Any word on the naval or orbital stuff?

Real world countries use navies because real people aren't fish. People like being high and dry, which is why we stay afloat on boats and use hollow shells to dive underwater.

This game doesn't fight with people. It fights with killbots. When you're a killbot, the difference between a sleek hull and treads just doesn't matter. You build a chassis, slap on a gun, and it's good to go no matter where it has to fight. Supcom 1/2 did a great job of showing just how invisible water is to these machines. At the same time, it also shows why it's vital that land and naval units be designed with understanding that they'll inevitably fight each other.

There are certain, real world advantages to placing machines in the water. Big things can move on water where they would be cumbersome to move on land. Water is a natural coolant to let reactors run hotter and stronger.

I'm not sure that duplicating every single land role onto a water chassis is going to make naval combat more "awesome". Copy over too much stuff, and water combat just turns into a blue themed ground combat.
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An old game does have great idea for what future aquatic combat might be like. XCOM: TFTD showcased a style of aquatic vehicles that were fast, sleek, and an obvious attempt to recreate the original game except with more blue. Just look at this badboy and tell me you don't want a flying sub.

I dunno bobucles, water is more of an irritant to machines than you make it out to be

For one, underwater bullets just don't work. Laser beams just warm up the water... plus, a big machine on land can't move whereas a giant machine floating in the water can with much less effort. Not to mention fun stuff like water temperature layers in the sea can deflect radar waves, and that water pressure will interfere with many mechanical processes (hydraulics for example)

I'm not sure you understand Uber aims for Awesome, not optimal.
The level of detail in that ship is nice for a small ship, but for a huge battleship it looks dull.
In the scale-demo, units and structures Uber has shown us, are more detailed than the ship of yours, as it is now, it will look out of place in PA universe.

I would like the idea of a fast naval transport, it would travel fast over water, perhaps sorta ram a beach and instantly unloads what it transports onto that beach , then it could ether extrend lil legs or sumin and back up into the water slowly allowing it to be reused or it could be a cheaper 1 shot transport with it being lost after its beached

You underestimate just how much power goes into a boat engine. Sure, a little boat doesn't take much to push around. The same is true of tiny bikes. But if you want to go fast like a jet ski, it takes a high performance engine on par with any land vehicle. Even worse, water movement gets more difficult than land movement because the effects of drag and turbulence scale up much more quickly. It takes major tradeoffs and exotic tech to get ships to move fast through the water.

Water is useful because it's inherently flat and it allows big things to drift around. If you wanted a mobile artillery cannon then it would be easiest to mount it on a floating pad, for example. But that doesn't change the fact that artillery cannons work just as well on land, never mind the kinds of "glacial" type movement nanomachines can be capable of.

Semantics, really. If anything, it places naval combat as being just as short ranged and frantic as land combat. That's good for letting the two theaters fight on an even ground.

Because one dimensional units are boring, I already laid out why the rear turret is smaller, the short version is that it is for diversity and allows for more options in it's use.

I'm sure that you don't know the origin of that statement, I suggest you educate yourself.

I don't think It's lacking any details when compared to the units shown already, but it's also hard to know exactly what level of detail Uber is aiming for it's in-game models, as everything they've shown us so far is from the Visualization.

Mike

Like I said, I'm not against there being AA, but we can't just put AA on everything. Also does that mean you want Anti-ground Gunships to have AA as well? After all a couple fighters/interceptors can kill an infinite amount on anti-ground gunships. The is that as I said, this Battleship is mean to focus on it's main guns to the exclusion of almost anything else, so it will naturally do more damage for it's cost when compared to a unit that tries to do a bit of everything. As I said, it's about the ability to use different unit compositions, for example, if I already have air superiority, I can easily JUST build Battleships like mine because I have air units that can defend it, or if I'm using it as a part of a larger Naval force it's only natural I'd have some AA units as part of that force. It's not like players complain that the Basic tanks don't have AA, because they build separate AA units.

You're not looking at the big picture, this is just one unit, one among hopefully 15-20 or more other Naval units.

Mike

I would second this.
I believe navys in real world give the nation controlling it a very strong option to project force a lot further than possible without it. I think this might be true for futuristic "killerbot" combat. Navys allow your commander to bring firepower on par with a small base to any place with water. If you have battleships inbound you should worry!

