Naval Feedback

Hey Everybody!

So I'm gonna' be doing more work on Naval this month in addition to a couple of other things that you should start seeing on PTE later this week. Now that you all have had some time in the live and PTE branch to play it, I'd like to get everbody's thoughts on the naval changes so far. So let me know here what you like, what you don't like, and what you might want to see in the future.

Thanks!

Needz moar teleporterz

Probably yeah.

But a little twist on the usual rules could be more interesting.

Hopefully the map generator gets a little water based update as well.

I've been enjoying the improvements to naval, some of my best games have been on the new naval map...

Some thoughts, I think the light gun boat could stand to be a little cheaper and a little faster. It would be nice if it were possible to use groups of them against small numbers of heavier ships, however they never currently get close enough to even a couple of orcas.

The narwhal could also use a bit of a buff, as currently including them in a naval force pretty much gives the battle away to a player who only makes orcas (orcas + fighters appears by far the best naval build).

I don't think orcas should be made weaker however, they 'feel' right to me, especially in how they work against land units. I would prefer to bring other naval units up a bit.

I really like the current naval balance, teleporters should REALLY be a thing though!! Naval is SO slow already, and it's basically useless on multiplanet systems.

Also that depth meter in the PTE (there is something like that, right?) would really help make map making easier for naval, since it's impossible to tell if a ship can pass.

One other thought, is there any way to include an amphibious land unit in the naval factory (eg dox)?

It would allow naval players a way of attacking land locked areas once they've secured the water....

No, that would be weird.

We need a dedicated amphibious factory with amph bots and vehicles and a few hovercraft in naval factory.

Naval is actually fine, it's T2 that is screwy. The eco needs help.

Assuming this is purely a balance pass (so no additions, no teleporters) then I have to agree that in a pure naval battle all orcas will win out every time. Narwhals are still useful to target down bombers, since fighters don't prioritise bombers, but their anti ship role feels almost useless at the moment when you have equal numbers orcas & narwhals.

I have noticed they're good against more spread out, faster, ground units than orcas due to the higher RoF, so perhaps buffing gunboats as CDRKF suggested would give them an indirect buff & role expansion without any direct stat tweaks. They already work on a 'weaker but more versatile' balancing scale compared to orcas, so perhaps making them more necessary as your go to anti-gunboat ship would make them even more viable without increasing their raw damage output.

EDIT: just to say, I really enjoy naval play at the moment and the naval/ground interface makes for some very interesting matches.
Not saying it's perfect by any means, but not sure it's the most important balance issue anymore.

More uniqueness compared to land:

• Remove floating laser defence, make torpedo launchers take their place.
• Artillery shouldn't be buildable on water - ships themselves are floating artillery, and if not, maybe a dedicated artillery ship?
• Mobile variants of other structures - nuke ship (or sub, once available) instead of floating nuke launcher, maybe no naval anti-nuke for a bit of a twist.
• Carriers instead of floating aircraft factories.
• Wherever else, aim to make the "naval way" of doing things different to land.

Obviously many of these need new units to be made, which may or may not be feasible.

I think we need to be sensible about how much we can ask for... A new factory type that services the water to land role would be good though I think one type would be sufficient.

Given hovercraft could potentially cross lava I'd be inclined to go that route rather than an underwater amphibious factory. This immediately becomes a bigger job however, as now we are talking a new factory, and a set of new units (as you'd probably want more than one hovercraft type)...

both naval and orbital teleporters .. and since it has been asked since their removal ... subs ... aaand a salemlike ship

and yes please add a hovercraft factory with its units able to traverse lava ... buildable on both land and water ...

one very demanded thing ... multiunittransports and orbital aircraftcarriers along with factoryassisting ...


one unit to think about would be a t2 airplane that is able to traverse orbital on its own but primarily used to attack aircraft when in air itself ...

+1 for some sort of amphibious units from naval factories. Dox would be too weird. What about boats with tank treads?

No. I don't want huge slow fleets puddle hopping around the planet killing whole land armies.

I don't see why that is worse than land units popping up around the planet... Remember your opponent has to get a gate up on all these ponds, which is the big weakness in the strategy.

Not if it builds hovercraft (either traditional variants or other)

disagreed

.

little more speed would be nice, maybe an increase of 1 or 2 across the board. Maybe a little extra for gunboats.

naval teleporter would be nice, though I'm thinking t1 naval only (and t2 naval fabs).

Wat? I'm talking about a different thing, I mean real life hovercraft being buildable in the naval factory, all I was saying is I don't think a dedicated amphibious factory is needee.