I've searched for topics about this but haven't found anything: I reckon it'd be really cool to sea naval units in 1944: cruisers, battleships, aircraft carriers - the Bismark! This is a time when ships still shelled eachother rather than firing cruise missiles from the other side of the world.
You can't have see sort of things in a game like Company of Heroes, but Spring is more than capable of handling larger scale warfare.
Are there any plans for this?
Naval units?
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Re: Naval units?
In a word, no, not really. Even though Spring can handle a lot more and our scaling is not precise, our attempts to hold to a relative scale more in keeping with reality makes ships beyond a certain size impossible given the present map format. An aircraft carrier would be almost 18x40 map units, or so, in size. Even if we could include such a behemoth, it would be virtually unable to move. Furthermore, the sheer expense/timeline to putting a ship in the sea prices them beyond anything available ingame by orders of magnitude. Either they remain that expense and powerful, and nothing would be able to balance with them/you never see them because they're too much of an investment, or they are horribly unrealistic.
In RTS terms, balancing a semi-realistic navy from any period after 1840 is comparable in difficulty to balancing modern warfare. For the navy, it is a problem of scale from sea to other branches, and the tremendous leap from boats to ships... you go from surface torpedo boats to destroyers... that is one, if not two, magnitudes of expense, at least four times the crew, and ten to twenty times the firepower. For modern warfare it is the fact that modern sides are horribly imbalanced, that there is no system of checks and balances like you saw in WWII armour, and that there is a difference of scale between the two main elements of war - bombing/shelling, and holding with men.
We have a growing basic navy of vessels which might, reasonably, be seen by the coast. If a new map format arrives, you might see more. We're open to expanding the naval repertoire, in as much as it is in keeping with the design scale.
In RTS terms, balancing a semi-realistic navy from any period after 1840 is comparable in difficulty to balancing modern warfare. For the navy, it is a problem of scale from sea to other branches, and the tremendous leap from boats to ships... you go from surface torpedo boats to destroyers... that is one, if not two, magnitudes of expense, at least four times the crew, and ten to twenty times the firepower. For modern warfare it is the fact that modern sides are horribly imbalanced, that there is no system of checks and balances like you saw in WWII armour, and that there is a difference of scale between the two main elements of war - bombing/shelling, and holding with men.
We have a growing basic navy of vessels which might, reasonably, be seen by the coast. If a new map format arrives, you might see more. We're open to expanding the naval repertoire, in as much as it is in keeping with the design scale.
Re: Naval units?
edit: for the record:
Tiger Tank ~ 10m / 60 tons
Bismark ~ 250m / 50 000 tons
hmmm - it's certainly true that if you tried to keep to the exact scale/function/cost/power you'd be in trouble when it comes to cost/build-time/balance/actually-fitting-the-damn-thing-on-the-map.
I remember a few posts about Supreme Commander, comparing tanks to battleships: Gas Powered were showing off how the tank was about the size of the battleship's turret. Course, the scale seems pretty good even though in reality it's WAY out, as one of the forumites explained with a nifty diagram. Can't find the post nor, nor can I find the screenshot comparing the tank to the battleship or the digram comparing a real tank to a real battleship...
I'd be quick to sacrifice realism for battleships, but if realism is a priority I guess they don't really belong in S44.
Tiger Tank ~ 10m / 60 tons
Bismark ~ 250m / 50 000 tons
hmmm - it's certainly true that if you tried to keep to the exact scale/function/cost/power you'd be in trouble when it comes to cost/build-time/balance/actually-fitting-the-damn-thing-on-the-map.
I remember a few posts about Supreme Commander, comparing tanks to battleships: Gas Powered were showing off how the tank was about the size of the battleship's turret. Course, the scale seems pretty good even though in reality it's WAY out, as one of the forumites explained with a nifty diagram. Can't find the post nor, nor can I find the screenshot comparing the tank to the battleship or the digram comparing a real tank to a real battleship...
I'd be quick to sacrifice realism for battleships, but if realism is a priority I guess they don't really belong in S44.
Re: Naval units?
The bigger issue than physical scale (which is an issue) is power scale. None of the land units come even remotely close to a battleship in terms of weapon power/durability/range. If we ever included anything like that, the game could very easily turn into a race to build a battleship and win the game (because you'd instantly have enough range to bomb the enemy shipyard/whatever)...or it could turn into an expensive noobtrap which good players never bothered even reaching for, like the krog.
