[Suggestion] Elaborating on Underwater Layer

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by thetrophysystem, February 17, 2015.

  1. thetrophysystem

    thetrophysystem Post Master General

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    I have an idea for the Underwater Layer:
    -In most/classic RTS, the underwater layer is invisible to land/air vision. Would be neato for that to be the case here, where land, air, and orbital didn't see the stuff underwater. Also adds a mild "stealth" layer to the game. Also buffs both the barracuda's power as an anti naval only, and the kraken as an expensive anti-land that can be hidden underwater. ALSO, it makes air dangerous to use heavily without non-air units, which can actually detect dangerous underwater threats.
    -Would be a nice touch if amphibious units like bots were expanded on too. Remember how the weakest infantry in RA2 was also the only able to occupy structures and fire from them? Would be nice if Dox and Grenadiers were able to cross underwater but not fire since you added that to the engine already. The hard part, is making them only detectable underwater with underwater detection so it's a surprise when they emerge.
    -I couldn't help but notice the vehicle fabber is cannonbuildable. Would be awesome if the bot fabber was amphibious as well, and then you could make that cannonable instead (because sometimes you wana play a naval game, build unit cannons on water, fire units into water, teleport units between water... you feel me?) I don't feel given the vehicle fabber is cannonable, that the bot fabber would even need a nerf or cost increase or the such in light of this, but that is a possibility depending on preference.
    -Would be hard program work, but would be awesome, if things that transferred from land to underwater, could change speeds. As if water slowed down an amphibious unit if it enters water. Dox move 20, could move 12, grenadiers could move 10, combat fabbers move 10, and even boom bots could get in on it if they moved 12 but that too is a questionable future move. Maybe the Commander could stay the same, or gain +1 more speed than current on land and have the current speed in water.
    Last edited: February 17, 2015
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  2. ace902902

    ace902902 Active Member

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    yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
    yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.
  3. nixtempestas

    nixtempestas Post Master General

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    a fantastically verbose post that...


    do agree though that underwater could use some love.
  4. blightedmythos

    blightedmythos Active Member

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    Agreed. I am honestly surprised it's not this way.
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  5. tesseracta

    tesseracta Active Member

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  6. stuart98

    stuart98 Post Master General

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    Trophy, while your suggestion is an improvement somewhat I really would be more pleased if naval play was just straight up ripped entirely from TA.
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  7. blightedmythos

    blightedmythos Active Member

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    Yep!
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  8. thetrophysystem

    thetrophysystem Post Master General

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    I was thinking from most classic rts as far as vision goes. Specifically in my personal case, from Red Alert 2.

    Ask for all of naval combat, as is my feelings with the entire game, ripping it exactly off TA would miss out on the opportunity to be ITS OWN GAME...
  9. Raevn

    Raevn Moderator Alumni

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    You don't recall how utterly broken Fibbers were in TA?
    What's not to like about a stealth, invisible submarine that makes all other subs around it also invisible to both radar and sight? :p

    So ... not entirely like TA ;)
    (but I otherwise agree)
    Last edited: February 18, 2015
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  10. Bgrmystr2

    Bgrmystr2 Active Member

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    wot

    As long as I've played, I've never seen it make units invisible to sight. Ever. Invisible to radar, sure. The only unit I know of with the ability to actually turn invisible was the commander. Granted invisible to sight tends to become bullshit when it's granted with invisible to radar as well as applied to other units, at least the Commander had an area that made it visible if an enemy unit entered. That and it turned visible when firing and nanolathing.

    Your Com needed some type of radar jammer in the area to mask it's radar signature even if it was invisible. There were no ground unit radar jammers that could visually turn invisible themselves, so eventually you'd get caught. Having an invisible fusion or two really helps when hiding though.
  11. squishypon3

    squishypon3 Post Master General

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    Subs are invisible to sight iirc As they're under water.
  12. Bgrmystr2

    Bgrmystr2 Active Member

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    I can't see submarines under the Atlantic Ocean if I'm on a boat. Funny how that works, huh? :p
    (With respect, I actually used to live near Kings Bay Naval Base in Georgia thanks to my father, so I can say that with a straight face. Largest Trident refit facility on the east coast. Pretty damn impressive.)