And please don't make ships too fast. If ships move to fast there is no good reason to scout your coasts ahead of danger..

Umm, what? You're sure? I do know very well the origin of the statement, one might even figure out I too am actually a backer, and naturally have a great interest in this project and of course watch all the live stuff, as well as crawl around in the forums.
But yeah, that's all, Godspeed

What about a platform boat that can be built. Once built then opens into a platform that any land buildings can be built on but all can be mobile with big guns etc.... now mobile water unit, buildings lots of money alot to lose.

Means if this is a giant gunship, which costs several times the of a fighter, then yes. Otherwise no. Since I expect a orbital-layer weapon with AA-capabilities the giant gunship would still have a weakness without a matching defense weapon. Giant gunship is for example a cybran T4 gunship, which we won't see in PA. Perhaps a gunship comparable to the T3 UEF gunship should have, but I'd have to think about it.

This should be true. Would also have the advantage, that you could spread your different kind of ships to react more appropriate to the threats.

But there may also be downsides. Let me draw a scenario:
Fleet 1:
- one battleship with small AA (1 DPS), has 400 HP and costs 1100 AC (=abstract currency).
Fleet 2:
- one battleship without AA, has 400 HP and costs 1000 AC
- one light AA-boat (2 DPS), has 40 HP and costs 100 AC
Attacker:
- two gunships each with 2 DPS, 25 HP and costs 100 AC
Who wins the battle?
Probably fleet 1, because the gunships can destroy the AA-boat of fleet 2, which leaves the battleship helpless. Even if fleet twos DPS per cost and HP seem to be higher with the same price.
Therefore maximum damage per time and cost isn't necessary the best solution in all situations.
Nevertheless gunships would still be a good counter against battleships, since 5 of them which cost 500 AC would destroy a battleship that costs 1100 AC.
However the light AA-boat would still be by far the better solution against air-threats than battleships. They'd still be useful, because using battleships to destroy gunships is a very bad economical decision.
Analyzing this theoretical scenario leads me to the conclusion, that it may be useful to have units which try to fulfill different roles, if the threat isn't exactly known. If you know exactly that the enemy has no air units or you have air supremacy, the battleship of fleet 2 is the better option. If you can't ensure these circumstances it may be the battleship of fleet 2, unless you have some AA-boats left [which makes it effectively more expensive].

I admit this scenario may be not so common and because of the arbitrary numbers the outcome can change. But the result stays; units with multiple roles have a more effective hitpoints than the separated counterparts.

Different unit composition is good, since where talking about RTS so there should be some decisions a player has to make. I strongly support your idea of having a unit like your battleship, so a unit who only counters one thread. One of them you saw in the scenario above, a AA-boat that can't shot anything but aircrafts. I've made myself thoughts about a unit very similar to your battleship: A floating, movable artillery platform. It could also be a ship, but then I'd name it artillery ship not battleship.
Moreover your battleship, which I'd rather call artillery-ship, and my imagination of a battleship (so with AA) can, in my opinion, coexist very well. None of both is unconditionally better than the other one, the situation defines which one is more effective and therefore better.

Like I mentioned, I think it should depend on the unit size/cost. Basic (=cheap) tanks therefore don't need multiple roles. A "tank" that has AA in SupCom, is the Fatboy. It wasn't enough to defend it against "real" attacks, but still enough to destroy some low tier units.

[irony]What, I thought this battleship will be the only ship available[/irony]
Seriously I made some thoughts about naval units quite some time ago and also came up with something around 15 units. I also came to the conclusion that it may be a good idea having units overlapping different roles and units that fulfill only that specific role. This may not apply to all roles (a boat just for tac-defense isn't such a good idea imho) and the unit diversity should not be too large (20 units is nearly the amount of all naval units of SupCom but only one "faction").

Sorry for wall of text

Woah there, what kind of crappy AA boat can't take out 2 gunships?

I think big battleships should have some form of AA just because it's really cool. Seriously doesn't need to be very effective, but it looks really stupid to have such a massive investment with no ability to defend itself, and rapid fire AA cannons, even with low damage, look pretty awesome.