Re: Naval units?
We havent even touched on structures....
Re: Naval units?
In all senses they would have to be scaled down to an exceedingly unrealistic degree, which might be jarring considering how everything else is more or less correctly proportioned/powered. On the other hand, ships are awesome.
I rest my case
I rest my case
Re: Naval units?
Well, our solution is to just pick ships for inclusion that fit (more or less) into our power scale. Originally we thought destroyers might fit, but it seems they're a little too extreme, so unless we have a big breakthrough in how to approach them, we'll probably settle for combat ships and landing support craft as the 'top of the table' navy-wise.
Re: Naval units?
Do it as a map theme- that is more or less how I'm going about it.
IOW, if you want to have a naval map, use Lua, give each side either some ships and / or a dock at start.
There is no reasonable way to have the multi-year timeline for building things like battleships, so just don't bother. Give them the ability to build frigates and destroyers and those cute instant aircraft carriers Churchill was so fond of. If you want something bigger, it should be a map special, imo- have a "hunt the bismark" where one side is Lua'd and just gets a small island and the Bismark, for example.
And yeah, I have the scale problem in P.U.R.E., too, and I've arbitrarily decided that, in the Future, they don't build giant WWII vessels anymore, because they're utterly un-stealthy.
That cheesy excuse aside, it really isn't too big of a deal to have Units that are in the range of 1500 elmos, and vs. a typical tank, they look huge enough to be credible to players, who are generally less worried about scale than the game designers are. I tried some stuff that was twice that, but you don't want to know what happens to pathfinding at that point, it's ugly.
Just sayin'.
IOW, if you want to have a naval map, use Lua, give each side either some ships and / or a dock at start.
There is no reasonable way to have the multi-year timeline for building things like battleships, so just don't bother. Give them the ability to build frigates and destroyers and those cute instant aircraft carriers Churchill was so fond of. If you want something bigger, it should be a map special, imo- have a "hunt the bismark" where one side is Lua'd and just gets a small island and the Bismark, for example.
And yeah, I have the scale problem in P.U.R.E., too, and I've arbitrarily decided that, in the Future, they don't build giant WWII vessels anymore, because they're utterly un-stealthy.
That cheesy excuse aside, it really isn't too big of a deal to have Units that are in the range of 1500 elmos, and vs. a typical tank, they look huge enough to be credible to players, who are generally less worried about scale than the game designers are. I tried some stuff that was twice that, but you don't want to know what happens to pathfinding at that point, it's ugly.
Just sayin'.
Re: Naval units?
I have to say that NOTA managed to give the ships the feel of "big guns" but at the same time kept them relatively small and agile to be playable.
I am not sure how deeply 1944 is trying to keep the realism going, but slightly scale-down on ships would add a lot to the game. I mean, no one would REALLY expect a REAL ship to fight amongst tanks..
I am not sure how deeply 1944 is trying to keep the realism going, but slightly scale-down on ships would add a lot to the game. I mean, no one would REALLY expect a REAL ship to fight amongst tanks..
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Re: Naval units?
pretty deeply.==Troy== wrote:I am not sure how deeply 1944 is trying to keep the realism going, but slightly scale-down on ships would add a lot to the game.
there *are* ships in the works, but dont expect the Bismark.
Re: Naval units?
I'm fine not having super-battleship: even a few smaller ships would be great 
Re: Naval units?
As was already said, there are smaller ships. And they are in testing builds of S44 (which could be found in #S44 lobby channel), more-or-less balanced now. And they even were in released 1.07 version (included by mistake since their balance work wasn't even started back then).
So, in other words, get a testing build and see for yourself what is there. You'll most probably find there is no need for Bismarck as even landing support craft are powerful enough (and if you really want to see big guns, do a /cheat /give 1 gbrmonitor - that one is not buildable, but it has real battleship 15" guns).
So, in other words, get a testing build and see for yourself what is there. You'll most probably find there is no need for Bismarck as even landing support craft are powerful enough (and if you really want to see big guns, do a /cheat /give 1 gbrmonitor - that one is not buildable, but it has real battleship 15" guns).