Feature: Engine: Amphibious water transports

Even if units in the water are nerfed if they're not proper amphibious units, all units being able to enter the water creates a big problem that is nothing to do with just crossing bodies of water.

Walking your commander into the water is a common tactic against being overwhelmed by land units or air unit. Allowing entire armies to shelter from artillery, bombers, gunships, or other armies (since even if they follow them into the water, neither can fire) by retreating into the water changes games with water completely. And, conversely, the potential for laying ambushes by hiding units in water (possibly small pools which are unlikely to ever get a naval factory in them) should be a special ability, not a property of every single unit. While embarkation is supposed to reduce micro, moving your units into the water when they look like they're being outclassed will actually increase early game micro. Especially on island maps (as raiding becomes a matter of grabbing a quick kill and then retreating back into the water before you can get shot to bits).

You underestimate just how much of a pain water is. There's a reason why submarines use torpedoes. Bullets have terrible penetration through water. It's a thousand times denser than air, and aerodynamics designed for air don't perform as well in water. Water cuts the effective range of ballistic weapons by a factor of over a hundred, but explosions are conducted further through water. Most units with explosive ammunition would risk damaging themselves at any range where they'd be able to hit anything. Firing a laser underwater, unless the water is exceedingly clean, is an exercise in producing a steam explosion that destroys your laser lenses, and probably also the rest of your unit (even gamma ray lasers have ranges of less than a meter in water). So realism suggests weapons not designed for use underwater will not function underwater. And game balance suggests that giving all land units the ability to engage surface ships while underwater is a terrible idea.

I'd also like to point out that making some kind of 'embarkation' unit would be just as developer-resource intensive as making a sea based transport (still need to make the unit code, the model, etc etc) and that having units carry each other / move around on top of another unit is a very valuable engine feature that I would 100% support.

This would be really quite awesome if they included no-fly planets. Such as airless planets. If there were no-fly planets with water on them then it would force you to use your navy to transport units.

what about the russian invention the Ekranoplane that was used as a transport and still is ( i believe it is) its faster than a regular boat because it fly's over the water using its jetengine's or props.

the Ekranoplane could be an addition to water transports put a little stealth on and you get a fast insertian method and even without stealth it would be a good option


some cents of mine .......... cheerssss

Caspian sea monster? ^^ Love that thing. Not sure about having it in the game, but damn...

The problem I see is that if air transports in PA are the way they were in SupCom, there's no need whatsoever for naval transports. Why bother with a beach assault when you can simply find or clear a LZ inland and drop your units right where they need to go?

To restore an actual need for naval transports, I'd think that PA would have to turn the dial a bit back toward realism, e.g. air transports would be lightly armored and only be able to carry 1 or 2 T1 units at a time and naval transports would be able to carry a large number of T1 or T2 units and be more heavily armored. Not much different from TA, really.

Not sure if I'd want that formally as a part of PA, though it might make for an interesting mod.

The advantage of naval transport is that you don't necessarily need air superiority to succeed in a landing. You can simply defend the transports against air using cruisers.

Guys please forgive me if I end up repeating anyone, I have skimmed the topic but it's long and well, I'm feeling lazy today.

My experience of any unit that has an advantage over another is that it must have an offset. This is a common theme that is appearing in all the suggestions across the boards of late.

Example: The crock amphibious tanks in TA were not able to go across the surface of the water. They had to go under water. Slowly - making them easy prey for naval units but able to avoid attacks from air units like bombers (torpedo bombers being the exception). The speed of under water travel was another obvious offset. Additionally the unit cannot retaliate when under water.

On the subject of amphibious transport I am not sure there is a requirement for it. Naval transport yes. But most units can travel faster across the land on their own, negating the need for an amphibious transport. As you know, naval transports were in TA and then disappeared in SC and FA having been replaced by air transport, which basically can deliver the same end result.

The main difference between air and naval transport are that they are vulnerable to different types of air attack. ASFs and interceptors make short work of an air transport. Gunships and bombers can easily sink a naval transport just as fast.

