Any word on the naval or orbital stuff?

Deep water gets pretty damn deep. True ocean depths are completely alien worlds when compared to the surface. Another layer isn't such a bad idea.

But all this discussion is getting confusing. Perhaps a chart would help things make more sense?

No wait, that's even worse! And I didn't even get started on the gopher units...

Lmao that just made my brain go ......
"Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

If you're intimately familiar with Supcom strategic icons, it is only moderately painful to read. Attack vectors are shown with arrows, and the icons show what generic weapon themes would be included. A few unit subclasses are shown, as the half sized icons. The chart would get way more crazy as new units are added, and can dramatically change if a new unit class is added or removed.

An attack vector with multiple weapon types is well rounded. A vector with a single type is very gimmicky and fragile(for example, hovers only have direct fire vs. boats). But even from this mockup, it is plain to see that naval units have an enormous number of attack vectors to worry about. Land, air, space, subs, and itself. It's quite a mess!

The direct fire is considered high power, short range.
The long/Missile sacrifices power for range.
The artillery/splash includes bombers and short range AoE.

Edit: In fact, I already want to tweak that chart a few ways. No transit options from a base? Unit cannons! What was I thinking? Coastal bombardment ships might be paired against land artillery/land snipers, but long range naval cannons would likely compete against base artillery... etc etc etc...

Hover to land is missing. My suggestion for the visual diagram is that you can make it lot easier on the eye through consolidating 2 separate arrows between 2 types to single line with arrow at both ends, like instead of this
<----
---->

Just make
<---->

If attack type is a concern then my other suggestion is just to color code the arrow head to signify attack type.

There are few other redundant stuff as well... like having long range attack against air and another icon for anti air. If any type of attack can be made against air entity, we know it's anti air capable so why point that out again? Stuff like that.

Edit: my apologies if this sounded condescending, I actually think you making a diagram is a great step in discussing conceptual relation among different unit types.

Hover units ARE land units. I did not show interactions between a theater and itself, partly because it's a huge amount of clutter and mostly because a theater is assumed to fight itself(note that sea planes do not have AA as one of their outputs, and thus can not engage air). The only important interaction is that hover units add a brawler class that engages boats on their own turf.

I tried to do that, but most of the interactions are asymmetric. A ground unit does not get hit by anti air, not for any particular reason but simply because it would not be effective at anti ground.

Try to think of it this way: A theater contains units with certain combat types. If that combat type can engage another theater, you draw an arrow and add the combat type it to the list. If it does not, you don't worry about it.

A combat type could be a single unit. It could include a dozen different specialists. For example, direct fire units can be tanks, raiders, jump jets, assassins, walking bombs, stealth and cloak and even engineers. Anti gunship weapons would include any of these direct fire units, and would be additionally targetable by dedicated AA. It is by no means a complete chart of units.

Where did I do that? Oh yeah, against submersed sea planes. That means that subs can engage sea planes at long range, but not vice versa. A super fast, long range sub killer would be pretty OP.

I included point defense as anti air, because a single weapon class just won't cut it. Consider point defense as "anti long range" in general, using weapons specialized at hitting tiny fast targets, minimizing damage from long range weapons, or using an alpha strike that excels against hit+run tactics. That's certainly enough features to justify splitting it up to create a new class of units. A new unit class can then be divided among each theater as needed.

Those who've played sopwith (2:00-2:30) will have a greater appreciation for aircraft that destroy themselves. Point defense in this case would directly attack bombs, causing them to backfire on the bomber or otherwise be useless.

It's true that TotalA made most weapons able to target air. That does not make every weapon effective against air!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A table like that pic is a great tool to get things sorted out. Add things, subtract things, change and modify unit classes to your heart's content. If you don't like something, get rid of it. If you want something new, add it. The point is to give a really broad overview on what game interactions we will see.

An enormous number of vectors will be a mess, demanding a way to simplify things (hence why boats solve most things with direct fire). A class with lots of one way vectors will be very powerful, demanding new ways to answer them or limit their power (so fast air clearly needs some more downsides).

It's too bad I don't have a program to do such a thing. MSpaint does the job, but it takes a long time to set up.

u forgot my flying submarine and my intergalatical arti
also no asteroids falling down

Does the flying submarine have guns? If so, it's a submarine that transforms into a gunship. If not, it's a standard sub with jump jets. That's exactly the sort of unit I want on a lake hopping map!

Movement allowances, abilities, penalties, and resources demand a completely separate chart. Or two.

*sigh* This is why games used to come with with 70+ page manuals. It had all the hard things listed down and explained in easy to read detail. I remember consulting the pokemon counter chart every 10 minutes when I was younger. Now I know my 151 almost by heart.

You mean a gigantic "down" arrow doesn't cut it? Aw shucks. All that advanced spacey stuff is just... special.

if you want to add planets as a viable target type, then go nuts. Would planets do the shooting or orbital units? Would they use standard huge guns, nukes, and be privy to the same kinds of counters? I dunno. All I listed is that units go up, units go down, some long range weapons fight, and a lot of unique things are involved. Oh, and explosive death only rains from the heavens. Muahahaha. :lol:

Then I must be having a huge misunderstanding of how your diagram works, because I see 7 out of total 10 interactions being symmetric (as in they can shoot at each other, not necessarily same attack type of course).

Love the idea of planes going underwater/flying submarines.

