ITT: We discuss the balance of the navy in BA

[NOiZE]

never ever add floating mexxes imo. They look silly.

[YokoZar]

never ever add floating mexxes imo. They look silly.

There should be a way to make them not silly. Current day offshore oil drilling rigs float on the surface of the water, a metal extractor needn't be all that different.

[Forboding Angel]

The problem with BA's navy imo is the fact that the navy is omgordersofmagnitudepwn compared to land stuffs. Navy has always been omgwtf expensive. I propose that navy be toned down to cost and balance vs land stuffs, so that sea can also be a fairly intense game. Atm sea is interesting, but at the same time boring to play.

This goes for hovers as well (mainly the plant costs really). It is my belief that if sea were fairly simple to get in and out of, and was roughly on par in flowspeed with land, that more people would be interested in the sea portion.

As it is, you could rip out the sealabs and no one would even notice.

[Forboding Angel]

never ever add floating mexxes imo. They look silly.

There should be a way to make them not silly. Current day offshore oil drilling rigs float on the surface of the water, a metal extractor needn't be all that different.

Actually they don't float. They are attached by very large pillars to the sea floor.

Edit: It appears that I am somewhat mistaken -Semi-submersible platform
Main article: Semi-submersible platform

These platforms have hulls (columns and pontoons) of sufficient buoyancy to cause the structure to float, but of weight sufficient to keep the structure upright. Semi-submersible platforms can be moved from place to place; can be ballasted up or down by altering the amount of flooding in buoyancy tanks; they are generally anchored by combinations of chain, wire rope and/or polyester rope during drilling and/or production operations, though they can also be kept in place by the use of dynamic positioning. Semi-submersibles can be used in water depths from 200 to 10,000 feet (60 to 3,050 m).

[HectorMeyer]

If you are buffing seas ability to attack land, you should also buff the abilities of land to attack sea (e.g. depthcharge/sonar hovers). Maybe give Torpedo bombers sonar (it doesn't really add depth to the game to always escort them by sonar planes) and move them to the T1 airlab. Also, I think it would be great If the hover lab was cheaper and buildable by the commander. Make those cruise missile hovers more expensive in exchange. Lowering strength / costs of sea units across the board isn't a bad idea imo.

unrelated edit: i really liked how fast amphibious units were underwater in old BA versions - this raised them from cannonfodder tier to somewhat-crappy-unit tier. I understand this has to do with an engine change, but isn't there a workaround to this?

[Saktoth]

The old 3do floating mexes are in NOTA.

Thats the buildicons.

The ones in CA look like this:

oblig glamour shot:



And they make perfect sense in light of this:


Stupid looking or not, we're talking Balance, arent we?

Though, im not saying floating metal extractors is the solution to all your woes. CA has them, and the sea balance still feels a bit wrong.

Gotta agree with most of what hunter says, though i love micro'ing ships. There is nothing as inaccurate and with as restricted a firearc at the same time as the sub, it makes it fun to use/dodge. Though, perhaps this is only at small scale (We gave subs tracking in CA to try and make larger sea games easier to manage, ).

Turninplace really, really helps a player micro ships though. Unfortunately from BA's perspective it does change the way they function a lot. They respond way better which means they move faster which means dodging and kiting is a breeze. It will lead to changes in the roy/vette balance, since roy is actually faster than the vette- the only thing that keeps it kiting is its horrible turnrate and acel, not a problem if it never decels to turn. It also changes sub balance, since since dodging becomes much easier (another reason we made subs track).

The construction ships are OK IMO, though you can increase their build radius if this is a problem.

I dont know about t2 sea, subs used to be the real problem, and i dont know the new sub balance so i wont comment. If not subs, the problem would be cruiser. Its a beefed up destroyer with corvette-like anti-ship capacity. It basically makes t1 redundant. Nerf the cruiser if you want to not make t2 beat t1. Vette will beat the cruiser in a straight up fight, but only if you can get in range (cruiser kites pretty easy).

[hunterw]

never ever add floating mexxes imo. They look silly.

form follows function

if you can think of another solution to this problem let us know

2. underwater mex are not raidable, especially early on. the soonest raids on any underwater mex is either a 500 metal slow-as-fuck submarine, or a construction ship that builds a sonar on top if it so it can eat it. compare either of these scenarios to a wezel vs land mex. sands of war has no underwater mex, and this is no surprise.

[Gota]

Awesome idea,wont be added to BA.

