Water, buildings and units

I just played a game featuring some (read: only) naval warfare and realised you can build air factory on water. Also Dox and Combat Fabrication bot can move in water. To me these are just bizarre gameplay decisions and i wonder if it's some kind of temporary solution or if it's always going to be like this? The Dox is already a very versatile unit which can shoot both land and air, also allowing it to move through water is just...mind boggling. :S

My main point is that water should mean certain difficulties unless you build a shipyard, now it just seems dumbed down when you can even build tech 2 artillery in it (although this is with the naval fabricator). :S

This is intended. Also, tanks cant but bots can giving them a powerfull mobility advantage.

Every building except the teleporter(can only be used by ground-units), bot factory and vehicle factory can be built in the ocean as well. There really isn't a reason for these to not be build-able over water as their uses aren't land/water specific. If you can build a shipyard to make massive frigates, why not a small launch pad?


I have no comment on Dox/combat fabs amphibiousness.

Ok, and you don't feel that these decisions contribute to a kind of shallowness to the game? Are you merely stating the facts or are you also thinking it's a positive thing?

I don't feel it contributes to any shallowness. If we're able to build a massive naval factory in the water, then we should be able to make other buildings as well. We're either A) Making them float or B) creating a foundation similar to an oil rig.

I know that if you look at the energy factories you'll notice they're on bouys. A hydro-electric generator might be neat, but the power plant design that these hyper-intelligent commanders have been using seems to be working for them.

I definitely don't see a problem with Air factories.

Are you saying that the only water-buildable options be shipyard and other ocean-specific buildings? Or simple variations of existing buildings?

Well, something in between when it comes to what should be possible to build in water. I definitely think bots should not be able to move in water unless it is a bot which has it as its main purpose and that being its advantage while it may suck on actually attacking (i.e. an explicit amphibious bot similar to the amphibious tanks in TA). I'd like air factories to be dependant on land in order to have to defend the place where you build it as it *can* be quite an advantage. I want the player to be forced to make certain *decisions* when he places as many buildings or builds as many units as possible. If you can build anything anywhere and anything can go anywhere then where's the diversity and decision making? (ok, a bit exaggerated but i hope you get my point while at the same time i realise i may be a bit conservative)

What's wrong with having air factories on the water? Never heard of an aircraft carrier?

Well while the dox and slammer are amphibious, as well as the combat fabbers, they are hardly suited to land based warfare alone, and dox are unable to even attack while submerged (We need to rebalance the slammers torpedo's) but overall it's a nice alternative to having to use T2 air transports to move regualr land based army's to enemy land bases.

Personally, The dox's AA ability is extremely limited now as well, so even while it can shoot at aircraft, bombers will still kill them in droves, so AA back up is still required.

I made a naval mod. It shares my opinion on the subject.

-Amphibious could be a factory all of it's own, or even given to all bots and allow bot factories built on water. Assuming units balanced around that. That is a possibility, not a great idea.

-Naval could use variety in general. In my case, the smaller naval units were given 17 speed, slightly less than dox. Some cost low, have low armor, and have low damage but can attack land air and sea. Some have medium cost, medium armor, and exclusively attack naval only and cannot even attack land. Some have high cost, high armor, low speed, high range, and can attack land and sea but not air. That alone is a lot of diversity.

-Atop of naval diversity, naval lacks some roles. I added a combat fabber because it compliments the armor combat style of full sized ships. I just used the unused model for combat fabrication sub, and made it work exactly like the land combat fabricator. Making the land combat fabricator requires actual land to build the bot factory on, I hate that, but the combat fabber itself is a great naval addition. Along with that, bots being amphibious is alright, but dox wouldn't balance right which is why it's great they don't shoot while submerged (they dont), while the slammer is just a "naval sniper" which is fine.

-The commander has too strong a naval weapon, unlike land which he has to sustain at least a shot or two each land unit he kills while he does kill them in bulk fast, most t1 naval can be killed quickly and safely by commander, the commander is a very rewarding unit to send in alongside of naval combat forces when in naval combat because he is like a free naval sniper.

-Naval only planets, and systems with 2 or more naval planets, could use teleporters, to make naval an equal citizen when it comes to naval invasions. Teleporters show bugs when allowed on water, teleporting ships on land and they are stuck afterwards, teleporting land onto water and also stuck, large ships in large numbers jam the pathing of the teleporter and require self destruct. This is why it might be good to make a naval-only teleporter linkable only to naval teleporters, and to fix teleporter pathing or animation or simply disallow large ship teleport as amazing a strategy it gives.

-Artillery are, in all and every scale, the defense turret between land and sea. They slightly outrange their ship counterpart on t1 and t2 level, they accomplish the necesary damage per unit health per cost of unit while they do not against land units because less cost and more units. They can attack sea from land and land from sea and even sea from sea. Torpedo defences are even better but are sea-only while artillery doesn't break against land. Actual turrets can protect from dox but are trash against ships because even t1 ships outrange them.

-Air isn't the best against ships, it is viably played against, but it is very strong nonetheless. Enough to be useful, not enough to be solely the army of the game. Nonetheless, I felt naval deserved a t2 air unit. Then again, I feel land deserves one too...

That you could build almost anything on water was one of the things I liked with C&C Red Alert 3 (I hated it being so micro-heavy and too fast). And there is really no reason not too.
TA itself had something like this in the addon pack, wich added some very odd dunits and factories (a submersible Air superiority fighter, for example). It was a step back that SupCom only allowed some specific buildings (like AA) on water, but a small leap forward that it had wide Amphibic units.

It is very good to have this in a less micro-heavy game like TA.
Also note that water planets and navy where the same strechtgoal, so it was planned to have almost everything buildable on water in the first place (once the naval goal was reached).