Sea planes, literally!

The Core Contingency added a great deal of water based units and structures. Among them was the concept of sea planes. Sea planes were specialized anti-naval units that could park in the water. Unfortunately it was a fairly uninteresting advantage, as there was not much difference between parking on land or in the water.

The best implementation of sea planes I've seen was from the X-COM series. In Terror From the Deep, combat was done between submersible craft, half plane and half sub. Their hydrodynamic designs let them glide effortlessly through the oceanic deeps, and through the air when needed.

There are several interesting consequences of having aircraft that can scream through the water:

- They can not be intercepted by standard aircraft. So a slower, weaker sea plane does not have to fight interceptors.
- They can not be hit by anti air systems. This is not true over land, but on the ocean it is a HUGE boon against boats that depend on AA.
- The potential for surprise attacks is much higher. Underwater units can typically hide from normal radar, and can breach thick air defenses for coastal assaults. They can then dive back underwater for a safe retreat.
- Standard anti sub weapons are much less effective. High speed torpedoes and large splash depth charges would be needed to clear the seas of zippy threats.
- They can be effective high speed scouts for enemy boats and subs.
- Dedicated sea planes can have completely different properties above and below water. For example, torpedo divers are absolute nightmares in the ocean but harmless in the sky.
- Navy gets more interesting in general. You have boats, subs, sea planes, planes, coastal, and orbital stuff to worry about. What a mess!


Is this enough new features to justify an entirely new factory type? Perhaps not. But it is a unique layer that adds plenty new and unique aircraft to the game. Sea planes offer a mix of high speed and low altitude advantage that other units will find difficult to beat.

I think this treads too much on naval territory and distracts from the potential of Naval units.

Why not add Submarines that can fly?
Nah fun.

May be a worth a thought.

I highly appreciate this idea.

Why should a plane that moves on two layers be faster than a sub is designed solely for moving in its layer. Therefore also no to the special defense weapons.
I generally think that multi-layer units should perform worse on both layers compared to the corresponding single-layer units. Otherwise they these single-layer units superfluous.

Somehow the same.

i really liked the cyberian ships crawling on land

it was a joke -.-"

It's the difference in heavy hitter vs. fragile raider. The heavy hitter gains health, range, and efficiency, while the fragile raider gains speed and choice of targets, with reduced endurance.

More unit designs allow for more counters and gameplay in general.

A navy that is armored against air bombers and gunships can also rip apart torpedo bombers. They would not succeed against sea planes. Likewise, a fleet capable against sea planes might not succeed against armored subs. Or the plane could just be an ordinary land bomber, that goes underwater to stay out of trouble.

Also, why not have a sub with land treads?

I like the idea too, but I still think there should be another water-only destroyer that is more effective against other naval units than the dual-layer destroyer. This is for balancing reasons, similar to the situation that amphibious tanks are weaker compared to regular tanks. It's also somehow coherent with the "maximum bang for your buck"-theory which some people really like.

I somehow managed to ignore the

So excuse me.

Nope. I don't care what role you've intended units should fulfill or not (for example OrangeKnight suggested subs should be glass cannons not heavy hitter).
The fundamental point is, what kind of unit has superior abilities in a distinct layer? I'd say of course the unit that only moves in this layer. The fastest unit in air is an aircraft and not a flying sub. The fastest unit on land is a scout-vehicle and not a ship on legs. The fastest unit below the sea should therefore be: a submarine.
Units that can move on multiple-layers have made compromises to work on both and compromises aren't optimal when used in one of that layers.

But if these new units need new counters this isn't helpful. We probably already have a wide array of weapons and counterweapons, adding more makes it nearly useless to build any counters, since you likely build the wrong one.

This is somehow the point of having AA-ships.

This may lead to the situation that you can't defend your fleet properly and naval isn't fun anymore.

Because torpedoes don't work on land and cannons not under water? Making a ship with cannon able to work on land makes more sense since they can use their weapon on both layers. Sea planes are little different since they are very fast in air and therefore can use their "secondary" layer air as a quick movement layer.

I actually prefer Sea Planes as they were in Contingency. Mostly because being able to submerse the planes, but not move them underwater, made it where they didn't have to compete with naval units. As they were simply not meant to.

I see your point about transporting a surprise attack. I feel that is primarily the role of aircraft carriers (which have been talked about in previous threads). I really did like the idea of submersible carriers in SC. Perhaps the idea could be revisited as opposed to creating a new class of unit?

That's actually a good question, why not?

Why not just give every factory type at least one unit per layer type so they aren't completely doomed if they guessed rock instead of paper and have to start constructing static defenses. I'd be okay with that, flying subs to lightly compete in the air with a naval factory, Seaplanes to compete with early-game navy, Hovercraft to compete with land and sea, amphibious bots to stave off that early-game submarine rush.