I think the most obvious advantage of naval units is that it allows for a much larger mobile platform. Naval units can support functions that would need to be a fixed structure on land. Strategic missile subs and aircraft carriers are the obvious examples, but you could also do things like mount a big bertha, a monkeylord maser, or an anti-orbital rail gun on a battleship, or you could even have a transport with a unit cannon.

That would be the ultimate landing craft. A transport with a giant unit cannon.

Yeah, that's my bad. There are icons next to each arrow. They represent the available weapon styles. For example, direct fire and anti air weapons hit gunships, but gunships only use direct fire against ground.

The asymmetric part is that one arena usually has more combat styles than another. The difference could be extra long range power, additional anti air weapons, heavy weapons, or some fun tricks with point defense. Direct fire weapons are considered the strongest style as it represents efficient, short range weapons.

Taken as a whole, more options represent an overall advantage as more units can simply shoot back. The only equal relationship is between standard naval units and land, which are both part of a greater "ground" theater.

Of course it's just a prototype list, and it does have some quirks. For example, any aircraft uses its speed as a long range advantage in general. A bomber's heavy weapons are considered "splash". If it takes too much explanation it's not a terribly good chart, heheh.

Perhaps it's appropriate to split it into another thread, to get some more direct discussion?

It's awesome. Advanced version: A naval unit able to produce (at higher cost and time per unit) packs of T1 units (or some specific ones) and fire those packs as a projectile somewhere to deply units either on the impact location or at a height above the target to glide/land down below. Kinda a naval version of that cannon from the kickstarter video that sent units from the moon to the planet, only mobile and with lower range (closer to battleship cannons and no interplanetary invasion).

24 pages. dudes, you are insane xD

as for what i think about naval, i would stick with the idea that it' s main role is to establish a secure and reliable transport route for land units. i agree with the idea of a topologically rich underwater realm , in a manner that in shallow oceans you' d want to secure routes for ships and submarines, while in more deep oceans you could be able to hide your submarines to tend ambushes. however, i wouldn't know how to deal with the augmented complexity on controls and camera view you' d need for this concept. any idea?

Something that I think could be very interesting is variable depth.

It wouldn't be separate layers, just have subs stick to the bottom of the ocean.

Anti-submarine weapons would be less effective due to the travel time and range.

As a counter to that though, make submarines near the surface ridiculously vulnerable.

No need for new UI or controls. Subs could just automatically sink as far as possible.

I could go for some glass cannon subs, if we can pull of some nice shadow warfair stuff with players attempting to get the drop on one another I could be quite intence down there.

The only thing you guys have to keep in mind is that there won't be just 1 battle or enemy fleet to fight at a time - this isn't Supcom


You gotta think in terms of 'if I were to give some orders to these units, and went away for a minute or two, and then came back, would my ships still be alive?'

Glass cannons are nice and all, but if you can't reliably depend on them not being retarded, that means you're gonna have to babysit them.. on multiple planets.

Also the opposite. If your opponent has glass cannons, you have to rely on your own units not being retarded, because he could take out your entire fleet before you had time to come see what was happening.

Glass cannons cause trouble on both sides. For all their coolness, they're hard to get right in a hectic enviroment.

Depdends how much micro we have to do, if the units are somewhat smart then it could be fun.

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Knight has some good ideas.

If that's how you think Supcom is played, then you're doing it wrong (unless you're playing no air thermo).
Also, PA may play out like that, nobody knows yet.

There is one battle in FA. But it's over the whole map

Bit late to the party, but…

Limited firing arcs – so creating the broadside mentality we all think of from Napoleonic warfare – then Naval warfare would be fundamentally different – it may not make sense to not have fully rotating turrets in the far future, but if you want it to play out differently then it may be good to create a reason – eg the guns are too large, massive recoil, so need to be locked in place.
Battlestar galactica series and Endless space (pc game) had cool visuals with different ranged weapons and different counters for each range
Overall I think something more akin to men at arms (destroyers) charging forward with bowmen (battleships) at the back, and then skirmishers (subs) for ambushes and Calvary (air) for surprise attack, general support. Combined arms should win over the player who brings just battleships.

Ship types
Transport ship that you can move land bots onto, and they can fire out of it, be it AA, arty, engineer repair – a customisable ship essentially.
Fire ships
“Flying fish” inspired boats

Submarines
Make them fundamentally different to ships, more so than previous titles have done.
silent running, move very slow, but not on sonar unless very close to enemy, or fire.
Stopped subs can drop to ocean floor for even better sonar avoidance - ambushes
Depth charges – most effective method vs subs, but have to get close/on top
Torpedoes should be slow moving but very powerful – creates tension, move to avoid etc.
Hide in a trench
Countermeasures for torpedoes
Also implement broadsides of torpedoes for subs – again battlefleets will cricleone another rather than face one another.
Makes torpedoes horribly inaacurate, so you have to get close to be effective
Submarine nets – ie underwater walls.

General

Some units must stop to fire – so much recoil
Minimum ranges on ships weapons – again creates a tactical battle to get in close or keep far enough away.
Have to weigh anchor – i.e. ships once stopped take a long time to get moving again.
A ramming mechanic would be fun, but maybe too niche to spend time on implementing unless making it a short range gun with no firing arc is simple and effective. – makes it different to land war
Boarding actions – nanobots can charge over and try to take over enemy ships. – incentive to get close, and to stay far away.
Grappling hooks.
When ships turn they tilt – so their guns point into the water/air - you need to plan ahead