Naval Idea, The Way "Land" Diversifies Unit Use.

I... wait....


What if ship and sub engineers had their cost brought down to say, 265 and 250? Instead of the much higher values they have now (400~?).

But bluebottles and stuff were left the same?

Maybe that would work....

I have a crazy idea. What if the boat factory had a standard issue fabber, like what we see in the bot/vehicle factory. And the shipyard instead has a support cruiser which has a nanolathe glommed onto it.

The support cruiser has always been a peculiar type of ship in games that use it. It shoots aircraft and submarines, but not other ships. But it is an important part of a fleet to protect capital ships, and if it can repair other ships in the fleet it becomes even more useful. The support cruiser fabber would be quite large and expensive, like other large ships. And to some extent it would serve as "fleet medic" in similar fashion to scathis' notes about the future of the bot fabber as combat medic in bot armies.

That sounds cool.

It's nothing to do with metal cost of unit. Its metal cost of factory, upkeep cost in metal and power of factory, plus cost in power to support additional fabbers.

that would be a form of variation, but I see the problem being its use as a fabber for a t2 naval fact.

it can work tho. It can be a single unit basic healer, and the t2 can be slower multi unit healer, while other fabbers can be microed to do it. Still, its a variation.

Wow.... didn't know there were so many qualms with naval..... I personally love naval where it is now aside from the huge!!!! Price difference. I think just cheaper naval fabs is the answer. Granted they aren't as efficient as land fab but they aren't crazily inefficient either. Besides as mentioned naval don't fawk around they bring the BOOM big time. Right now its just am extreme balancing act with the crazy price of naval. If the decision is made correctly though naval can most assuredly clinch the win on many planets even with a lot of land.

right now they function besides starting naval being stall which is a numbers adjustment, and lack of unit variety although their anti air unit at least gets used most often.

I don't want them to change much. Same ships. Tugboat counterparts. Or something. Basically more roles. And roles are different than just sniper medic scout, roles between chasis are cost and movement type and focus of role. Because bots and tanks both have anti air just on different scale, and the big picture is what you want when building one or the other.

it also suggested an alternative to just reducing factory and fabber power cost, again is a good solution to tweak energy cost.

also, part of the idea de facto was even just visual variety. While being naval themed, you would be less bored if you saw a naval base with the current land base style of multiple factory rows of different unit infinite-production and an army of mix tank or mix bot or mix both, just all the different details dispersed among the similar styled units. Again, this doesn't take a different factory but a factory would even diversify base design, it mainly just takes unit roles.

I don't agree with having another naval factory as, when I play games when I am mostly on water, my base is cluttered enough as it is. I do support some of the unit ideas though. I want a unit that is very expensive to construct, but has a huge amount of HP and large firepower. I was hoping the Leviathan would fill this gap but I still feel that it dies too easily.

The aircraft carrier idea is also really cool (portable factories are a very interesting idea) but I feel like there would be no need for them unless they could store units as well as producing them. This would allow you to get the aircraft carrier to the enemy base by shielding it from attack then unleash a devastating swarm of air.

Anti air used the most??? XD that's a good one!!! Only fools build what I consider an entirely useless boat. I always build blue bottles and a handful of subs. Why waste time on that inferior anti air boat that is fodder to the blues ?? I just use fighters as usual for air support. Anyone I've ever encountered naval wise using those silly ships realizes their mistake to late as my blues crush their puny boats. Those ships are honestly a waste of time imo fighters are cheaper and as we all know prevail at keeping bombers off your forces.

I must agree the clutter of a second T1 naval is a bit much, but a sub yard and ship yard still sounds good to me.

Strange that the T1 sub is the most expensive unit and the t2 is the least in their respective factories.....

I thought the main idea of this games was the reduced micro and more macro decisions, therefore no techs/upgrades and so on. But with soon 10+ different types of factories I can't really see a reduction of micro at all...? The same applies to fabbers, in supcom you had three types of engineers with specific stats and those useless (?) building towers. Here in PA you already have to memorize eight+com different metal/energy build rates and building restrictions.

Ah yes lest we forget the macro..... good reminder.

The difference of scale between two factories opens up a lot of freedom for mixing roles together. For example a player might use a tank army backed by bot support roles of various kinds, such as scouts, snipers, rockets, and spread small bot anti-air. Or vice versa using groups of infantry bots as the main army, supported by vehicles like SAM vehicles, heavy artillery, and so on.

Having two naval factories creates a similar dynamic, but allows the behaviors of both to be remixed so naval plays differently from land. Such as making boats very fast compared to slower large ships, and having boats carry more specific primary weapons while big ships can carry several weapons to engage a variety of threats. A torpedo boat carries one big torpedo launcher and nothing else, whereas a battlecruiser has many different weapons.

Infantry bots vs tanks could be quite a different distinction, with slow but versatile bot infantry contrasted with bigger vehicles carrying more specific large primary weapons. A SAM vehicle would carry big anti-air missiles and nothing else, whereas an infantry bot might carry several small weapons, like a dox has one gun on each arm.