Sea planes, I seem to recall, were primarily intended to make mostly-water maps more interesting in TA. Perversely, it was not possible to build a normal air plant on an all-water map, essentially making aircraft carriers completely worthless. Except as radar and mobile energy generation, I guess. The sea plane factory could be built in water, which was much more significant than the fact that the planes could submerge.


I think a lot of these suggestions are gimmicky and pointless. Flying submarines? Would it not be better to have a submarine that could surface and shoot air units? Or, if you are really committed to having a flying unit, a submarine which builds and launches a flying unit?

Conversely, instead of having an airplane which can also submerge and effectively become a submarine- what about having a plane that drops a submersible unit into the water? In addition to more conventional torpedo bombers, planes might drop little torpedo-equipped submarines or stationary torpedo launchers.


My point is that PA is going to be heavily based around size, scale, and quantity. Which means we should think with our unit count, not with our individual units.

Yes, I really want submarines to have more reasons to actually surface other then a little pop gun.

that, is actually a good idea

I expected this idea to get a lot of flak. It's always turbulent when new ideas come to the surface and opinions begin to froth. Perhaps we should beach this discussion for another tide?

Transports have a real need to carry naval units in general. There are going to be times when you need to reach another body of water, and not every boat is going to be a jumping hover crawler.

How about a sub that's really fast, and instead of surfacing it actually takes off into the air?

That philosophy gives you exactly one submarine design. No wait. Two. Because you need a sub killer to get rid of the first one.

It falls apart because subs have to fight amphibious units, and a glass cannon doesn't cut it against standard designs.

Sea planes give many new options for units. Boat killers that work, deep sea raiding vessels, and aircraft that just don't want to deal with a billion air counters. Where they fail to work is in tiny environments, where they can not maneuver without breaking the surface. They would also lack the endurance to hold up against real subs, which have no balance issues with being heavy hitters.

Everything and its grandma is going to be gunning for air units, shooting at air units, or fighting with air units. That's the entire reason that you don't want a boat killer playing around in the air!

Removing air clutter and giving new things exclusive to deep water is a good idea. The sea plane is built to excel in large ocean environments, where it has room to maneuver without breaking the surface.

Then what would it do?

Why not just build a small carrier?

If what you are suggesting is a new type of submarine gameplay developed around the idea of very fast submarines, that sounds like it could be interesting, and I would be all ears.

But submarines that can fly is sort of whimsical and stupid- but it appears you agree with this point, bobucles. A submarine's main advantage is being hard to kill because it is underwater- the idea of lifting it off into the air and flying around with it is sort of... dumb.

But many different types of submarine designs predicated on the idea of fast submarine types sounds like it has a lot of potential.

Seriously? That's like saying robots can't fight in space because it's cold. These are guys that blow up planets for fun. A little terrestrial obstacle like water is not going to get in their way.

I also don't think you quite... appreciate all the ramifications of being a killbot floating in water. If a pesky submersible comes at you, then you take the boat, do a god damn barrel roll, and point those beefy cannons directly at the sub. Even if the cannon type can't connect, the crushing force of an aquatic shockwave is pretty damn effective.

