Any word on the naval or orbital stuff?

The thing is, it seems that once the dedicated force beats the mixed force, the match is over, there's no room for the defeated player to build a counter because the dedicated force just keeps moving till it smashes that players base.

I think you miss the point of "mixed" and "dedicated".

Dedicated is a narrow-spectrum high-intensity force. Bombers are 1 type of unit with a load of damage on a small range.

Mixed can fill various roles. Take an army of just tanks, and bombers will pick them off. Take an army of just AA, and tanks will pick them off. Mix it, and you have both.

Dedicated vs Dedicated becomes even more fun. The reasoning of dedicated vs mixed seems to be "dedicated always wins". Think of fighters vs bombers. Bombers don't stand a chance.


Now imagine an AA army versus an AA army. Both dedicated. nothing happens. Now take a player with dedicated bombers. Make it fight a mixed bomber/fighter fleet. Who wins?

A dedicated army will beat an equal-sized equal power mixed army, but ONLY WITHIN THOSE PARAMETERS.

that's a very big assumption, that it'll always be within those parameters.

You simply can't risk a potential complete vulnerability against a type of enemy.

Nobody wants to play boring, people do like clunky when it's done well; PA as a game is going to be clunky compared to something like DOTA2. (by which I mean generally delayed gratification)

You can't have battleship combat without a certain amount of clunkiness, so the design should either embrace that, or just go with 'blue land' (which nobody wants), or give up on battleships and make naval a game of fast missile boats (I'd be okay with that too, but I'd prefer hefty battleships ramming each other).

I don't see any alternatives being discussed, people are just having general balance discussions about mixed forces (albeit to justify big ships in the first place) or picking over the fluff differences between railguns and coilguns.

So, naval is either (really generally) blue land, clunkiness enhanced, or zippy speedboats . if you can see a fourth way of doing naval I would love to hear it.

Until I see a big enough planet with big enough body of water to warrant a movement focused naval battle (clunky-on-purpose), I would argue for 'blue-land' option just so that the naval combat will work with rest of the game with less oddity to them to distract from players. At this point, a question could be raised; why even bother with naval combat at all if it's just like land combat except different looking? IMO it's a fair question and I actually don't see much point other than some graphical "Wow" factor.

But if body of water is big enough, then by all means, I would vote for clunky-on-purpose (minus collision, the clunky-ness should be focused on movement to make every movement more profoundly tactical/strategic) so that there is a reason for having a naval combat in the first place.

I do not mind clunky, i do mind horrible turnrates etc.

I personally like the idea that Naval (proper full-scale naval, not just a bunch of frigates) should be like a mobile base: an investment, but one with incredible staying power. I do not fully see the point of Battleships as Carriers, well, made them obsolete. Within the game tho, both can exist.

I think that we simply haven't given a role to naval. Naval undoubtedly has a more limited role than land, because that's where everyone builds. That's why Naval has to be worth it on a map other than a water planet. The only thing that really allows it is, well, range. Range in the form of Battleships is IMO not enough.

A carrier is important for extreme range. the reason a battleship can't do this is defence: you can't really defend against ultra-long-range bombardment. Against a swarm of aircraft/drones? yes you can.

A shore invader is important because at some point, you own the beach and need units on the ground in stead of in the water. Naval now becomes an important way to put a beachhead near an enemy base.

One step further, one i REALLY want to see for Ocean planets, is a truly mobile Naval base. IE, pretty much everything but the metal extractors are boats (or: platforms). In a mixed scenario, it should be possible to build a floating reactor and just move it to the recently decimated base and have an ocean-side forward base.



The alternative is the Cybran approach, namely walking boats (which looks awesome but has other problems)

OH and by the way:

i do not see why we can not have both Clunky and Zippy.

Clunky is the large, multi-purpose, destructive large warships. Consider this T2 naval.

Zippy is smaller, faster boats (more like "land but on water") that pack more range than land, and are essentially more effective on smaller-water maps.

Something like a Shore Invader or a carrier can still be made as T2 naval, but having a T1 naval escort with smaller stuff.


A note on something like hovers:
-i think hovers can be included, but as a "like land but on water" with a fragility closer to Air. So land-esque, weaker units that are amphibious.

To be honest I wouldn't be opposed to all vehicles being able to drive on water and skipping out on the whole navy thing for smaller maps. Or maybe even something as simple as "build a factory on the coast and it produces boat-vehicles" that have the same stats as ground units but only work on the water.

C&C attack dogs were clunky.
Tanya was clunky.
Dragoons were clunky.
DoW tanks were clunky.
TotalA ships were clunky.

