@deribus I actually tried setting the Fervor to direct fire. It's Insanely OP.

Otherwise, ignoring the rules I have ideas for navy

• Torpedoes are universally ammunition style weapons, having a use or autouse toggle like overcharge. Torpedoes now do tons of damage, no homing, and have a cool splash effect when they hit something.
• Subs now have a silent/deep running modes and auto stealth when not moving (like selen auto cloak, but no power draw). Silent running mode cuts movement speed, but preserves sealth. Cyb moves fastest. UEF have low hp and huge deck gun damage (surface and attack ambush style). T1 subs retain late game usefulness by being able to reclaim seafloor mass.
• Ships can 'repair mode' or disable drive and weapons to regen faster. Or 'mothball' state that generates a tiny amount of mass and power.
• "Fleet Tender" class ships with regen or repair bonuses. Can also assist torpedo production. Perhaps cybran is submersible?
• Larger ships are broken down and modularized like ACU/sACU. Example-battleships, with gun enhancement, shields, speed upgrades, HP upgrades.
• Aircraft carriers made to actually carry aircraft. Their three module slots each have an aircraft type that can be selected. ASF, Bomb, Torp. Building it generates a squad of drones that dock at the ship, and go out and attack targets in it's radar range.
• Aeon Frigate increased in effectiveness. Easily beats any other frigate. Barely loses 2v1. Cost/build adjusted to compensate.
• Cybran corvette exists and given kamikaze 'ram' ability.
• Naval veterancy increases range slightly, as to assure higher vet ships get the first shot advantage (seems like something a better trained crew would be able to do)
• Homeworld games imported in their entirety. Vagyr and Higarian campaigns set in space. Entire engine overhauled.
• Execs at Sqweenix assassinated with orbital laser. SC IP purchased by nonprofit FAF association. Supcom 3 confirmed.
• Supcom now an olympic sport.

Attention Aeon Commanders!
This memorandum summarizes the newest addition to our quantum compatible unit database:
The Shaman mk 1

The shaman is a bot that amplifies the power of shields in it's radius. Utilizing mass vapor recombination, regeneration of shields in proximity is increased 1.5x, and advanced pulse ignition removes the delay in regeneration. Though they are expensive, they are a true force multiplier.

Shaman are right at home in any advanced unit composition, enhancing sortie durability.

With widespread deployment of our superior shield technology, the Shaman can also extend the operational life of more primitive forces already fielded, immediately boosting combat effectiveness with a single deployment.

GLORY TO THE PRINCESS
LONG MAY SHE REIGN
~END OF MEMO~

Unit is available on the vault in the mod "KtQ Unit Shaman"
I had wanted to do more, but it was just not in the cards... or allotted time. Apparently there wasn't a shield regen buff built in, so that took a lot of my umph. I had also wanted to give it a chrono-damper suicide option (that costs power), since we so rarely see that ability.

Suggestion:
Reduce all air unit HP and anti air damage by a significant, uniform factor. A third or a tenth or something.

Why:
To make them more vulnerable to ground units while landed, without effecting other components of air.

In a recent game a swarm of ASF were landed and overrun with mantis. They didn't take off for some time and despite this not a single ASF was destroyed. T3 v T1 units should be quite a disparity, but I feel that getting caught with your air down should be punished significantly, and is a reasonable vulnerability. At a quick glance I don't see how this would effect much else.

What are your thoughts?

A mantis can kill an ASF in a bit over a minute.

@in_omnia_paratus said in Naval Transports:

why

Because it's fun.

@Deribus @FtXCommando
I am aware of the rule, and It was a joke in regards to that rule. I am indeed a chronic 800. However I would still 1v1 him. I would also not throw the game. From what I understand that would not be a problem, if we genuinely battled.

