Naval Overhaul (Alpha 27)

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

After several discussions over the years, I think there is a broad recognition that ships are in need of improvement. I've synthesized some ideas here, but be warned: not everyone will be happy and by no means do I think this is the "perfect" naval system for an ancient-themed game, just something that may be interesting, fun, workable, intuitive, implementable, and not too historically problematic. 

The main thing I would like to see is to differentiate ships along roles or classes and get away from the "multi-role" ship idea, where all you do is build bigger and better versions of this same multi-role ship. While the multi-role ship is historically accurate, it's problematic for gameplay (for myriad reasons that have been chewed over a dozen times). Better to go with the "historical authenticity" principle that gives us more leeway to develop classes of ships dedicated to their roles.

So, let's discuss some ship roles or abilities and come up with classes of ships to approximate these roles and abilities without making things overly complicated.

Some roles and abilities of ancient warships:

Arrow Platforms

Troop Transporting (I think this is one thing all ships can do: there doesn't need to be a dedicated ship for this)

Artillery Platforms

Boarding

Ramming

Scouting

 

With the above in mind, let's come up with classes of ships to depict these actions. Note that garrisoning units aboard have different (small) effects based on ship class. When garrisoned, you don't see anything appear on the deck. Ship models are small than they are currently in the game for pathfinding reasons, so would look strange with giants standing on the deck.

Scout Ship

• Role: Scouting, Gathering Treasures
• Attack: None
• Garrison: 5
• Garrison Effect: +5% capture resistance per 5 units.
• Has no attack and is basically an arrow-less Light Warship (can even use the same base model, minus oars, just a sail or vice versa)
• Can only train 1 at a time, but is super cheap (perhaps free?) so can be rebuilt very easily. Can be used to land a small scouting party, maybe good for scenarios too.

Arrow Ship/Light Warship

• Role: Arrow Shooter; harrasser
• Attack: Arrows x3 (unit AI), Arrows x1 (building AI)
• Garrison: 10
• Garrison Effect: 1 extra (unit AI) Arrow per 5 units; +5% capture resistance per 5 units
• This is your bireme, your liburna, your hemiolia, your pentekonter, your pirate ship. 
• Very good against Merchant Ships (perhaps with an attack bonus) and Melee ships (Ramming Ships and Boarding Ships) due to having no minimum range. Countered decisively by Artillery Ships. 

Ramming Ship

• Role: One-Hit kill ramming attack.
• Attack: Melee Ram, Arrows x1 (building AI)
• Garrison: 20
• Garrison Effect: +5% speed per 5 units; +5% capture resistance per 5 units
• This is your famous Trireme. Athenians get a special technology for these ships. Its primary role is to sink enemy ships with a melee attack, which has has to recharge. They are tough ships, but are vulnerable to Arrow Ships during the approach due to their paltry 1 arrow defensive ranged attack, and Boarding Ships if their ram attack did not sink the boarding ship in one strike. Due to recharging nature of their melee attack, these ships require the most APM/micromanagement and are often naturally suicidal if not microed effectively.
• Very Good against Artillery Ships and other Ramming Ships.

Boarding Ship

• Role: Capturing enemy ships and docks
• Attack: Freezing capture attack with a Boarding Ramp for Roman civs (a bonus) or grappling hooks for other civs; Arrows x1 (building AI)
• Garrison: 20
• Garrison Effect: +5% capture attack per 5 units; +5% capture resistance per 5 units
• This represents the boarding actions common in naval battles. Romans have the Corvus technology which boosts their Boarding Ships. These will look similar to the Ramming Ship, but with a ramp for the Roman version and some other identifier for the other civs.
• Can counter Ramming Ships if they are not destroyed in the enemy's first strike and are good against Artillery Ships if used en masse. Can capture enemy Docks as well. Vulnerable to attack from other ships while it's attempting to capture the target ship.

Artillery Ship

• Role: Long Range siege attacks
• Attack: Artillery Bolt x2; Catapult Rock (Upgrade); Unit AI
• Garrison: 30
• Garrison Effect: +5% firing rate per 5 units; +5% capture resistance per 5 units
• Your Quinqueremes and other Polyremes. They come with a siege weapon on the foredeck.
• These are used for long range bombardment of massed enemy naval formations or shore structures such as docks, towers, and other buildings. Due to their slow firing rate, they are very vulnerable to faster ships such as Ramming Ships and Boarding Ships. They absolutely massacre Arrow Ships.