Is clunky boring? Of course not. You can't be bored when you're spam clicking the brain dead unit to not get itself killed god damn it what the hell are you doing Dragoons. fffFFFFFffff

Naval adds 2 layers: Above water and below water. The surface features may be very similar to land units, and for balance reasons they have to be competitive with one another. However, when subs get involved all bets are off.

There are certain advantages to water. It can allow unique water based weapons(torpedoes, hydrogen-themed, hot running weapons). It can allow uniquely large units (big bertha on a boat, mobile factories). It can allow unique platforms to interact with other layers (creating bridges, transports, orbital stuff). It can allow unique resources to keep players fighting over water (underwater metal, geotherms).

Oh, and sea planes. Like, literal planes that zip through water, none of those stupid TotalA wannabes. I haven't gotten started on that one.

I thought it would be neat for there to be specific resources harvested from water that make it a worthwhile thing to fight for. (like gas giants).

IF there is a planet that is almost all water, there would be no reason to fly there and set up a base unless the presence of water yielded something worth while.

Maybe inside water there could be metal deposits that have better income, and maybe there are an array of tidal generators: from tech 1 to higher tech ones- that make it quite worthwhile to move to a waterworld and build huge navy to fight for it.

Perhaps there are also some interplanetary weapons that are build under water, on ships, or in some way necessitating water!

If you need a ground force capable fighting most threads just spend 45% of your resources on AA-units and 55% on tanks/kbots. You'll win against very likely against any ground or air force that's up to half expensive as your group.

I don't see to what conclusion this should lead me, but actually can "carry" their weight even better than land units. This is also the reason why we in reality see naval multi-role-units and no MLRS with AA-missiles on land.
(multi-role aircrafts exist for another reason, but that's another topic)

Regarding aircraft-carriers with drones. I'm not a fan of this idea, here some of my concerns. Are drones bound to a specific carrier? Will there be one or multiple types of drones? If there is one type what can it shot, what not? If there are multiple types, what would be the advantage to a carrier that builds "regular" aircraft? There is also a dedicated thread about carriers.

Regarding the movement speeds/ "clunky control". [opinion] I think big ships deserve to have low speed/turning rate/acceleration, while small boats should be very agile. This is because big ships usually aren't supposed to fight right in the first line, battleships and carriers for example have likely a large range so the could attack from distance where speed isn't that important. Imho they are more strategical units than tactical. They aren't supposed to fight in the first line. They aren't quick-reaction-forces, thats what boats are for. They rather depend on place them well or they may be useless. [/opinion]

Regarding the "blue land". What's then the point of having water? If the units behave nearly the same, why do we need water only planets, if they're nearly the same as ground only planets just without the mountains?

Me neither.

The problem with naval is the relative scaling. In RL a navy is all about projecting power over large areas, because we can't scale the navy numbers the same way we can an army. Because of that modern single units are immensely powerful at their roles, a missile cruiser will only start to loose against aircraft when it runs out of missiles, that's up to 122:1 before we look at the guns and point defenses. WW2, everyone had a little bit of the AA, because all they had were point defenses, but since then the strength, range and accuracy of aircraft has also changed making those point defenses mostly useless.

Some bad statistics:
1.6 million km of coastline
149 million km^2 of land area
361 million km^2 of sea area
93 km "average" depth of land from coast
Iowa range: 40km
effective coverage: 5024 km^2
effective coverage: tomahawk: 1300-2500km
5.3 million km^2
end WW2 US Navy size: 6768
sea area per ship WW2:53340 km^2
coverage/sea area ratio: 0.09
Modern US Navy size: 285
sea area per ship modern:1266667 km^2
coverage/sea area ratio: 0.24

The only advantage of guns, say a BB, is that ammo is far cheaper, missiles are better weapons in most other respects.

A hybrid ww2 and modern navy doesn't make sense, ww2 navies were designed around large numbers of cheap "short" range munitions. Modern ones are designed around limited numbers of long range, powerful, accurate, expensive weapons. Problem is, in PA, we don't have ammo concerns, so a modern based navy needs to be rethought.

In a WW2 leaning scenario, the ship trade offs were based upon speed, armor and firepower and everything had AA. BB's were still used but in less roles, carrier escort and land bombardment. With squadrons of attack aircraft, very few would actually hit their target, mainly due too the weapons and delivery systems of the time. So, if aircraft have much improved accuracy and large numbers in PA, then we need do something.

And I'm out of ideas, and wow did I ramble and wander with that post...

So you're saying naval units are flat out better/bigger/stronger than land units? Because that's what it sounds like to me.

When it comes to basic roles, there is no reason a naval unit would be more effective than its ground counterpart. There's no reason it would be at some kind of new disadvantage against the same layers. There's no reason a combined force on the water would not work, when a combined force on the land clearly does.