[Muka]

Well, I just love to play with ships, but it's more fun than a realiable enemy. 1 of all mega uber cost's of making ships, while there aren't many mexes esecially at start pos. Secondly ships vs hovers.... making a tower based defense is too costly, and defending with t1 ships vs hovers is just , useless? hovers cost at least twice less than ships, they don't suffer from subs and are more micro friendly. I think that it should be a bit changed cause t1 ships vs hovers is quite annoying when u do your best to conquer the other water based player and hovers get your ass so easily...

[ginekolog]

I dont see water balance broken, its quite good actually.

I like to play water as do many other good players like Pulla and Behe etc.

On Tier 1 all units besides transport have their uses:
sub kill ships
corvetes kills shipsand hovers
dest=bombard + can harm subs
scout kill air

Its hard to master all these combinations tbh and against good opponent i have good time.

Bad thing is that core has weak water because laser do 50% dps at range. This hurts cruiser, batleship and even flagship. Laser also cant fire over arc 10% range and 10% DPS increase to all T2 lasers could help here a bit.

In FFA or big team games water is actualy prefferd location to be because of rock stable UW eco.

[Muka]

yeah, but everything is true but if someone harass you with hovers (plasma hovers not any crap fast attack hov) its almost impossible to beat him on open sea cause the ships are to expensive to make them in such numbers to defend effectivly. and plasma hov are rly good

[YokoZar]

Sea is very annoying to break into if you don't start sea. A comm can make a reasonable outpost by himself on land, but in the sea he can get screwed by a scout boat. Things get even worse if there's subs guarding the shore.

One problem is the land based defenses don't really reach into the sea far enough until t2 - the jellyfish, for instance, can't protect a coastal base from subs at all.

[TheFatController]

I don't think there's many 'small tweaks' or nudges that'll make BA sea much more fun than it is.

I have a project for a mutator with rebalanced sea (got some holiday coming up, plan to go through every unit and mess with them until they're fun to use and possibly add new units) which can take feedback and go through some rapid development once released then if it plays well hopefully some of the lessons can be learnt for real BA.

[Muka]

how about making sea defenses cheaper or hovers weaker?

[1v0ry_k1ng]

I don't think there's many 'small tweaks' or nudges that'll make BA sea much more fun than it is.

you tell a good joke

[YokoZar]

I don't think there's many 'small tweaks' or nudges that'll make BA sea much more fun than it is.

I have a project for a mutator with rebalanced sea (got some holiday coming up, plan to go through every unit and mess with them until they're fun to use and possibly add new units) which can take feedback and go through some rapid development once released then if it plays well hopefully some of the lessons can be learnt for real BA.

I think this is a great idea and was thinking about doing the same thing myself. Needless to say I would really like to help you on this...I've got a whole list of notes on the role each unit might play in a redesign.

[Muka]

agree great idea, kepp it as good as rest of Ba and don't go to far with redesigning. GL

[Gota]

"QQ im bored of BA cause i'v played it a lot so now i want to change it..."
Sea is fine.

[Pxtl]

I don't think there's many 'small tweaks' or nudges that'll make BA sea much more fun than it is.

I have a project for a mutator with rebalanced sea (got some holiday coming up, plan to go through every unit and mess with them until they're fun to use and possibly add new units) which can take feedback and go through some rapid development once released then if it plays well hopefully some of the lessons can be learnt for real BA.

Good thinking. BA Sea is as good as it's going to get with the current model. Either live with the current one, or tear it down and start from scratch. Fundamentally, sea combat is heavily focused on rock-paper-scissors action in the form of submarines and hovers, so it's always going to be really messy.

Personally, I think what sea needs is a real move to get rid of the RPS action - something to simplify the overcomplex relationship between the units. For example, by removing the torp-invincibility from hovers, or by making all underwater units un-armed (no attack subs, no armed Gimps, so DC weaponry is just for demolitions).

@ginkelog

Subs kill ships? I've found that Destroyers handle them well-enough to make T1 subs not worth building. Too slow, too much micro, and all you get is a unit that does okay (but not great) against destroyers.

@yokozar

Build Guardians? Yeah, I know they're too expensive to capitalize on their double-damage-vs-ships thing.

[YokoZar]

@yokozar

Build Guardians? Yeah, I know they're too expensive to capitalize on their double-damage-vs-ships thing.

This is an excellent example of a unit that should be thought about when doing a sea remix. The guardian may deserver to be a bit cheaper; then it may actually be viable as a t1 sea protector.