LuaRules? component, we can even analyze the heightmap and decide what kind of speed modifiers to apply based on the map to compensate for the lack of standards on what a seabed depth should be. Unfortunately there's no way for the pathing system to know about this, so this could lead to non-optimum paths.
  • Regarding a dedicated sub factory: I think this would be too hard-counter in its relationship to surface vessels; as a surface ship player, one would be limited to little more than a single unit type when fighting a dedicated sub factory since many surface vessels are incapable of attacking subs. Furthermore, we run into the issue of submarine shore bombardment--without it, subs have no way to affect things on land, but shore bombardment with any significant range could be overly difficult to deal with. I would rather keep a couple sub options in the sea factories and perhaps also the amph factory.

Saktoth:

  • I think conships should get more build distance and be able to build land structures, particularly mexes, so they can take islands.
  • On cost striation- yeah it still exists. But boats are already prettymuch in the t2 cost ranges. T2 ships (battleship etc) are more like mechs.
  • The problem with the 'shallows' draught is its generally used to gross seas and such. Its often really important that ships can cross these kinds of shallows, or they're mega-gimped.
  • We can create a 'this is a river/shallows map, for boats. This is an ocean map, for ships' dynamic, but thats just really creating two games.

Id rather see hovers/amphs for use in shallows rivers and really swampy areas, since there are more interesting things you can do with them and they foster integration. Ships having to stay a mile off shore might be meh.

  • On a greater variety of slope tolerances: Im just thinking that on maps like comet catcher, or really flat areas of maps like DSD, it might be viable to use hovers. So at least they're practical somewhere other than sea maps, but not on the same variety that vehicles are useful. Perhaps if we did that slopemod thing.
  • I dont think we need flame, rail, wobble-missile, annihilator etc ships. These kinds of weapons are mostly flavour. They add to existing units, but the units need a niche or role to play on the sea, in the first place.
  • I agree a dedicated sub facs probably too hard countery, but an amph fac could serve semi-similiar purpose while being more versatile.

Side Differentiation

Arm

  • Superstructure in center, turrets fore and aft. Arrangement favors broadsides.
  • More firepower, less armor.
  • Overall tend to have higher unit cost than Core, in contrast to land. Extra cost goes primarily toward speed.
  • Design favors curves. Boats have rounded bows and sterns. Ships resemble modern ships more, with pointed bows. Turrets have distinctive "ears".
  • Mostly gray color scheme, with curvy camouflage.
  • Names based on virtues or forms thereof: Inquirer, Invincible, Tenacious, Victory, etc. Perhaps somewhat resembling a Royal Navy feel. Use names resembling the role of the unit.

Saktoth: I like this, the new destroyer is really cool.

Core

  • Superstructure in aft, turrets in fore. Arrangement favors head-on attacks.
  • More armor, less firepower.
  • Design favors angles. Boats have flat fronts and sterns, ships have a more diamond-like shape. Still considering turret design.
  • Mostly black color scheme, with various lines going across.
  • Names based on traditional weapons: Scimitar, Balisong, Claymore, Atlatl, etc. The larger the ship, the larger the weapon it is named after. Anti-air ships use names of projectile weapons, and subs use names of concealable weapons.

More WaterWeapons

  • Weapons capable of firing from above the surface at underwater targets will make it easier for land players to make a foothold in the sea, where they can build a boat/shipyard, as an alternative to going amphs or hovers.
  • This will also make surfboard action more interesting.
  • Likely candidates, such that each factory has at least one unit with a waterWeapon:
    • Lightning.
      • Zeus
      • Panther
      • Bantha
    • Tachyon.
      • Penetrator
      • Bantha
      • Krogoth
      • Doomsday Machine
      • Annihilator
    • Heavy (orange) beamweapons.
      • Can
      • Gimp (maybe keep torpedo and use red beamweapon instead)
      • Halberd
      • Krow (maybe give HLT and have a different gunship use heavy beamweapon instead)
    • Banisher.
  • Possible unit changes:
    • Give Pelican sonar and lightning cannon instead of current weapon; reinstate as an anti-sub hovercraft.
    • Give Halberd sonar, decrease other stats slightly; also becomes anti-sub hovercraft.
    • Krow gets HLT instead of current lasers; add anti-sea gunships armed with lightning (Arm) and heavy beamweapons (Core), using old torpedo seaplane models for now. Sonar on these gunships, or possibly another gunship.
    • Merge sonar and seismic to allow sonar detection from land.
    • More amphs with underwater weapons.

Saktoth: Sea weapons (torps) cant hit anything thats not in the sea, and cant hit hovers. I think thats a useful dynamic. Hovers are immune to subs- they dont need anti-sub weaponry. Subs arent the major problem with re-taking the sea imo.

Miscellaneous

  • Internal names: Repeat two letters, followed by another descriptive letter if necessary. Exception: Construction ships.
    • bb - Battleship
    • cc - Cruiser
    • cs - Construction Ship
    • cu - Construction Sub
    • dd - Destroyer
    • ff - Frigate
    • kk - Corvette
    • mm - Monitor
    • uu - Submarine
    • vv - Carrier

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