What's with Naval? (59607)

Boats are now slow as molasses. I just got into a game where I had an excellent naval start, but my units move so slowly that I'm starting to wonder if someone made a numerical typo. What would have been a winning number of boats lazily died against a handful of torpedo launchers, as the enemy could fire faster than my boats could possibly move. Meanwhile, no other players even bothered with navy, and the game was won with bots and air. Is this a clever way of encouraging us to avoid boats until naval teleporters and/or subs work?

That or makes positioning and area control for boats even more important as a force of eternal glaciers.

I think they overdid it a bit. Slow boats are fine but glaciers that take half the game to get anywhere? Too much

@igncom1 Glaciers made of popcornium.

If they just made them a little or alot more tanky and added a little better range..!

Did someone say iceberg navy?

Ice is a legitimately amazing material for boats. It's light, easy to reinforce, easy to repair, and most importantly it's CHEAP. The materials exist on site (protip: it's water), and the transformation is a simple matter of using a refrigerator. You can literally build a gigantic ice cube, strap engines/guns to it, and have 10 times the navy of an idiot that wastes his time using metal.

Negative, they are so slow now by the time your fleet meets someone's naval base, if they die, by the time your reinforcements get there, your opponent has a brand New fleet built. They have become just stationary water batteries.
What was wrong with their original speed??? They weren't blazing fast to begin with.... now if your build them you've wasted your time. All my planets with nice ocean continent ratios are useless. Naval has always been a favorite of mine. Please throw a hot fix so we can actually use boats again.

They were this slow in the play tests that were streamed. I asked never got an answer. I can't believe this has gotten so little attention.

Naval went from OP to completely worthless in one patch.
And not a single word about it from the devs?

I'd like to see the first shell hit your iceberg, or flamethrower boat.....

Just... read the article. Pykrete takes some serious ordnance to do any real damage, and that's with simple wood pulp. They aren't even going into nanotube territory. While any solid block of material is difficult to destroy, this material floats by default. You can't float with a solid block of heavy metal.

A flamethrower vs. water battle is not that impressive. Interestingly enough, water wins that battle as well. It turns out that water has an absurdly high high specific heat, and absorbs incredible amounts of energy to melt/boil. It's all thanks to being a polar molecule. While other materials may be more effective or compact, water is basically free. Use as much as you damn well please.

You get more endurance, at less cost, and have more ship capacity to boot. There really is no question about it. This is how you build a surface navy the way that robots were meant to.

Oh if only ice didn't melt.

A single Pelter can destroy many Bluebottles with out even taking a single hit.

READ. THE ARTICLE.

Some general guy was put in a bathtub full of pykrete ice. The wood pulp was such effective insulation that the water stayed warm.

Keeping a fresh layer of ice is trivial when every single boat is surrounded by water by default. It is a moderate issue today, which makes it a complete non-issue in this war.

Can we please stay on topic?
Start a new thread on iceboats if you wish.

Naval speed is a serious issue in the game right now. And derailing/hijacking threads is no way to go

Oh come on. There's no way boats can be that. damn. slow.

Okay, maybe they can. I guess 50 million years into the future hasn't heard of a hydrofoil.

Scathis said:
"Balance is a process. You'll see the process play out over the next few weeks.
I'd say we found the lower edge of the naval speed balance. I fully expect them to get faster in the next update.

Naval roles are still being worked on. They have a major disadvantage of not being able to travel anywhere. So they will always be very planet dependent. We'll find it but they are lower on the priority list behind ground and air units."-Scathis

Good to get an answer on this. Hopefully they won't be slug boats for much longer.

I doubt scathis's ability at times.

Boats only had a movement speed of 10, which is slower than a dox, and can't be massed into large groups as easily. Their movement speed was never an issue.

Bombers have a movement speed of 75.


Getting attacked by navy?

Use your t1 bombers.

Yeah it still doesn't make any sense.
The only logical explanation is he wants naval to be a non factor for balancing purposes for a little bit.
Would be easier to just temporary remove shipyards for the time being

My god, there is an idea.

Imagine having a structure that actively creates "land out of water" via freezing within it's range? Honestly, useful in naval and land battles, because naval can use some land tools, and land can use it against naval.

That is aside from the main topic. Main topic, this is another balance "experiment" with naval. There is no alpha testers, we are it. That being said, you will get passes of bad balance just to confirm the direction it "should" take. Do your jobs, let the world know you HATE it, then don't insult the very matter of it because that was the entire point.

I still think they should test large ships/most ships turning only while stopped and moving forward without being able to turn. They push the sides of each other a lot less that way, and look more authentic. Obviously, adjust the speed numbers so they move as fast pre-patch, just faster in a straight line than before to make up for their stationary turn time. (it also encourages positioning before "entering enemy combat")

Scathis said:
"Balance is a process. You'll see the process play out over the next few weeks.
I'd say we found the lower edge of the naval speed balance. I fully expect them to get faster in the next update.

Naval roles are still being worked on. They have a major disadvantage of not being able to travel anywhere. So they will always be very planet dependent. We'll find it but they are lower on the priority list behind ground and air units."-Scathis

This concerns me, if naval units are planet bound period how is someone going to take a water-world if they weren't already on it to begin with? We need naval transportation. Totally agree with everyone else ships = too slow, they need to be able to cross a lake faster than a group of land units can go around it, if not, then whats the point of them?