SmedBlog: Seamless Continents/Naval Units

[Phisionary]

Yeah, I don't see why water-borne invasion forces couldn't be (almost) as effective as one by galaxy drops. If you had a naval transport vessel that could act as a spawn point, or large ships that could be repair bays for air support. On a continent with a more inclusive approach to water features, particularly around capture points, I could see that being very effective.

[p0intman]

Originally Posted by Phisionary

Yeah, I don't see why water-borne invasion forces couldn't be (almost) as effective as one by galaxy drops. If you had a naval transport vessel that could act as a spawn point, or large ships that could be repair bays for air support. On a continent with a more inclusive approach to water features, particularly around capture points, I could see that being very effective.

This.. basically.

[Blackwolf]

Originally Posted by Stardouser

Well, here's the thing; warpgate is a convenience, but they could be camped too. Or, you can fly your Galaxies/naval landing ships across the ocean, the whole ocean can't be camped. If necessary, they could remove the shielding on the warpgate to enhance its status as a possible convenience, not a safe route.

AND, if they make it so you can only cap adjacent hexes, or beach hexes if you have no adjacent hexes, it would force beach landings.

You're on to something there.

Remove the shields from the Warpgates and make them capture points as well. With Naval battle as a means of spanning continents, capturing a Warpgate on the other side to facilitate faster reinforcement and travel between secured continents and potential battlefields would allow a naval fleet to actually secure a "beach head" at the warpgate. Or if the fleet was strong enough, it could simply form it's own beach head anywhere on the continent and engage the enemy head on. I like that idea.

[sagolsun]

Originally Posted by DjEclipse

Naval units is one of those ideas that sounds good and never is.

True enough.

A few downsides:

1) water makes for visually boring terrain. Blue on the bottom, yellow sun up on the top. NC will feel like home.

2) water is uniform on all sides, ergo not possible to use terrain to your advantage.

3) water is flat, meaning maximum viewdistance, meaning snipers have a field day and the client needs to suck a lot of data. You'd be shooting at two pixel high enemies a server away.

4) infantry are useless on water, which would require movable ships on top of which you have soldiers. no game has successfully solved the mover-on-mover problem yet - though BF2142 got close.

5) land vehicles are useless on water, meaning you need to create a lot of new assets to replace them

Though I also see the potential for an additional layer of gameplay here.

[Neurotoxin]

Ranges are key. If you render everything in a 1km radius, it doesn't matter where you are. Servers would essentially need a seam-stitching method to tie all the individual continents and the servers running them to the open waters without any hiccup in the action.

I feel like there could be additional limitations... expand the boundaries and add a few captureable ports, make boats the key for water transition. They could either extend the energy radius for the empire (think of Protoss nexus crystals) and maybe smaller aircraft only have 30 seconds of battery outside the massive energy radius of a broadcast ship.

The Galaxy is probably immune to these effects, and a Galaxy can even be fitted with a smaller energy radius module to help friendly aircraft get further from the ships. Land-friendly watercraft may or may not have the same energy limitations.

The energy broadcast areas would reflect areas that the server should focus on more. Where there is empty water with no nearby energy, the chances of seeing or having to render anything there is greatly reduced, so the server can essentially ignore those dead-zones aside from processing weather patterns in those areas.

[FuzzyandBlue]

Originally Posted by sagolsun

2) water is uniform on all sides, ergo not possible to use terrain to your advantage.

3) water is flat, meaning maximum viewdistance, meaning snipers have a field day and the client needs to suck a lot of data. You'd be shooting at two pixel high enemies a server away.

When I think of oceans I don't really think of the massive wide open spaces we have here on earth. I'm thinking of islands, Floating platforms, and rock formations jutting out of the water.

If anyone ever played crimson skies I'm think of the islands that were in that game.

The most important thing to prevent sniper heaven would be to not make the oceans to large. I don't see any reason why the oceans can't be smaller than the average continent by quite a bit.

[super pretendo]

Anyone who thinks there isn't feasible hardware for this is living in a dreamland.

[Blackwolf]

Originally Posted by ComerEste

My first thought of this was something like BF1942/1943 in the Pacific, was always fun to jump in a Destroyer and shell an island. Knowing how SOE designed the look of all the vehicles and aircraft, it would be interesting to see how they would do "futuristic" naval ships. VS would probably all be hover ships, NC probably be like space ships that have been re-purposed into being naval ships, TR probably be close to real life modern navies from like US or Russia.

Should they work on the idea? Hell yes. Even if takes a while for them to do and they tell the teams that they can work on it at their leisure. Would be cool if they designed a whole new set of bases specifically for the water, like an oil rig or something.

I don't think VS ships would hover. Wouldn't make sense if they did, and yet couldn't travel across land.

Originally Posted by Sledgecrushr

Wtf? Why would air assets engage against naval units in the middle of the ocean? If you put a platoon on a ship and sent it out into the ocean thats a platoon that is going to be lost to you for a long while as it floats along. Navy is great for projecting force, except when there are no fuel constraints and then navy is just a waste of manpower and resources best spent on air power.

Because resources such as ammo and repair facilities don't fly along with you. No matter how fuel efficient aircraft become, they will always need a place to land for one reason or another. And no matter how effective aircraft are in controlling the war, no battle in history was ever won by air superiority alone. Naval forces have the potential to press in with ground forces, and supply long range bombardment for easier beach heads and landings. If a fleet could act as a fully functional base (that is destroyable) then why WOULDN'T aircraft head out to attack it?

[Stardouser]

Originally Posted by Blackwolf

You're on to something there.

