Should Navy Going Over Land be Considered an Exploit?

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Strategy
strategy noun, plural strategies.
1. Also, strategics. the science or art of combining and employing the means of war in planning and directing large military movements and operations.

I not only provided proof that it's visually possible to look at waterlines, but to my luck, not one person who disagrees with me responded to it. Nobody. Is it because you guys can't say anything? If I'm wrong, prove it. I just gave screenshots as evidence that you can look at the ground and identify water surfaces.

I'm not abandoning the thread. If fifty percent of the people disagree with me, then I believe those who did do not have the strategic capability of playing on maps with water. Period.

This isn't about water being visually correct. This isn't about the waves being visually incorrect. It's not about water being clear so you can see land under it. This isn't even about the game being alpha.

This is about defending a decision that was a strategic failure. A decision that was strategically incorrect. Incorrect by choice, by inaction, and by lack of self-education of the map's features. This level of gameplay is punishable by the slightest miscalculation, tactical errors, and miscommunication. It's not for those who defend strategic errors by calling it a glitch, bug, or exploit. If you had enough strategic planning ability, you would know that.

This thread is semantics:
- Is it a bug because the code to support water depth as a part of pathing isn't implemented yet, or is it a feature until it does?

Regardless, you can assume this is not "by design", but it's also technically not a bug, because there IS water there, we just don't check for water depth yet.

So, you're all wrong. ;-) (Or you're all right, if you prefer a more positive spin - I'm feeling snarky on a rainy Sunday)

Thank you for that Garat. This is a moot point since it should be gone in the next 4 days, so why not drop it?

Also, the refs who were officiating decided that it was NOT unfair(Neptunio tossed it to Cola_Colin and ZaphodX who said the win was legit, no cheating/exploiting involved). If you don't like the decision talk to them. But regardless, this is now just an argument of minor details. This has ballooned from a small "lets talk about this" in to "MAJOR GAME BREAKING CHEAT ISSUE". Let this die for heaven's sake. There is nothing left to be said.

none of what I said differed from that statement.

You are absolutely right. This is not about the technical side of what is water and what is land. That has been stated at least a dozen times now.

This is about water being rendered as land and driving ships over what visually appears as land. Which has also been stated at least a dozen times now.

That is a bug. Using a bug for an advantage in a video game is an exploit. This discussion is not about strategy, it is about using a bug.

We're not talking about strategy that was used to defend against naval. We're talking about sending boats over what was visually represented as land.

The Pathfinding view is a debugging tool that was given to us Alpha uses so we can help diagnose bugs – like this one.

But as OathAlliance points out and as has been discussed earlier, doesn't really matter too much since Beta will be out soon. That is, provided Uber fixes the bug in the Alpha release.

Worth pointing out though, over 50% of people polled view it as an exploit.

I can walk over trees without knocking them over or destroying them. I can make buildings with the trees inside them. That should not be the case. With your line of reasoning that would be exploiting a bug and players should manually have to avoid trees and shouldn't place buildings on top of trees.

The visual representation is wrong. The actual game simulation treats the passage that they used as shallow water which is passable. Technically they can't pass on land as far as I have seen.

And this helps us see that there is a discrepancy between visual representation of land and actual water in the simulation.

This bug will persist until Uber put it high enough on their priority list so that somebody will fix it and many more similar bugs will be discovered and appear in the beta. It is gonna be a rough ride. Sometimes it will also be hard to say if something is a bug. Should tanks be able to drive underwater? Should commanders be able to fire underwater? It is hard to know the answer until the devs have fixed it or said it doesn't behave as intended.
At first I thought that it was obvious that tanks shouldn't go underwater because in other games they don't do that. But in real life many tanks can wade underwater so why wouldn't future robotic tanks be able to drive completely on the bottom of the sea? Maybe the devs wanted to change it up abit. Tanks might be unable to fire from underwater but that means you could raid and then retreat to the depths of the sea. An interesting tactical ability.
Did it brake the game? Not really. Does ships going somewhere you don't think they can go brake the game? Not really. Could it surprise your opponent. Maybe. But after all we got a F11 which gives us an accurate view of where ships can go. Why would we need to ban this in the gentlemens ladder?

Your are actually answering the wrong question. I also voted yes because it is obvious that it is an exploit if you can drive ships on land unless they are intentionally made amphibious. A more accurate question would be "Should ships that traverse shallow water which appears to be land be considered an exploit?".
The thing is that ships can't drive on land as far as I know. They can only go in deep and shallow water. Now if there is an actual exploit to push them on land and move them about as land units do the I think that should be banned in the gentlemens tourney until it is fixed.

You don't need the debug view to see if an area is counted as land/water. Just select an engineer, click the "build p-gen" button, and drag the wire-frame over the area in question. If you see the model change to the water-only model (very obvious because it is larger), then the area is counted as water and ships can move there. You don't even have to have the area scouted. If you are too lazy to do this for the miniscule number of areas where this might be called for, you deserve to have your base shredded by ships then.