Here in lies the reason why naval transports were removed. Both types of transport require air support from ASFs or interceptors. They have the same support requirements and similar weaknesses, but naval units are much more expensive and are less versatile.

Then somebody should meld a flak cannon on top of that transporter. And some AA-missile batteries when the engineers are working on it anyway.


Imo, good water transports for land units are something that I'd love to see in the game. The issues they usually had in other games were long loading times (into the the transport), annoying disembarking (order a fleet of full transporters and they'll try to unload all the units at the same spot on the beach) and being weak hp wise against most anything.


The first part is an engine issue. Usually bad pathfinding makes it hard for multiple units to enter a transport (basically multiple units try to reach a single spot [the transport itself] screws up pathfinding mightily). Solution to this only relies on how good uber can program their pathfinding.

Embarking issues could be solved elegantly with some wild design ideas on the transport itselfs. As has been mentioned, kbot style units could just be catapulted/rocketlaunched in masses on the beach. Transport empty in seconds.

Larger units would need to drive of the transport itself I guess, which again is a question of pathfinding that the units don't hinder themselves while trying to drive off. The transport could, for example, open up flower-like so that units could move out of 3 sides (front, left and right) to give a better spread.


As for why a naval transport would be used instead of air transport, there are some different things you can design them towards.

Naval transports should be relatively strongly armored, with enough hp to survive a bit under artillery fire. Give each naval transport some form of anti-air. And most importantly, units on a naval transport should still be able to fire from it.

So if you're planning a landing on an enemy beach, you're units won't be sitting ducks until you've landed.

Flying transports comparetively would need a cleared landing zone, else they get shot down. Naval transports would be when you need to attack over water into an enemy fortified position.



Addendum: Transport waypoints, like used in SupCom, should really be independend of the transport unit themselves. Being able to create them without having a transport selected and not dying with any transport linked to it too is imo almost mandatory.

Ghetto Gunships were problematic enough. No Ghetto Battleships please.

I agree. I'd quite like to see them back. I wasn't really saying I dislike them. Moreover trying to explain the reasoning behind taking them out of the game in the first place. It's a combination of playing Devil's advocate and constructive criticism of the shortcomings of previous iterations of naval transport.

Possibly a similar option to the queuing method depicted in the unit cannon sequence in the KS video would suffice?

Agreed. Let's get creative. It's what made TA great. Off the wall and creative unit design is a must in PA.

Another good idea. I also think maybe some kind of area command where you select a section of coast to unload on to. See the ideas from ZK thread

Not sure about this. I think possibly either transport has none of it's own defences or units can fire from it but definitely not both. Have to be careful not to make it overpowered - especially when it's supported by other naval units and air.

You know, while we're at it I'd just like to go back and spend a bit more time on this:

You see the trouble is here that there's a reason why transports are non-combat units. Now I know that it is feasible that a transport unit, particularly a ship could be armed. But I can see a huge problem with what you have suggested here and I want to explain it.

Firstly, it's a strategy game. This means that the player has to decided what he is going to do and then find the best way of doing it - usually by mixing and grouping units to make them less vulnerable. If I could simply load up a transport and send it across the map with no support then it kind of defeats the whole strategy part of the game. If a unit is strong enough to survive alone then supported correctly it will be too effective and very unbalanced. Every unit needs a weakness of some description to make the game work.

Secondly, there is the potential for the player to simply load up his naval transport with arty and AA and park it off-shore where it can't be touched by the majority of units. From this position he could cause untold havoc. All kinds of exploits are possible with that option and it gets worse the more units you want a transport to be able to carry.

I would personally opt for the naval transport to have maybe a light T1 AA turret or two and similar HP to a destroyer or cruiser. That's about it really. Speed of movement should be low too, making units tasked with defending it travel at a much slower pace. Naval transports generally carry more than their air counterparts, so they need to be relatively costly to reflect their size and value to the player.

EDIT: I also kind of like the idea of units being sitting ducks while in a transport. It's a good trade off.

I love the idea of amphibious transport ships.

