Due to the slow speed of naval fabricators, and the high cost of naval, expanding with naval is still inferior to ground based expansion. Expending on water with naval fabricators gives you a disadvantage when compared to land due to the slow speed of the naval fabricators. Expanding with air fabricators is a disadvantage due to the vulnerability and increased energy costs. Then there's also the increased costs of advanced naval... I think naval speeds should be increased back to where they were previously. Thoughts?
You don't need to rely on naval fabbers to expand. Air fabbers are arguably better at expanding than land fabbers because they spend less time going between mexes and can quickly take unclaimed territory where the enemy least expects it. At T2 naval fabbers are horribly slow while T2 air fabbers are likely to be sniped by Peregrine raids but Stingrays basically shut down enemy gunship and bomber play while no mobile land units can really touch Leviathans. The land player should be able to get nukes faster but he still needs a way to deal with Stingrays and Leviathans and if he can't establish his own t2 naval production he might find himself confined to his base where his only choices are to defend himself with Holkins, Catapults or to nuke the enemy navy. I can't really say if a land start with transition into naval is fast enough to get t2 advanced ships out to compete with a naval start as I haven't played that many naval/land planet games but even if a naval start is generally economically weaker it could still be balanced or better than a land start depending on how important sea dominance is. Personally I would prefer if most ships were much more expensive, had much greater speed and much more health. It is a design that I am used to from TA, NOTA and SupCom and I think such a design is interesting as sea units are really different from land units. In NOTA and SupCom, sea dominance can be very important even if the sea completely lacks resources and ships are really expensive. Ships' blend of mobility, range, firepower and health makes them very different from land units in NOTA and SupCom.
Naval expansion can also be harder to touch for a ground player. You can also use your commander/air fabbers to start a coastal expansion, eventually get a T2 vehicle factory up. The biggest problem there really is with a ground vs navy situation is if the enemy isn't on or near a coast, there's no real way to reach him with ships, but that's when you turtle in the middle of the ocean and rain nukes on all his stuff
I agree, ships move too slow. I've said it before. They should go fast but turn slowly. Also I want underwater extractors and T2 power.
i agree, naval fabbers at least should be faster (although i would like all ships to be faster again)
Ships should be as fast as vehicles, but just have slow turning and slow acceleration and deceleration. After all, an M1 Abrams tank can go 42 mph on a road, while an aircraft carrier can go 33 knots, which is abou 38 mph. And that's an aircraft carrier. Smaller ships can go faster.
I'm not sure if this would be the correct thread to post this in, but it's about naval expansion, so here goes. I think one problem with naval is the fact that construction ships aren't normally used whatsoever unless you don't have (or can't guarentee) air dominance above your own naval expansion, or you need to build advanced naval units. Construction aircraft are more efficient for the time it takes to get there, and I think that's actually fair considering speed (IE: lack of movement resistance) is the one thing air is designed for. Aircraft can stack infinitely while building or helping build a structure / unit as well, which makes them almost necessary for late-game. What I want to do is make naval construction units worthwhile compared to the alternatives. I propose that at least anything construction-based on or underwater should be the most efficient construction units, bar the commander himself, because of the sheer size of the unit compared to everything else. Point in case : Naval units are large, heavy, and designed to take a beating. With the space available inside our naval vessels of today, they carry very very complex and advanced technology. More so than you could fit inside any aircraft or tank available to date. With such a large unit, they won't be used compared to aircraft because of stacking, and if you ignore that, they still won't be used because of the speed difference. If you can fit something nearly as efficient in aircraft as you do in bots or tanks, imagine what you could fit when given the size of a ship. Space is king, and from the way other units are designed around size differences, naval should be no exception.
