Naval Transports

Femboy

I'd be interested on it, would definitely make Cybran and UEF suffer less on those maps where Zthuees and Aurora tend to have easier time and make land more relevant on maps like Roanoke where its all navy and air. However, I worry about how it could affect balance.

I believe it could be really good for more variety of strategies since currently, t1 navy feels like it lacks interaction with the rest of the game. Win t1 air? t1 bomb stuff, do drops, etc. Win t1 land? get more map control and mex, reclaim, etc. Win t1 navy? You'll be lucky if some mexes are near the shore, otherwise it doesnt translate to any game winning thing (yes t2 navy exists but you cant win with only t1 navy unlike t1 land only and t1 air). Specially on maps like Setons where it feels like rushing t1 navy and winning your pond doesn't lead to anything meaningful.

Plus the idea of a D-Day style dropship with 20 tanks just coming from the coast sounds very cool.

Sladow-Noob

Since it seems we're primary talking about the t1 and early t2 stage, I don't think it makes a huge difference on most maps (primary talking about 15x15+ maps since on 10x10 you either walk most of the times in teamgames or in 1v1s you can't see every drop due to lack of attention). Like, you don't have a t2 radar that early, therefore can't rlly see drops until they're close to the land anyway. You don't let your intis just patrol around over non-Aeon frigs for no reason and therefore it doesn't make a difference if the transport pops up 10m away of the land due to radar range or if it popos up 9m away of the land due to underwater-transports.
I simply fail to see where the benefit is. The only thing is that random scouts can see a transport but that doesn't happen that frequently if you watch out / use your inties like you should.

Also on many maps the water is shallow, making it a pain for the transport (pathfinding issues, bugs, ...) anyway.

Other things are how units react. E.g. can you getto a sub? And stuff like that, but those mechanical/balance stuff isn't my problem.

Tomma

I'm wondering how it will work. Like pathfinding of units and stuff. I think something like hower version of transport might work? We even can add button which will get regular transport in this hower mode. Assuming land units can load other land units into them which i doubtful about.
I think it might be fun but i dont think it will be used much. Like maybe if you want to transport units to shore without air control, but really why? Whats it's purpose? For me it would be weird feature never used in actual game.

Sprouto

The problem with naval transports was never the concept - but the execution. The mechanics of loading land-bound units - onto a water-bound vessel create some real headaches - you only need to see how painful that was for Total Annihilation to know it's going to be a problem.

I've seen other solutions, for example, BrewLAN has a transport that crawls up on land, unfurls it's arms to carry the units, picks them up, folds the arms back into a vertical position, and goes back into the water. Yes - it addresses some of the issues, but the entire process becomes a bumper car exercise - both on loading and unloading - and the tranport's vertical footprint is so tall, it sticks out of the water on many of the even the deepest water maps.

No - the abstraction of transport, based on the flying transports we have, is really the cleanest and most versatile solution you can get.

FtXCommando

No, make amphibious tanks. Why remove half the point of a unit that already exists?

Unknow

Penguin well we already have air transport and engie floating so i don't really see the point here

Javi pls don't talk about setons (it hurt me, to see that being writen), when navy win bring engie -> invade with land units or -> u just need to make t2 land to have units which float so no need to transport them.

veteranashe

Sea transports would be awesome! Make labs shoot from them for a ghetto frig, carry aa that can shoot, carry a sheild etc

KaletheQuick

If I recall, a lot of people tried to mod this and ground transports in when the game launched. No one ever got it working.

I don't know why, and of course I love the "d-day" landing cinematic thoughts, but with the game popping in a few engies and building factories under the artillery coverage of your navy on the shore, is how that kind of thing is done here, and that's fine. If the game was more set up so you produced units centrally, then had to get them to the fight, a logistics game like Creeper World 3/4, then such transports make a lot of sense.

I try to make my units centrally a lot, using air transport assists or ferry points to get them from my centralized production to the front lines, and it's tough to get working, and easily shut down by competent enemy air. I'd love more transports. But in the end the game is set up for you to make factories near the front.

arma473

Alternative: how about a boat that can build LABs directly on shore? Kind of like how the Megalith has "crab eggs"

Maybe the "engineering ship" can build a very small "tiny factory" (the size of a t1 pgen or slightly larger) that can produce nothing but LABs. Or nothing but LABs and land scouts. And these factories have very little BP so they work best with an "engineering ship" assisting them, that way you can't really run an invasion by having your engineering ship make 20 mini-facs and driving away. Each engineering ship would make 1 mini-fac and then assist it and the result would be LAB spam from the water.

Maybe regular engies should also be able to build/assist this so you could turn an engie drop into LAB spam without needing to build an entire t1 land factory. It would be a new way to make raids happen faster, so LABs get more use.

KaletheQuick

@arma473 Cool idea. Mod it in and lets test it out.

BlackJaguar

Cool idea, already made in a version of Future Battlefield Pack mod. For a D day battle, adds a lot of options for 4 to 8 units added.
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Zeldafanboy

Naval transports would be good for being tanky (air transports die easily) and having higher capacity. However, I feel like having a purely naval transport would be very hard to load and unload effectively depending on the map. The two transports above are hover or amphibious. I don't think a purely aquatic boat would be easy to load.

TheVVheelboy

Just build hover and amphibious tanks? While I get that it could be cool it's totally unnecessary.

BlackJaguar

@zeldafanboy Three that already exists in Future Battlepack Pack mod are amphibious, and IMHO , they are better suited to fight along to follow the general lines of each race. UEF is a transport warship with tracks. I can suggest that CDRMV put a small mod with these for test.