Looking at the underground bases, many people say that it would be cool to have underwater bases. By underwater bases I mean domes and tunnels. Anyone have any suggestions about how this could be implemented (in-game). Added later. What about underwater units that crawl along the bottom, like a subsurface battlefront. That would be awesome, especially when added with mountains and trenches.
Has this never been discussed before? Anyway, I'd say just certain structures could be built underwater. Factories for subs/amphibians, sonar stations, torpedo defense, some sort of power generator (tidal? maybe just nuclear or whatever), mexes if there are underwater resource deposits, missile silos. Certainly not everything. You would build them underwater for an appropriately increased cost and then that would be it. Nothing complex is needed.
You said it already. Domes and tunnels. As you can see though water there is no problem with visibility (you are not allowed to build too much deep, if that's the problem). Just make an submersible engineer that may build underwater domes and make submersible amphibious transport ships that may transport units in and out of domes. Inside the dome you may build ordinary land units and structures. That's all that needed. (you may destroy the dome by torpedoes, ruining everything inside by such action)
Just thinking that there could be geothermal vents and metal deposits that you could tap into, to make underwater exploitation have an incentive.
I admit it, I voted no. Now I regret it. Underwater turrets would be a pretty good idea, since there are no "point defenses" against naval units.
After thinking about this. Why would you build a land unit underwater that could only go through tunnels? Who would it shoot at? you'd have to build a tunnel to the other person's base just to use it, and a few boats with torpedoes could shoot at the tunnels (without it being able to shoot back) and kill all of your land army. I'd be up for just having buildings that can be amphibious. Kind of like the anti air turrets in Sup Com. You can build them on land or sea. Except that some buildings that don't necessarily need to be above water can be below it. So for example building a power generator, torpedo turret, or something off shore could make it default to being on the sea floor. If a land factory is built in the ocean it can only make amphibious units. Naval and air units would just float to the surface before "launching"
We know we'll be having water-planets, and that piracy o' the high seas will be happening. So it's fairly safe to say there will be some sort of base building happening. Whether it's floating or underwater; ask Uber. Having patches of land constructed underwater seems like a massively non-awesome idea to me. As it's already been pointed out: all it would take is a submarine or two (well, a torpedo launcher or two) and you could drown all the tanks. I fail to see the fun in that. I'd just spend me resources building boats.
Domes and tunnels would be a massive pain. Just make it so that some buildings can be built underwater, no dome necessary, and move on.
Well, I haven't suggested tunnels, only domes + amphibious transports. And an increased risk of dome destruction is a payoff for ability to product units near enemy base. Anyway, my point is simple - no special types of buildings are required. You may just add underwater dome or on-water platform. Basic idea is that firstly you build the "land", either way, then you build land structures at this "land". Probably platforms are just better, cause they also cover air support, but question is about underwater bases. I suggest to move this to "water bases". Why not just amphibious turrets? Cause FA missed anti-nuke or engineering stations from amphibious units. So you are required to put almost anything into amphibious group, or make sea planets some kind of outcast. This won't lead to slow transformation from sea planet to land planet, as platforms should be expensive and they are huge risk - well placed assault will destroy everything on this platform.
And what possible use could an underwater dome which holds ground units be? I like that above water platforms though.
The only use of such a dome (or even a surface platform) I can see would be to gain a tactical advantage by producing land units at this place, as you say possibly right before the enemy base if you control the sea. But this sounds like a massive pain for such a situational use. Building land units in the sea, while adding a bit of tactical options, wouldn't be worth such a hassle. But even if it is, then I'm pretty sure there can be other, simpler ways to do it. Now, having complex underwater gameplay would be neat, particularly as there will be water-worlds. Which means submarine and sea-crawler units (and buildings), and more variety in underwater weaponry than torpedoes. Land and air aren't all limited to missiles, after all. I defended elsewhere the possibility of building 'land' factories in the sea, where they would instead produce amphibious and sea-only units, instead of (the same) amphibious and land-only units.
This. And keeping this hidden from enemy bombers/arty. But on-sea platform will make the trick too, while being more useful in general situation.
I would like to see underwater bases in terms of underwater metal patches, underwater geothermal vents and chemical geysers ("black smokers"). I don't think it should be massively extensive tho. It makes much more sense to just use ships for EVERYTHING (IE, build an Atlantis submarine like in Supcom for aircraft, or a big mobile oilplatform-esque building for production.)
