Jumping Boats

i have seen alot of gameplay lately
the boats are being used as water artillery (thats why i love boats) but i also have noticed that because of the random planet generator that the lake sizes can be very small and / or scattered all over the place
meaning that on a big planet there are like tons of small water pools that dont even connect to each other
so i tought why not let some boats jump (not all) or maybe thats something an experimental boat type can do but jumping allows the player to have more water control on certain planets instead of the player building a boat factory in every water pool it maybe sounds a little bit OP but if you give it a cooldown time and limit the jump ability to a certain distance youll see that the player is still not able to reach all the water pools on the planet. also it would make that boat a more flexible unit type other than increasing its weapon range
i think its a more creative idea other than making the boat walk on land or the boat transforming into an air unit with this idea the boat is still a boat and not a transformer.

It may be more creative but its a bit of a ridiculous concept to have ships that jump. Walking ships would work fine.

Or, just not build ships in puddles.

sounds like the need for a puddle jumper, but no that name is already taken.

I think ships should stay in water, no need to start the robotic evolution and give them legs. Better not to go down this road, next they would live in caves and reinvent fire.

my only suggestion in this context (one that came up already in some other naval threads) would be to define different water areas (coastal and deep water) with own build limitations. With that no one would be tempted to build big ships in small puddles (as they would consist only of coastal area).

Why not? A light boat should be able to jump no differently from any land bot. Just as they should be able to use unit cannons, be transported in space, and launched to the surface.

It's not a good idea to be treating navy as some kind of different scale from land. You'll end up with the same issues that Supcom's tech tiers made.

i dont think it should get to silly, that was one of the bad things about the new Red Alert 3 and beyond it just got to silly. walking boats really.

Just because you own one lake, doesnt mean you should own them all. I thinks its cool to have to think about if its worth to fight in this little lake because there is resources.

Cybran walking ships were pretty cool. It'd be difficult to come up with a nicer solution than that for moving naval units between bodies of water.

Of course, you shouldn't be building shipyards in ponds anyway. Ponds mostly function as a roadblock for land units.

See what I did there?

There's no reason to limit transport options just because of human prejudice. Robots are not afraid of the water, they're not afraid of flying, and they can go wherever they are built to go. So if a boat needs an air lift, then it very well gets an air lift! There's no reason to stop players or map makers from playing a lake hopping game if they so desire.

It's a real shame that Supcom boats couldn't be transported. The UEF transports were totally built for it.

While you are correct, I wouldn't want to see that happen because I think it just negates the whole idea of terrain types. If you can transport around land units and water units willy-nilly, then water is just functionally a blue coloured land that only funny shaped tanks can drive on.

Air transport seems the most feasible. however it depends on how strong the boats are. I think it will bring a whole new idea of balance. Defending a whole body of water incase the enemy just pops a t2 destroyer right beside your base seems unfair to me.

you guys don't get it, the walking boat is such an interesting concept, it could threaten land alot, hence make naval battles necessary.

(the movie was **** but i only watched it because of awesome alien ship and stuff)
just to give you guys an example of what a jumping ship could look like

thats the point there is a slight procent chance that 2 players build their shipjards in 1 ocean
so there would not be any naval on naval action
im not saying that every ship should jump but only the highly advanced one

Water still has fundamentally different features and obstacles from land. Different weapons are required, and different combinations of tools will be needed. There's no need to give everything to land or water, but there should definitely be some overlap.

PA doesn't have any of the special movement types yet, so there's a completely unexplored leg of the game to work on.

sure if the overlap is limited to a few units, then it doesn't really matter if it is an amphibian tank that can float or a small boat that can walk/drive, more a matter of taste.

as long as the overlap is small enough (in numbers and the size of the respective units) small puddles still are more a terrain feature/obstacle and work much in in the same way as now.

