Topic: Naval warfare rethought
tothxa
Joined: 2021-03-24, 11:44
Posts: 448 OS: antix / Debian Version: some new PR I'm testing  Tribe Member |
Posted at: 2023-11-22, 22:31
I have another idea (obviously for the 1.3 cycle) to have a naval warfare feature that doesn't disrupt the overall game mechanics that much: We could remove the direct navigation controls of warships completely, so they could only be sent to protect ports or to follow expedition ships. So expedition ships would be again the only units that can be directly controlled by the player, and all naval invasions would need an expedition ship too. (cost increase and rate limiting There would be no control for ship to ship battles either. All warships would act like land soldiers in an attack: they would start fighting nearby enemy warships automatically whenever they see one. If they win and there are no more enemy warships around, they would resume protecting or following. Another tangentially related proposal for rate limiting: Only allow refitting a ship to a warship when the total number of the player's warships in an ocean is not more than the number of ports plus expedition ships of the given player in that ocean. (and possibly new expeditions would also be limited to the number of ports) The warships wouldn't be tied to the ports or expeditions though, the player could decide how to assign them. This would get rid of the spamming problem, and also make early naval expansion safer. Then in the later phase of the game, the player who was able to grab more ports could get naval superiority. 
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kaputtnik
Joined: 2013-02-18, 19:48
Posts: 2452 OS: Archlinux Version: current master  One Elder of Players Location: Germany |
Posted at: 2023-11-23, 07:34
In my opinion the most problematic thing of the current implementation of naval ware fare is that one can't create warships if the opponent has won the race for early ships. We have seen this in the tournament on the map Plateau: Once the opponent navigate his ships to your port it's unlikely you can create a warship fleet again. At least at the besieged port. But also if you are able to build up a new port it will be besieged again and probably you will loose the game. Once your opponent has some warships it will be impossible to turn the game. So there must be a way to defend a siege from ashore, imho. Otherwise the race for early ships will be part of every game played on seafaring maps. No idea how defending from ashore could be implemented though. Maybe building, and repairing, of warships should be done at shipyards and not at ports (this feels also more natural). This would also partly prevent the tactic to build a new port in the vincinity of you opponent, which only acts as a repair port for your warships (this idea came to my mind in the tournament match on The Nile, where ships needs a long time to reach a port at your starting position). So you need a port and a shipyard to get a repair station for your ships. Fight simulator for Widelands:
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tothxa
Joined: 2021-03-24, 11:44
Posts: 448 OS: antix / Debian Version: some new PR I'm testing Tribe Member |
Posted at: 2023-11-24, 10:34
Maybe not really fitting into the normal game mechanics, but enemy warships within the conquer range of military buildings could get a small damage per some time unit, proportional to either the number or the total level (or even both with different weights) of soldiers. Could also be made dependent on the distance, like BTW this would have a small positive effect for the scouting warships too (to offset the obvious big negative): they could roughly assess the strength of the defences without launching a test invasion. Edited: 2023-11-24, 18:26
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) (maybe when an expedition builds a port, all soldiers from all warships assigned to the expedition ship would also land to protect the construction site)