I love navy, and have always thought it was a bit underdeveloped in this game. I have been studying naval history for game development reasons for another project, but as for games I don't see a lot out there similar enough to FAF to really get a good metric for what people find fun. I really like the macro aspect of SC, that's what brought me to it, and others above have mentioned not just random micro but micro that's actually fun and has a use. One quote I like for game dev is "A game is a series of meaningful decisions" from Sid Meier. So how do we add options to the t3 navy that let the player make meaningful decisions, and if they have the APM, boost their fleet effectiveness?

We could add toggle-able abilities. I'm unsure what would be viable, but toggling your big ships from direct fire to plunging fire, or a tight vs wide spread, seems like it would be useful. Something like an overcharge could be done too. A hard hitting shot that costs energy or mass, with a cooldown, etc. And the right click 'auto use' feature. Perhaps it can do HP damage to the ship per use or something?

I think every ship should start with HP regen. Ships have damage control and I think for big ships this could be expanded upon. A fast repair mode, (or an ACU style upgrade that only repairs HP damage), that disables the ships guns and movement, and makes it extra vulnerable to torpedoes (IE, adding late game raiding targets for subs). Could be interesting. I think this would pair well with expanding on battleship veterancy. Adding other benefits through the ranks to incentivize keeping your capital ships alive, and tending to them.

If I can find time I will try to mod this in to test it.

I have always loved sacrifice. It fits into the lore ya know? Its interesting. And up until I read this thread I thought it was 100% efficient and that was it's only saving grace.

The pathfinding thing is the death of it, and I think range would help it. But there is still the component that its your build power and getting rid of it is pretty much always a setback not worth it. I think there are a few ways it could be improved or changed.

~ Boosting efficiency. Easy
~ Adding effects. AOE Heal, AOE auto reclaim
~ Changing effects. Remove build, have it do something else entirely that kills the unit. A last stand thingy? AOE Convert of enemy units of same tier. Regen field in build radius and health drain to death for unit. Satic shield of certain value (uncontrollable unit like ion storm, but a shield).
~ Putting on more units. Would labs be combat viable if they had a 100% sacrifice? Multiplied by veterancy
~ Unit simply detonates, every one the power of an ACU explosion. Can chain react. This is the Way.

Also, since we are talking useless economic bonuses, lets make a "recycling center" for the cybran. Like a land staging center you just hit a button and the unit goes to the nearest suicide booth and is turned back into mass at a high rate. GENIUS.

@bigbadgaz How do you know they are smurfing? Like, what's the due process here?

You guys just don't understand Aeon. It's not about killing the enemy commander. The Princess can only be appeased by stealing trees.

TREES FOR THE TREE GOD!

I prefer full share. It just makes sense to me, everything self destructing when you leave seems kinda weird. Yeah in team games it makes sniping a bit less important but sniping all the coms is still the goal. It's more like they have a number of lives, and can be given APM disadvantages as they lose them. Though I usually try to stick around if I die in a team game and mark important structures on the map (nuke, anti, com).

I do feel like it is how FtX said, sniping one guy with a bit of coordination seems to too easily turn into just a roll of the enemy team.

@jip oh darn. still awesome to see! lots of people seem to like it as well. good work!

This recall feature is outstanding!
We can live to fight another day!

Would it possibly have any effect on ranking changes? Nothing big, but the equation evaluates it as if your ranks were closer if you recall instead of die.

This could incentivise people to not stay in a losing battle of attrition forever, or toy with people who don't know they are defeated.

Knowing that it's time to retreat is a good commander quality, and this is kinda diagetically like that.

Perhaps in ranked games there is a signal the enemy is retreating, and it takes a moment to charge.

Anyway, love the feature!

Would resolving the problem from a different direction be possible? Like making it less detrimental to lose an early expanding engineer. If I were making a map with this in mind putting the initial expansion mexes closer together, with the assumption the expanding engineers are more likely to complete a mex before detonating.