These aren't real life ships. There are no crew. There are no logistic pipelines, no internal storage, and no commanding bridge. They don't have to survive alone in a hostile territory for months at a time, where any potential threat must be dealt with, simply because the ship is too big to fail.

These are killbots. They're designed to kill other killbots. Their individual lives are measured in hours at the best. If a boat can't deal with a threat, big deal. Clean up the wreckage and get a different killbot. Or more of the same. Quantity has all the quality you need.

If land and water units are already very similar, why don't make them the same?

Yes. But exactly of such reasons I don't understand why water units should behave as land units. Because water also brings things like lower top speed and acceleration.

I doubt bridges and naval transports are a good reason for an extra layer, since these exist only because of the existence of sea.

Sounds pretty much like usual land situation. If they are on land or bottom of sea or in the atmosphere doesn't matter too much.

I'm not for removing the naval layer, but if it behaves just like the ground layer I hardly see any point why I need it.

If you mean these I agree very much.

From a technological viewpoint railguns and lasers make classical cannons much more powerful since they are harder/impossible to intercept compared to missiles.

A naval vessel is always better than a ground unit for a single super-simple law:

Archimedes' law.

A naval vessel is so strong because all you need is an average density lower than the density of water. This is why we can make boats out of steel.

Land units have to deal with average pressure on the ground, ground solidity, and need to push against solid matter.

Water units move in a liquid.

Naval units > Land units.


the obvious problem is that bases are normally built on land. Which is where Land units can go, but Naval can not.


To counter the very typical "navy owns Land", i would actually opt for the inclusion of Anti-naval technologies.


-Directional mobile artillery: A heavy artillery unit that deploys, with limited arc. Has great firepower. But most of all: it is excellent against naval ships. Weaknesses: deploying. Because of the relative slowness of naval, i do not consider a limited arc a weakness.

-Anti-naval cannons. Basically directional base arty. The crucial difference being that this arty is actually pretty accurate.


Fighting naval with ground units is IMO suicide, and this is a GOOD thing. Naval's weakness is that they can not thread on ground, which is -as i said before- precisely where the enemy base is situated.

Hence the desire for Carriers and Land Factory ships.

Does naval have a weakness? i'd say Air and enemy Bases.

Well, basically subs are just stealth tanks anyway. Except for the arbitrary restrictions to which units can and cannot shoot them. You can probably make a land based equivalent for those as well and just use the same units for both theaters.

If you're going to make them behave pretty much alike, you might as well take away the distinction, and make all vehicles amphibious or hovering. After all, why would killbots invest specifically extra structures, extra designs and schematics, only to produce units which only work for a very small part of the battlefield? Might as well just make a small design change to let your regular stuff cross all the terrain instead of slowing down when it gets blue.

I meant weight in the term of mass. Mass doesn't say anything about strength. If you by "are flat out better/bigger/stronger than land units" mean that they always are better than their counterparts this isn't my intention. There might be scout boats who are lighter than tanks, or tanks that have the same firepower as a cannon-boat.
But the idea of having a movable Big Bertha on land without rails doesn't exist for a reason (if you absolutely ignore logic and reality the reason is invalid of course). Having such a weapon mounted on a ship is no problem. Therefore there would be some ships which are bigger/stronger but also more expensive.
But I wonder why it's such a land vs water situation, since their layers don't overlap usually.

As I described in my last posts, combined naval single-role forces have to defend against three main possible threats, while land forces have only two. This makes the difference.

The conclusion, that units become smaller because of less/no humans isn't generally right. I can name examples like the new Zumwalt class destroyer or X-47B UACV. Removing the crew of a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-2_spirit won't reduce its 152,200 kg to much. It's also illusory to assume future weapons will be smaller.

I won't cry if some kbots die. I won't even care. But quantity >= quality isn't generally true.
If I distribute a discrete amount of HP and ED (= effective damage) to many boats or put it all on one single ship. Which one will destroy more enemies? (All ships are single-role with the same role, facing the same threat)

That's a rather basic way to deal with the quality/quantity ideal.
It's situational, as most things are.
If I want to conduct a multi-pronged attack, chances are I'm not going to do it with a single unit!

Define multi-pronged. If it means something about 100 subs or whatever, I'd stick to the single one (because of math). Except for the case I chose not to fight but to run.
The HP and ED of the single boat may even be little smaller.
EDIT
To clarify, I was speaking about single-role ships (all the same role) facing the same threat. The number of enemies is irrelevant, doesn't change result.

It could also be possible to place submersible buildings under the ice.

Pincer. Attacking from many fronts at once.
i.e attacking both enemy flanks or launching an intelligence-denial attack at the same time as a wave of stealth units.