Will Naval ever be useful? ;-;

I feel like for naval to be used more, the map generation needs to be looked at, maybe even have another new slider, for rivers and lakes. So that instead of just some lakes around the planet, there is more of a connection between them.

This would obviously require some form of bridge mechanic in the form of terrain that can go above rivers.

Atm naval just seems to confined because of the way lakes is spawned.

Infact i dont actually recall ever seeing rivers between lakes hmm.

Not to mention water needs to be able to be on higher plains, so it can go up and over mountains and such as well. Then it would be really fun, to sail around and see what you can find and hit .

Good point rmj

People don't use naval for several reasons.
It's slow, it's clunky, planets almost never randomly spawn with water and there's also the teensy little issue of it being kind of unfinished.

Thanks. But yeah thats my observerations at least. If naval is to be fun, the playground have to be there so to speak.

It just feels so limited to oh yeah i build ships but only in this tiny lake.

sure on earth not all water is connected. But most of it actually is.

imagine if you could even create water ways of some form or as people before me have said, teleporters for water. So it actually has mobility. Still think lakes and stuff would look awesome.

I agree rmj. Choke points are another big issue. There are no choke points in both naval or ground war fare that connect things together. But unfortunately that's an issue with having round maps instead of square like ta and supcom..I hope uber has a way around this..

"First class support for naval means you will be able to have a combination of water and land planets as well as ice asteroids. Huge water only planets to play out all kinds of naval only scenarios will also be supported. Asteroid tsunamis FTW! Some of the water units we can expect include subs, amphibious units, floating buildings and of course battleships!"

I'll just leave this here...

First class huh lol
Ice asteroids.. nice find ace!

i think naval should be like it is in real life a support for ground troops. big boats as artillery and small submarines to take on the big boats. thats it. no t2 no fuzz, only a t2 fabber can build a dock. and the naval fabber should double as scout and/or be anfibious.
like that naval will be useful.
p.s. sea bases should look a lil bit different…..

I want anfibious vehicles soooo bad

The solution to buffing Naval is actually quite simple:

- Increase the speed of all Naval combat units by 100%
- Add an amphibious hovercraft unit
- Allow portals to be built on water to allow Naval units to enter water on another planet
- And also for amphibious hovercrafts to cross portals from water to land on another planet
- To balance up, add an amphibious underwater tank and do the same by allowing it to move from land portals to water portals.
- The amphibious units should not be as powerful as the pure Naval or pure land units so as to let them keep their inland or in-water advantage.

This is a no-go though:

- Let Naval units walk on land and float on lava.

I'm mainly waiting for a terrain generation overhaul, subs and hoping for hover units.
Unfortunately I heard a while back that there were some technical issues with implementing subs (I may be imagining things though). Hopefully PA gets subs at some point though. Am just a bit worried that they wont be included.

Naval was great when it had great range, but they you got silly flooding of lakes with Orcas. Then range was reduced and you have to get out the very expensive T2 factory and ships to make use of it, and that takes a long time. Still, if someone pulls it off ships can shutdown a sizable area.

Personally, I think T1 naval needs more range, it can't do enough to the shore, and bombers are a more viable way of countering an Orca lake.

Also, I think for naval play to be more interesting there should be a restriction as to what can be built on water. Currently every freakin structure can be placed on water, except for ground factories. This makes water rich planets a lot less diverse from any other planet. Am I the only one who thinks it's stupid that pelters and holkins can be built on water?

@neutrino also repeatedly said that submarines are not needed for this game, and this is where I strongly disagree. Subs are very much needed to increase unit variety in the currently very small pool of naval units.
The argument against subs is that people barely play on water planets. Well I think the reason people barely play on water planets is the desolate state naval is currently in and the absence of submarines and amphibious units.

In a half-assed attempt to create specialized units the slammer got the ability to walk underwater which is completely out of role for this kind of bot and looks like a band-aid fix.
In contrast, have a look at TA: The Arm had the pelican bot, an amphibious bot armed with a light laser and a rocket launcher. When it went from the shore into the water, it transformed into a mini boat by changing the shape of it's arms. Now that was a cool specialist unit.

Pelican was basically a skeeter that could walk on land and that was invincible against missiles.

The pelican was broken. While in water, rockets/missiles fired at them were aimed too low and would basically never hit, making the pels much stronger than they would otherwise be. It's difficult to say how popular it would've been without this "flaw". But was it cool? Hell, yeah!

Subs aren't really needed to make a proper balanced.

Besides, they were removed due to technical reasons rather then balanced reasons.

1 year ago i think find the best game but now...
my problem is not i need wait, my problem is the many lost futures (but now i fear uber don't want finish this game, they can't
"submarines are not needed for this game" wtf is this .we need time/ no many /or we can't but not needed?
updates 2 step forward 3 step back
(this is very expensive game from the beginning, just say)
and when units start moving...... bulldozer derby(land/sea) or ghosts(air/orb.). the game is fun and fun to play, but everybody see bugs unfinished mechanics, lack futures(not t3 and spacebattles just subs/ pathf./ flatlands/ hovercraft/ m.u.transports/asteroid belt etc.
and you say the balance is nearly finished without these, how?
where is the 100 useful unit? we have 1 faction
i know 1.0 and the money and the bug fixes are come SOON
but look the past 1 year and ask yourself they can do this:my heart say yes but my
brain.....
and i don't know how work game development. i doesn't want know!
i know what uber said from the beginning.....

and i know how wierd say we dont need subs but you
why people build subs you think waste of time ?
you in sea war and don't have subs :good luck comm.
(we have planetary war system without subs)-is this joke? you designed this game without subs from the beginning?

why we don't have fast ships and slow ships
no we speed up everything or slow down

land buildings on water no problem.....???

rivers?

AND UNREALITY IS NOT AWESOME! YOU CAN SAY IT IS BUT NO

I think you need to take a step back a bit. If you look at *any* of the first versions of the earlier related games (Total Annihilation, Sup Com 1 etc), there were many things that weren't perfect (at least at first). TA had many updates and 2 official expansion packs and many many community made mods (that eventually evolved into a full 3D game- TA:Spring). Sup Com 1 had a number of updates (early balance was *way off*) and later spawned 2 sequels (with Sup Com FA being the best imo).

PA is a fantastic starting point. It isn't completed, however they have done many many things very well.

- The engine is capable of dealing with multiple spherical planets on a single 'map' (which is a first).
- It deals with large numbers of units pretty well now (quite common to have thousands of units in a game).
- We have land, air, sea and orbital layers to mess around with (admittedly we're currently missing a few unit types, but TA's unit roster was pretty limited for version 1.0, many of the best units were added later).
- Planet smashing is fun and now pretty complete with proportional and incidental smashing.

I think it's worth looking at the game as a whole- which is actually an impressive feat of software engineering. The other thing is, I really think Uber will continue to work on PA for a good while after release and add in allot of what's missing now. Add in the fact they are working hard to enable modders to do stuff with it (which is what has kept TA alive so long, and is also keepign SupCom FA going for that matter).

well...conquest frontier wars could hold upto 16 maps per battle....but well said