Remove the shields from the Warpgates and make them capture points as well. With Naval battle as a means of spanning continents, capturing a Warpgate on the other side to facilitate faster reinforcement and travel between secured continents and potential battlefields would allow a naval fleet to actually secure a "beach head" at the warpgate. Or if the fleet was strong enough, it could simply form it's own beach head anywhere on the continent and engage the enemy head on. I like that idea.

Ah, now that's an idea. If they're capture points they could indeed be strategic targets to bring in faster reinforcements.

And even if they can't be made capture points, sending in an airstrike team to bomb the campers just before the rest of your forces come in through it would be great tactical depth.

[Celfoid]

Originally Posted by sagolsun

True enough.

A few downsides:

1) water makes for visually boring terrain. Blue on the bottom, yellow sun up on the top. NC will feel like home.

2) water is uniform on all sides, ergo not possible to use terrain to your advantage.

3) water is flat, meaning maximum viewdistance, meaning snipers have a field day and the client needs to suck a lot of data. You'd be shooting at two pixel high enemies a server away.

4) infantry are useless on water, which would require movable ships on top of which you have soldiers. no game has successfully solved the mover-on-mover problem yet - though BF2142 got close.

5) land vehicles are useless on water, meaning you need to create a lot of new assets to replace them

Though I also see the potential for an additional layer of gameplay here.

1) Agreed. Yet with a neat and ''dynamic'' weather system, it wouldn't be so bland methinks. Have you seen the naval combat in Assassin's Creed 3? I watched a small bit of it from E3, anything near to that even just in concept would make naval warfare a much more interesting event.

2&3) ^ . So long as there's anything that has semblance to how the ocean really moves, snipers are going to have a pretty hard time making a shot from a boat that bobs up and down.

4) This is a problem. D:>

5) As a Vanu, I'm okay with this.

Edit: It would be neat to see outposts or even small bases out at sea, on islands, etc. I definitely wouldn't want the sea to only be used as another angle of attack.. it should be contestable space too. Maybe that's stretchin' it though.

[RoninOni]

Originally Posted by ringring

I quite like the thought. But I have doubts.
I imagine it would be way down the line too.

It would be... probably at LEAST a yr post launch.

This is a long term wish list item, and as power increases, so do the possibilities.

And of course, Adding Naval support would mean adding Naval vehicles....

I have big dreams on that one

[Duskguy]

Originally Posted by sagolsun

True enough.

A few downsides:

1) water makes for visually boring terrain. Blue on the bottom, yellow sun up on the top. NC will feel like home.

2) water is uniform on all sides, ergo not possible to use terrain to your advantage.

3) water is flat, meaning maximum viewdistance, meaning snipers have a field day and the client needs to suck a lot of data. You'd be shooting at two pixel high enemies a server away.

4) infantry are useless on water, which would require movable ships on top of which you have soldiers. no game has successfully solved the mover-on-mover problem yet - though BF2142 got close.

5) land vehicles are useless on water, meaning you need to create a lot of new assets to replace them

Though I also see the potential for an additional layer of gameplay here.

#1-2 you realise the oceans have islands, rock formations, etc. that stick up out of the water an just below the waterline, right? and i assume if they add in water, they will add water based capture points such as oil-rigs.

#3-4 none of which i am picturing would be able to truly be vulnerable toa sniper, like:
-a sunderer type boat as a transport,
-an aircraft carrier type boat that can spawn small attack craft/air units when stopped = water based galaxy
small, quick jet skis for quads
-and small destroyer type boats with a pilot based minigun and a pair of turrets for passengers, one front, one back, to cover the position of tanks.
-with these, only the jet skis would be vulnerable to snipers, and the distance... you wouldnt be able to shoot as far as you can see due to bullet drop and in the case of the VS, damage/distance returns. and being that the aircraft carrier type would have to be stopped to spawn the vehicles, the moving on a moving platform would be solved

#5 if the above vehicles are too hard (i doubt), a cert could be added in for land vehicles and galaxies to traverse/land on water.

the problem would be how fast these vehicles traverse the water and how large of an area the water covers and how many bases are added in between the major lands. i mentioned earlier that there is a naval and continent thread in the ideas section that someone mentioned certs for infantry in the water, such as a way to traverse the water and even a device for LA to dive instead of fly.

[RoninOni]

Originally Posted by Satyxis

There are a lot of places this could go wrong... we're talking about potentially adding a LOT of geography (playable real estate) to the game world... would there be a way to "up" the population to maintain a playable density? It could get boring really quick if you were just running around in your ship looking for other boats to sink between your continent and others...

I am afraid it will end up similar to the caverns that turned me off of PS the first time around (I did eventually come back, but still despise the caverns).

I don't think you'd just mindlessly patrol waters looking for kills....

There'd be some few resource platforms in the water to contest over,

and you'd be able to use Naval units to assist in coastal territory battles, even providing a close Air Fighter spawn in the form of a Naval Carrier, as well as some serious bombardment options.

the REAL advantage IMO is that it would allow the warp gates to be 'shut off', forcing a faction forced off a continent to make a DDay landing to regain presence.

[Blackwolf]

And let's face it. It wouldn't be a bad idea. If you could locate and engage a fleet in the ocean, more power to you. But the fleet's ability to launch an all out surprise attack from any direction on a continent would be it's biggest advantage. An organized outfit could cause some serious havoc on enemy forces by deploying a fleet to it's flank.

The fact that ships would function as destroyable vehicles would keep things balanced.

[Envenom]

Aiming high. If they can make it work, awesome. Though I'm sceptical.