Will Naval ever be useful? ;-;

Agreed, the TA naval game was better than the PA naval game, and I think that the size of the models something to do with that.

That said, in TA, the ocean was used as a means of navigation between disconnected places. That role is served by the orbital layer in PA. Consequently, there are no oceans in PA, just big lakes. Since PA naval cannot walk on land, that means that you end up with an unsatisfying turtle strategy if you go naval.

My personal wish list for PA naval is that it:

1. should be amphibious,
2. the ship models smaller, and that
3. commanders should be able to be completely submerged.

And no, I don't think we need torpedo bombers.

I agree naval needs serious lovin. Naval in TA was awesome. Ships feel utterly weak in PA, slow, & just overall useless.

I Think Naval should have the best surface to air capabilities. Naval are only ever going to be a supporting role or non-existent on most planets. For planets that do have lakes or other large water bodies, there should be a reason to get naval supremacy of that water. Currently, on most planets, it's easier to just go for air dominance, that way you control all of your surface with the same unit blobs, be it land or water.

Strong Naval AA would effectively mean that an enemy held lake is a serious no-fly zone for your aircraft, unless you're planning to take some pretty heavy losses to force them out.

Naval should also have access to some of the biggest unit mounted guns, since, you know, they're naval. You can afford to give ships stupid powerful guns, because they're already limited to water as a drawback.

At the same time, amphibious units should be kinda rubbish on land compared to other land units, since what you're paying for in metal is versatility, rather than pure combat cost effectiveness, similar in water. At the moment, slammers (which totally shouldn't be amphib, need a different unit for the amphib role) completely wreck naval, which shouldn't be the case. You've paid for an already pretty decent land unit, you should not get amphibious capability and superior naval combat ability essentially thrown in for free.

EDIT: and by rubbish i don't necessarily mean worse in combat, they could merely be more expensive, making them a less cost effective option unless you're planning to take advantage of the versatility you're paying for in the cost of the unit.

I agree. There needs to be some serious balance between land bot air and orbital...Right now I feel like bots are too weak, air is way too OP as well as orbital, naval is crap, and land is so so

The general rule for ship movement should be low acceleration, but decent top speed. They should feel a bit sluggish; but since it's going to take them that much longer to move into position, it better be worth it. Immense firepower and reasonable health, so you didn't send these slow buggers all the way across the map for nothing. They need to be proper floating fortresses and people should fear them.

At the moment I feel like an idiot trying to make use of ships. Uber should go ahead and crank ships up to max OP, and then tone them down just a tad for the sake of balance (*cough* T1 bombers *cough*). That's how ships should feel. Even the notion that you could put a shipyard down in a channel to crank out a few ships for fire support should be a genuine worry for your opponent.

Try navel in the TA mod, TA:Escalation, it's everything that was awesome about TA navel cranked up to 11.

Also Naval in Balanced Annihilation (Spring) is pretty epic (especially the 'epoch' flag ship- an exercise of 'how many guns can you fit on one boat anyway?'). Now when you add in sea planes (all VTOL) and Hovercraft platoons into the mix it gets really epic!

We did a pass for naval when we did everything else, so I would call that recent. I haven't heard that people have played naval that much to try it though.

Naval is too slow and doesn't do enough to land. I'd say increase the speed overall, I think the RCBM has naval speed in a good place. I'd also increase the weapon range on the destroyer by ~20-40.

Random question, will there ever be waves caused by ships, or splashes when shells hit the water, dynamic fluid basically. It was in Spring and wasn't detrimental to performance, do you know if this will ever happen or even be possible in the engine?

I only played TA singleplayer. All I remember from TA naval (which is actually fairly recent) was not being able to see anything because of the fog of war, shooting at little red dots with cruisers because they did everything better than anything else, and seeing stupidly expensive ships sink to weapons fire because they're stuck in a naval traffic jam.

I played with naval a bit today and i thought it wasn't that bad. It gave me a stronghold to recover but to also put some pressure on the enemy (Leviathans are nice for that. I still miss something thats like pretty strong close range (something that can annihilate units at the coast)

I haven't played Spring in ages but i used to play Absolute Annihilation which I think BA was based off of. I love how many guns can you fit on a boat philosophy. Real battleships had dozens if not hundreds of guns (of varying sizes) and are hundreds of times more massive than say a tank, so I really like the idea of crazy powerful, crazy big boats that utterly dominate the seas and the surrounding shoreline.

The unofficial patch (available on www.tauniverse.com) vastly improves pathfinding in TA. TA:Escalation integrates this patch. I've played games with hundreds of ships and not had any real issues with traffic jams. Yes I did have times where my longer ranged ships were firing at radar dots, but such is the nature of any long range weapon in a RTS.

I played a little naval and even had a PTE naval battle with the computer. I made sure my commander stayed out of dodge with that one, but the naval was definitely fun, though I started to tip the scales a bit with anchors to ensure that I was doing tickle damage while I assisted a naval factory with orbital builders so I could have an army NAO. Didn't get to see advanced naval as there wasn't a point.

Can we get an anti-orbital naval unit? Seems weird to have floating fortresses that do tons of damage but have to build stationary laser turrets that shoot into outer space to protect them from Anchors.

I don't see why it'd need to be a dynamic fluid simulation? Just going about it in a similar manner to SupCom should be enough no?

Mike

Because it was so pretty ;3

But yeah I'd be alright with Supcom level of water, Spring's dynamic water just looked so nice.

Most planet configs being used are not watery enough (or at all) to warrant (enable) the use of naval. Even with more water, air is going to be preferred, partly because of the reputation ships now have picked up.

Would you say the feel of ships is where you want it to be in the current state? Because if you ask me, it's not difficult to see for yourself that the use of ships is incredibly cumbersome. Air is just easier. I don't know if the AA boost will apply to ships; that might change things slightly (can't combat ships with bombers as easily). But ships are still very, very slow and clumsy, and they're just frustrating to use.

"if you don't like vanila balance there are mods"
there should never be a reason to have to use mods for balancereasons ...
in this case i rather would like modders and devs to find solutions together for vanila balance...
mods should be optional for different gaming expierences ... they shouldn't ever be mandatory to get the proper maingameexperience out of vanilla ...

Oddly enough I'm starting to think the people (modders) can balance a game better than the developer, especially the incompetent Blizzard (because David Kim is a total ******* moron) and maybe Uber ;p But nonetheless mods better not be required to balance a game! Mods should be the equivalent of the Starcraft Map editor custom maps and nothing else!

Man that pic of ta looks better than pa lol I agree the world's of pa just aren't as nice as supcom or ta. I really hope naval can can get to the point of ta and supcom