Edit: I even got a nice little comic to illustrate my point. You can't argue against a picture, they fight back with a thousand words.

~~~~~~~~~
Sonic themed weapons in general would likely excel in water. You have a dense medium, which transmits well, at a high speed, and isn't afraid of a couple hundred megaPascals of pressure (the Marianas trench is about 110MPa, FYI). There aren't many ways to shrug that off.

This, precisely.

Torpedoes are not and should not be the only weapon used by/against submarines. Depth charges are a bit of an improvement, but that's still not enough. Otherwise, that's like having only missiles and grenades for land units.
Sonic weapons are one possibility. Omnidirectional pulses, damaging anything (or anything enemy) around the ship/sub. Directional pulses, the equivalent of a "shotgun" (short range, hard-hitter but disperse quite fast). Even sonic beams (see sasers)
For those "sea planes", you could have short-range weaponry, equivalent of the machine gun on a plane (bullets are just small, fast unguided projectiles, they can be made to work underwater), or even short-range fat torpedo, equivalent of the bomber's gravity bomb.
Or missiles. Why do we have nuclear missiles on subs but not the other kinds of missiles? AA, tactical, anti-ship, rocket rain...
You could even have energy weapons. After all, why not? Water is just slightly denser than some atmospheres. If you can have plasma weapons, it shouldn't really be such a problem. In fact, having a few energy weapons ignoring water could be interesting, it would give a direct-fire weapon usable by and against both surface and subs.

To sum it up, subs are a layer by themselves and should be treated as such, not as "mostly ships". There should even be (at least) one sub factory.
This layer should have its own light units, and those "sea planes" may be a good idea for that. After all, there are even a few dedicated underwater "space shooters", so the idea isn't strange at all. Making them leave water isn't even necessary, honestly, just treat them as small, fast and agile subs.
(I'm not a fan of the "sea plane" name though, it evokes a regular plane specialized in sea operations, like a torpedo bomber, IMHO.)

But if you want to keep subs as nothing more than "big tubes shooting small tubes" then don't bother.

Also, why should subs surface? It brings unnecessary micro and complexity...

bobcules, I'm sorry, but we're treading into really contrived, gimmicky gameplay here with that. Flying subs are a silly idea, sea planes is an okay idea for all-water maps (Or conversely, airplane plants could just be amphibious like zero-k).

I think we've gone out of the bounds of what is an acceptable gameplay element. If Sea Planes are in the game, fine, if they are submarines (I would prefer submersible carriers in this instance) then maybe it will work

When we start making bizarre abstractions like flipping a boat over so it can shoot at submarines beneath it? That's where I think we all need to take a step back and ask ourselves if we're getting a little too overboard with the ideacraft. Don't destroyers already have torpedo launchers? If you want another type of effective anti-sub weapon, okay, sure, let's do sonic weapons or maybe even a tesla-coil like design. But let's not load down units with gimmicks.

Anyway, sea planes, I say keep them as they were in contingency

I think what bobcules is trying to get across is that subs aren't just different because they can't always be attacked underwater, but that there are several features that make subs different. First, they are much harder to detect. Second, once detected, it takes different methods to kill them, meaning specialized weaponry. And finally, they can do more damage to a ship in general. (The reason for the final point is that subs can get much closer to their targets, allowing for more damaging and reliable attacks on the weak spot of the enemy, whereas inter-ship attacks tend to hit more heavily armored areas, and can potentially miss.)

I don't think you quite... appreciate the ramifications of having battleships that can flip over and start shooting underwater targets with cannons.

And when Brisbane said that a picture is worth a thousand words, he did not mean that every picture was so expressive. Yours, for example, speaks for itself, and all it says is "DURR."

Direct fire underwater weapons are a good idea, though, whatever the lore justification.

I don't like the idea of conventional units that drop (and build) sub-units. I have no problem with mobile factories, including aircraft carrier (perhaps even a submersible) or regular transport-(air-)units that transport and drop conventional submarines or boats/small ships.
If there is a role a unit of a layer should fulfill, it should be able to fulfill it's role itself. That's what it's made for. What should happen if a unit is destroyed, will it's sub-unit stop working? If yes there is no difference if the unit itself attacks, if no it's overpowered since you can just build another unit and therefore have a highly mobile and probably too cheap unit factory.

Surely PA will be a game with a heavy emphasis on quantity, but in the end your armies still consist of these individual units (unless you don't do the "indirect controllable drone" thing, but I do not want this to happen).

You basically can build AA-vehicles to regain air-control with land units. Or torpedo-bomber to regain sea-control with air units. It sometimes makes sense to have such units, but it's nothing you must have or can't compete in another layer. Constructing a new factory is also an option.

How about not surfacing? May sound strange, but since they are designed to destroy ships and subs they might not need.

And which sub kills the subhunter? ... Perhaps none and you don't need a sub-killer, because torpedo-submarines are the sub-killer? The dedicated sub-killer might be a torpedo-bomber. The most effective way to kill tanks is to use gunships or bomber.
Submarine types that come in to my mind: torpedo-sub, tac-missile/strat-missile sub, (amphibious) transport sub, recon-sub. But this low number isn't negative in my opinion, since the naval layer doesn't consist of submarines exclusively, but also on surface vessels.
However since this isn't my idea I don't know what OrangeKnight really thinks about this or how he will respond.

If the submarines have larger range and more damage than this amphibious units I don't mind they cannot compete. Also not every amphibious unit needs to be equipped with torpedoes. From my point of view amphibious units aren't designed to hunt submarines, since they trade some of their damage and hitpoints for the ability to cross water.

The first one is basically the definition of submarine.

He didn't say they can't fight them. He just said moving a satellite from orbit to land layer might be a stupid idea, since a satellite has the advantage of being to far away for most weapons and trades it for nothing. Would make more sense to drop some ground units from orbit.

Sound must be pretty terrible for these robots. I guess if you let your cannons play justin bieber they will surrender.
Otherwise source.

The water will instantly vaporize and thats it. This is not how pressure works. And the bullet will go amok, the path is less predictable than the winner of the super-bowl in 5 years.
Edit: This guy already reached the bottom of the mariana trench. So even if you could create this pressure they wouldn't be necessarily too impressed.