You could instead build a series of locks in the same way you would build a wall (once better construction ui is implemented). The ships could go up and over land, just as they do today.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_(water_transport)

OP opened a massive can of worms relating to SupCom 2 and you guys somehow turn it into a thread about battleships jumping around like fleas. I love this community.

Personally I don't like walking ships because they invalidate land. In SupCom2, a walking navy was ALWAYS better than a force of say Rockhead tanks because the navy outranged the tanks by about 10 times. Literally the only thing that defeated the damn things was Gunship spam, and that was because NOTHING DEFEATED GUNSHIP SPAM.

Arguably walking navy can only be used on maps with water, but by that same argument, buildings can only be used on planets with land. Overall I would prefer Uber keeps the primary dichotomy between different types of terrain (boats stay in water, land stays on land), and they can add exceptions after release.

That was a problem because navy units were not designed with the same numerical scale as land, because there was an assumption that they weren't supposed to mix for some reason. That's something to nix in the bud. Land units should be expected to mingle with naval units. There are going to be amphibious units going deep, shooting boats, sinking subs, and be a nuisance for everyone in the water. Boats are going to shell shore lines, walk up coasts, and make land life a special hell.

Why? Because worlds are allowed to have any mixture of water and land. You could have an island map with worthless narrow waterways, or a lake map with jagged rocky coast lines. It could be a mixed marshland where nearly nothing can move. There is a need to move units around regardless of where they reside, so there is a need for units that can mix and match with the terrain. More movement options means means more ways to attack, more ways to flank defenses, and more opportunities for surprise. It creates more play styles as different unit combos work on different terrain types in different ways.

The only other alternative to deal with the land/water boundary is to use air. That is not the right way to bridge such a major interaction between ground units.

Firstly I've said it before and I'll say it again, don't build ships in puddles and then complain that the puddles are too small to support ships, just because the planet has a body of water doesn't mean it needs to be able to support Naval Play.

A] Just like in FA, you never tried to build a Naval Factory in the puddle on Finn's Revenge. Sometimes Planets will have large expanses of water(there is a slider for that) and sometimes they won't, it's your job to adapt to that.

B] We only have a very small unit selection available in the Alpha, so it's hard for anyone to try and make claims regarding stuff like this as we don't know how well it meshes with other planned units.

If you want to play with Naval a lot, just make a bunch of Water focused planets yourself in the meantime. Don't forget that we are going to be getting Water Planets in the long run.

Secondly I've also said this before but I'll say it again, I'm not against things like Walking/Hover ships at all in theory. But we don'twant a SupCom2 situations where we gave it out all willy-nilly. Frankly the Salem from SupCom:FA is a well designs alking boat that isn't all that effective on land compared to a tank force, it was slow(both in raw speed and turning speed) and it's weapon had a limited arc making it super easy to flank. When designing Naval units that go beyond the water you have to be really careful and thorough. Currently my favorite example for good walking ship is the Humble Torpedo Boat, it's effectively useless on land, but on the other hand it makes for a grate tool to try and take back the water(assuming you have a nearby puddle) from enemy ships/subs .

Mike

If boats and tanks are on the same scale (numerically and power) then why aren't they actually funny shaped tanks that drive on blue land?

Submarines and torpedos are literally the only thing I can think of.

You could make the exact same argument by swapping "land" and "water". Units go where the resources are. If a map has tons of crappy land and rich underwater lake deposits, then that's where the fighting will end up. It's not a good idea to state that such a map is impossible just because all the cool toys ended up on land.

There are just as many movement archetypes as major weapon archetypes, if not more. There's plenty of creative room to satisfy both theaters, both individually and as a whole.

They're called hovercraft, and they exist in this world. Today. Unfortunately, real hovercraft require large power plants to support very light equipment. They're more mobile, but not the armored beasts that a dedicated land or sea vehicle could be.

A PA hovercraft could conceivably have a huge powerful gun. However, it is likely that the craft will need to anchor down or shut off its grav in order to fire. Such a disadvantage is a great counterpoint to its otherwise excellent mobility.