I just played a game and decided to go with a planet made almost entirely out of water, to try an all out naval battle. During my game i noticed some issues that I wanted to compile into a list, so here it is: The most obvious issue with naval units right now is their pathing, I dont know if this is an unfortunate side effect of using flow field algorithms or not. But maneuvering naval units in the current version (Gamma 62443) is a very tedious business, especially when it comes to larger vessels such as the Leviathan Battleships. Even moving a pair of small crafts to a point far away, in open waters (to create a smooth linear travel path), tends to end with them crashing against each other or taking strange paths. To get my ships lined up for the nice screenshot I included below took some serious micro-management of each separate ship. As seen in the screenshot above (top left), the Stingray Missile Cruisers have a difficult time hitting certain targets, especially Air Factories. The missiles miss and loop upwards for a long duration, never hitting the target. Some of the other issues are purely astetic ones, but none the less important to an overall smooth look and game immersion. Stingray Missile Cruisers do not open their missile hatches before firing. Causing the projectiles to simply clip through the model (this is perhaps simply due to the model being a placeholder). The stern gun turrets of the Leviathan Battleship points forwards into the ship when idle. The guns of the Leviathan Battleship uses no sound effects, and those enormous turrets firing in complete silence is kind of a let down after spending all that time building and positioning them for the perfect shore bombardment. The game is turning out to be greate in my opinion, becoming more polished with every update. But it would be a real shame to see the naval units fall behind and be neglected. There is not many things as awe-inspiring as a armada of battleships pounding away at the enemy shores, both audibly and visually! (Except for smashing the entire planet of course!)
I had a similar game, and noticed two things. the pathing was bad, as you said, but I also had an issue with the T2 factory, as can be seen here:
This one is in the bug tracker at least, aptly named "Stingray Missile Tornado" (Bug FS#3152). I couldn't find the other ones though, so you might want to add those. Well after a search of course, my searching skills are rather low.
Thanks for the reply! Sadly, i do not think the bad pathing is a bug. More like poorly worked on path algorithms. One can only hope they improve them later on. As for the visual issues, I am sure someone has already added those.
I think part of the bad pathing also comes from the current iteration of formations. They are packing too closely, while units such as tanks and bots are smaller and so the spacing is more appropriate. Moving large groups of elongated units mean they all put leverage on eachother and so their turning gets stuck, leading to an endless straight move in a constant state of trying to turn. I dont beleive Uber is unaware of this, I am sure it drives them equally nuts at the office during play tests. I agree with you that its just poorly worked, but not due to skill, just incomplete.
That sounds very plausible, being a programmer myself I know that getting the unit rotations right when moving a group of units using flow fields can be tricky, especially when in a formation!
I think its probably re-using the standard system, some spacing will be needed and also be more aesthetically pleasing. At the moment it looks like the worlds deadliest duck race lottery. Gotta put the brush down somewhere, the first stroke of paint isn't wrong, its just not the last one.