    In all seriousness though, I know that you can't see subs unless you have something that has vision underwater, but isn't that obviously how subs should work? They're subs. That's not really being invisible. What I meant by being invisible is if your enemy had commander, subs, or ships that could see underwater, you'd still be unseen. All underwater units and structures had the "invisible to sight" mechanic as long as they were fully submerged. The radar masking on the Fibber was pretty important in that respect, but if you lost naval (or the game entirely) because you can't see fibbers from land, then you're doing something wrong, because no matter what you do with them, no subs can fire on land targets beyond the directly connected beach. (..and to be fair this takes some ingenuity in your attack ground orders.)

    I can definitely see their potential if they push you off the water, but naval in TA has always been extremely expensive to compensate how powerful the units are. Flak ships were evil as all hell vs aircraft, but even they can be outmatched without touching water units. Air will eventually overwhelm them as they can only shoot flak in one direction. Also, a swarm of hovercraft would wreck them, giving torpedo bombers free reign to hit everything else in the water. I don't know the metal for metal stats offhand, someone else likely does, but I do know that you could get quite a few aircraft and hovercraft for the metal you paid for your ships. And since the Fibber is ARM, you won't have to worry about Warlords and their damned long range lasers. (Hovercraft's worst nightmare, bar none </3)
  13. Raevn

    Raevn Moderator Alumni

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    In TA, sonar stealth also negated underwater sight, so it made them invisible to other players even when in range of underwater sight radius. It wasn't actual invisibility like the commander has, just a consequence of the way underwater recon worked.

    Normally in TA, underwater sight allowed you to see subs. Fibbers prevented that so you had unviewable, un-radar-detectable underwater units. It was pretty broken. If it was just sonar stealth, it wouldn't have been as much of an issue.
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  14. Bgrmystr2

    Bgrmystr2 Active Member

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    Wow. Ok, yeah, that seems broken as all hell. I feel it should really be sonar stealth alone, and not visible stealth. In that respect, I agree we shouldn't be trying to copy that. Otherwise, I always liked the visually hidden subs if you only had surface vision. That was one of my favorite naval mechanics in TA.
  15. thetrophysystem

    thetrophysystem Post Master General

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    When making a mod to give subs invisibility to surface, I gave radar the inability to detect them, ships the ability to see them still, and still gave land a few units to detect from shore, including catapult, sheller, and bluehawk. Regular artillery cannot, torpedo tubes can. This at least gives you something you could shrug subs off with.

    Besides that, I think it does a good job at making air on its own unable to clean up the entire enemy naval as they would miss the subs in a strike by themselves, as well as making subs powerful since your enemy has to preemptive way to know they are coming at all. Torpedo turrets are stationary sub detection, but the important part of giving them underwater invisibility, is that you can detect and track enemy armadas, but subs just appear for the first time only when they are in your face attacking.
  16. MrTBSC

    MrTBSC Post Master General

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    which is bs there should be radar/sonarcoverage available otherwise subs would be OP

    frigates are meant as fleetprotection so they should have sonar as well as hornets
  17. thetrophysystem

    thetrophysystem Post Master General

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    Well, I was going for one goal in particular. Making them visible within their own effective range to anything they can affect as far as the t1 one, which is anything naval, anything naval can see subs in their own vision radius...

    ...and making them invisible to constant map tracking.

    I... could use the old sonar model meshed into the place of the unitlist's percieved placement of the "advanced torpedo tube", as to not still need the unitlist.json because I don't want my mod to need one for capatability.

    ...then again, they would just be an optional "advanced radar for naval". I feel the current problem is "sub invisibility" doesn't exist really, and anything has the vision of a kraken. This gives anything in danger by a barracuda a vision of it, as well as a few anti naval land units, and gives the kraken a very slim margin of land attack where it could not normally be detected unless a player goes out his way to make/fetch a specific kind of unit (including commander, commander can take care of krakens)

    As it stands, I didn't add long-distance sonar, because the subs don't need a hard counter, as long as they have so many existing soft counters like frigates and torpedo tubes and slammers and other subs.

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