Same reason (and it was mentioned before) the Core bomber was really cool (even if really pointless) because it had the extra laser cannon to duke it out (poorly) with enemy aircraft. It doesn't work, but it's hard to say that a flying fortress spewing machine gun fire in 5 directions isn't cooler than a regular bomber that's just going straight and defenseless and does nothing.

Well, the Aeon T1 Air Attack Boat couldn't even destroy one UEF T2 Gunship. Barely destroys a Cybran T1 Light Gunship.
Even the Cybran T1 Frigate loses devastating versus two Cybran T1 Light Gunships.

What about weapon systems on those bigger ships. I mentioned railguns (not the ones from Quake :lol: ) somewhere before. Even with our current tech old fashioned gun batteries like the ones used on the Bismark, the Yamato or the Iowa ships would be meaningless because they won't hit s**t.

Or is this a case of awesome > realism. Don't misunderstand me. I really love classic battleships in RTS games. But it might be worth discussing. Same could be said about nearly any artillery platform. :/

For some reason naval combat elicits ideas of battles where "everybody is shooting everyone". That's great for movies, and there's certainly a lot of romanticizing involved, but holy crap. It's a complete mess to play with. Supcom had ships that would shoot air and it looked great, until you noticed that they were doing practically no damage because they were supposed to lose against air. So your ships would valiantly shoot back and die without killing anything. Yuck.

Small boats and cheap boats stick to a single role very well. If you need more of a role, then get more boats. If you need a separate role, then get a different boat. The only time you need a big boat, is when it can't be a smaller boat.

I know it doesn't sound sexy, but hold on. A great deal is going on to simplify visuals for ground units and make the game easy to read. Why wouldn't you do this for naval units as well? Cluttering one vessel with multiple systems makes the unit more expensive, detracting from its main purpose. It steals roles that could have fit on other ships, and removes clarity for the user. All in all it's just not that good.

Follow the KISS principle- Keep It Simple, Ship. Pack the least amount of systems possible, keep the price low (so we can buy more of them), and let players decide what vessels they need.

Some examples of big ships include an artillery boat, where the power core was trimmed out so you have to pay energy to fire. Its emphasis is on range rather than pure killing power. Other examples include nuclear defense, anti orbital weapons, orbital access tools, or mobile factories. They are vessels which would not succeed or be properly balanced as small units.

Most importantly, don't have players throwing a a retarded amount of money into unreclaimable vessels that fight over no resources. TotalA had that problem with generally overpriced ships. Supcom definitely had a huge problem with vastly overpriced ships and unrewarding naval play.

It certainly looks good in games as well. But you have a point that it would create a problem for the visuals. There must be some kind of fix. (Or even bigger ships. Which I still think would be more interesting and more befitting naval warfare)

Technically railguns don't differ from "usual" cannons, beside the fact that the projectile is propelled by magnetic force instead of expansion of some explosive. To be realistic the muzzle should have a slightly different shape, but in the end you just can label them railgun and you're done.
Other possible weapons may be laser, missiles, plasma (unrealistic in athmosphere ) some kind of particle accelerator ...

Considering how a Jester is almost twice as expensive as the Shard and T2 gunships are another order higher, this isn't exactly surprising.

Then naval is the same as land combat, which would be pretty boring for me. Or did I get you wrong?

Why take the presumption that big ships can't be cost effective. Give them a range of weapons with a focus on one or two aspects (f.e artillery and missile defense). This would be pretty close to modern navies where ships have distinct roles but they are able to perform different tasks. Look at the amount of weapon systems for the Zumwalt class destroyer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt_class_destroyer

An imaginary example of what i mean:
Battleship:
Ground DPS (long range)= 10
Ground DPS (short range)=5
Anti Air (slow moving)= 3
Anti Air (fast)= 0
Cost: 1000 AC

The same amount of firepower with landunits could cost 1400 AC or more or less and would have less HP. It's just an example. This would be pretty cost effective and could be used on a variety of ships. There would still be a place for smaller vessels like gunboats etc. but they would be used more for fast harrass and not so much for bigger battles.

I don't think your idea doesn't make sense. It's just not to my taste. I'd rather have fewer ships, that are worth much more and even a few of them are a real threat. That would even make sense strategically on a global (per planet) scale. Do I invest in a navy on maps where water and land is present which could net me a long time advantage but makes me vulnerable for the time it takes to construct these ships.