My suggestion is that they have caterpillar treads (tank tracks) so they can creep onto land, to ensure they can deploy their units anywhere. Because nothing would be more frustrating that trying to deploy units to a beach, but it turned out to be too narrow or too steep or something to allow units to unload from the ship. It would be much better if the transport ships could roll up onto the beach, just like Cobra's submersible transports from G.I. Joe.

Another deployment option to deal with terrain limitations would be for the ship to catapult units onto land, similar to the Soviet Bullfrog amphibious troop carriers in Red Alert 3.

I always assumed that the reason why there weren't transport ships in SupCom was because of the difficulties with loading and unloading units encountered in TA. I think these suggestions would resolve those problems.

I just yesterday played a game of core vs arm vs another core on a map callled assault on suburbia wich is a land water map ideal for hovercrafts and you'l need a water transport or a hovertransport ( Hover plant and vehicles come from the Core Contingency Expansion )

this hover transport has a loading arm and a gargo bay for a game as TA that worked good, to my opinion if you'd wanted something like this yould want a shift functautillity so you can select multiple units to load in the transport.
Unloading should also go with a sort of shift way unloading all units with one mouseclick

Also with the scale of PA and its massive battles yould probably wanted to move a bit more units then five like in TA so transports should/could be bigger

TRANSPORTS

Water Transport


Hover Transport


Ekranoplane Transport


ORbital transport


Rolling Transport ???

Looks like you did't pay attenton when playing TA or you forgot that amphibious transports were in total not without a reason. Incase it makes difference there were ships capable of transporting troops. They were made in harbour. If there is an air transport then why should't there be a amphibious transport? You can always use an air transport to deliver units right in to the base of the opponent. You can only deliver troops on to the beach with troop carrier ship. In TA air transport could hold only few units while amphibious transport could hold 20 -30 units( don't remember exactly how many) Air transport is faster and you are not limited with the boundaries of the sea, while an amphibious transport is tougher and slower. This is how it should be. Balanced. Removing this unit makes the game more boring. This Removes the part were you can suprise your opponent. The troop carier ships are expensive and making a sizeble army together with them will not be easy, but time consuming. The less options there are in the game, the more boring the game is.

So once again.

Air transport.

Fast, can drop units anywhere, not tough, can carry only few units(1-4, most likely 2)

Amphibious transport

Slow, can drop units on the beach, tough, can transport 20-30 units.

Do check the time stamps next time.

TA naval transports were gigantic whales. In fact, naval transports in general have been clunky and obnoxious to use across most RTS games. If they're to be in PA, they need to be meaningfully more useful than air transports. Otherwise, w'ed be better off using air transports!

For example, they might be like the ZK surfboard, where units can shoot from on top. They might offer repair function for garrisoned units. They might toss units past coastal defenses with miniature unit launchers. It might be stealthed or cloaked or even deployable from orbit. There's lots of things to try out.

fair points bobucles, I too would like to see a surfboard ship.

If air transport will only be able to transport 4 units while an naval transport 40 units, then then it should be fine. Amphibious transport will be much tougher and harder to destroy. If you are going to invest resources in to 10 air transports then, it's likely 5 of them or more will get shot down. People tend to have a lot of fighters and air defences, which are unharmful to the ships. While bombers and artilery are not as common. Plus if your opponent inflicts damage equall to the five air transports on amphibious transport, it will still have half of it's life and all 40 units will arrive safely. While the 5 not destroyed air transports will deliver only 20 units. I need to admit thought, that your surf board idea would really help the amphibious transports. If such a transport would carry anti air units, it would be much harder to destroy it. It could carry rocket tanks so if opponent would have close range defences on the beach, you could get rid of them.

In TA the amphibious transports were't used that often, because the ships had krains with the use of which they unloaded units one by one ,instead of having one frontal hatch. Additionaly the game from 1997 had some minor bugs, which made disembarking more difficult.

As long as troop carrier ships will have frontal hatch instead of krain and will benefit from the surfboard ability, they should be fine comparing to air transports.

Fixed.