Other ideas:
Cheaper T1 radar, with a boost to power consumption. Or perhaps radar installations can do an early warning 'pulse' that doubles their range and costs 5k power, for a moment. Just enough to see if there are aircraft.
Civilian AA turrets about the map to make running the bomber a tiny bit more complex than a b-line.
Tweaking it so an aeon engineer can dodge, start building an AA gun, then sacrifice itself to completion before the bomber comes back around

Experimenting is good. And I have wanted to try something like this. Tying it to fuel makes sense, piggybacking it on a mechanic already there, and highlighting an underused thing (air staging)

Perhaps to boost the bombers without it being a huge boost to snipes, buffing AOE in lieu of damage would suffice. Could do it to gunships too. Making them nice strike aircraft.

You need to get them in, have them spread their attacks out, and have them pull away so they still have their fueled up speed to escape.

Adjacency was a super cool idea.. but it's generation bonus is so paltry.

I really like the t1 pgens around artillery thing, the rate of fire bonus. I believe that works because each factions artillery is a similar rate of fire. Perhaps expanding on that?
Pgen ++ ROF
Pstore ++ range
Mass gen ++ damage
Mstore ++ AOE

Perhaps mass storage gives everything a rate of fire boost, but causes it to cost energy to fire too, so the storage has a dual use?

Build power bonuses to adjoined factories?

Maybe if we buff these have them chain and share damage like shield overflow.

T1 radar adjacency boo

@Jip off the top of your head, do you think this could be solved by giving them a toggle button for their engineering capabilities? Like how movement for the Salem was solved.

Perhaps a little depth could be added by having the toggle just be the shields. They can't engineer while shields are up, but maybe boost them to 10 build power, just under t2.

Perhaps buffing the torpedo launchers could work.
I propose for consideration:

• They have range and damage buff.
• Salvo size nerf (buff to effectiveness of anti-torp)
• Magazine and ammunition build requirements. magazine size and torp cost a good variable to tweak for balance. Underwater TML esque.
• reduce build time/cost (offset costs to ammunition)

Why I think this will make games more interesting:
Assuming the naval defenses are viable, they could hold off a fleet, but on a timer. Defenders get a few options, put mass in naval factories, or let the torp launchers spend mass to make more torpedoes. Maybe put some engineers on the front to assist in torpedo production speed or build more launchers.

The attacker has some options as well. Bringing in longer range bombardment, missiles or something, to try and wear down the defenses. Or rush and try to wear down the defenses. Send in a couple frigates to trick the launchers into firing, forcing the defender to toggle them on and off shoot.

The defender also gets some counter-intel options as well. Building a bunch of cheap launchers but not having them build torpedos, essentially bluffing the defenses. Attacker would have to weigh that as well.

So I guess make them viable defensively, and good, but not in a sustained engagement. might be able to catch people off guard and shred a fleet.

You guys just don't understand Aeon. It's not about killing the enemy commander. The Princess can only be appeased by stealing trees.

TREES FOR THE TREE GOD!

@jip On the "initial ferry transport dying" problem: Perhaps making it so the transport can build or special ability spawn the invisible and intangible ferry controller beacon? You then select the beacon and set up your route like normal, and have transports assist it.
Possible?

As for loading whole fleets of transports, some variant of the ferry command seems like it would work. Using the same behavior that sends all the units to an appropriate transport, but then the transport just hangs out instead of ferrying.

Transports are my favorite part of the game. Making them more useful and viable would be the best.

I used to play the game SOLELY by setting a patrol route from a factory, having transports assist the factory, then moving the patrol route to attack places or retreat. Obviously not PVP viable, but it really makes you feel like a general! And the idea of 'platoons' that automatically get reinforcements is awesome.

I would also like a "wait" command that I can issue that just does nothing and everything waits, so I can cue up their overly complex flightplans and attack patterns, then cancel the wait command so everyone goes at once.

Oh, and orders contingent on other orders. Actually if the whole order system could be touring-complete that would be great.

Semi-unrelated shield question.

Is it possible to have shields in shapes other than a bubble? Like would a forward facing rectangle shield be possible?
Also, could we arm the parashield? Perhaps that would boost it's utility? Or making it deploy and be more efficient when not moving?