[Gurken Khan]

I find the garrison numbers pretty low; when I think of the average army size I set over this would mean nearly double the ships/trips.

I wish you luck with your overhaul and hope that ships become more fun. The last time I played a water map I definitely didn't enjoy them; felt like they became even clunkier and dumber, hanging on every obstacle, turning for ever on the spot, with their turn and acceleration times I sometimes even didn't know if they were moving at all...

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

31 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

I find the garrison numbers pretty low; when I think of the average army size I set over this would mean nearly double the ships/trips.

With 100 soldiers you'd only need 5 ships.

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

After several discussions over the years, I think there is a broad recognition that ships are in need of improvement. I've synthesized some ideas here, but be warned: not everyone will be happy and by no means do I think this is the "perfect" naval system for an ancient-themed game, just something that may be interesting, fun, workable, intuitive, implementable, and not too historically problematic. 

The main thing I would like to see is to differentiate ships along roles or classes and get away from the "multi-role" ship idea, where all you do is build bigger and better versions of this same multi-role ship. While the multi-role ship is historically accurate, it's problematic for gameplay (for myriad reasons that have been chewed over a dozen times). Better to go with the "historical authenticity" principle that gives us more leeway to develop classes of ships dedicated to their roles.

So, let's discuss some ship roles or abilities and come up with classes of ships to approximate these roles and abilities without making things overly complicated.

Some roles and abilities of ancient warships:

Arrow Platforms

Troop Transporting (I think this is one thing all ships can do: there doesn't need to be a dedicated ship for this)

Artillery Platforms

Boarding

Ramming

Scouting

 

With the above in mind, let's come up with classes of ships to depict these actions. Note that garrisoning units aboard have different (small) effects based on ship class. When garrisoned, you don't see anything appear on the deck. Ship models are small than they are currently in the game for pathfinding reasons, so would look strange with giants standing on the deck.

Scout Ship

• Role: Scouting, Gathering Treasures
• Attack: None
• Garrison: 5
• Garrison Effect: +5% capture resistance per 5 units.
• Has no attack and is basically an arrow-less Light Warship (can even use the same base model, minus oars, just a sail or vice versa)
• Can only train 1 at a time, but is super cheap (perhaps free?) so can be rebuilt very easily. Can be used to land a small scouting party, maybe good for scenarios too.

Arrow Ship/Light Warship

• Role: Arrow Shooter; harrasser
• Attack: Arrows x3 (unit AI), Arrows x1 (building AI)
• Garrison: 10
• Garrison Effect: 1 extra (unit AI) Arrow per 5 units; +5% capture resistance per 5 units
• This is your bireme, your liburna, your hemiolia, your pentekonter, your pirate ship. 
• Very good against Merchant Ships (perhaps with an attack bonus) and Melee ships (Ramming Ships and Boarding Ships) due to having no minimum range. Countered decisively by Artillery Ships. 

Ramming Ship

• Role: One-Hit kill ramming attack.
• Attack: Melee Ram, Arrows x1 (building AI)
• Garrison: 20
• Garrison Effect: +5% speed per 5 units; +5% capture resistance per 5 units
• This is your famous Trireme. Athenians get a special technology for these ships. Its primary role is to sink enemy ships with a melee attack, which has has to recharge. They are tough ships, but are vulnerable to Arrow Ships during the approach due to their paltry 1 arrow defensive ranged attack, and Boarding Ships if their ram attack did not sink the boarding ship in one strike. Due to recharging nature of their melee attack, these ships require the most APM/micromanagement and are often naturally suicidal if not microed effectively.
• Very Good against Artillery Ships and other Ramming Ships.

Boarding Ship

• Role: Capturing enemy ships and docks
• Attack: Freezing Melee attack with a Boarding Ramp for Roman civs (a bonus) or grappling hooks for other civs; Arrows x1 (building AI)
• Garrison: 20
• Garrison Effect: +5% capture attack per 5 units; +5% capture resistance per 5 units
• This represents the boarding actions common in naval battles. Romans have the Corvus technology which boosts their Boarding Ships. These will look similar to the Ramming Ship, but with a ramp for the Roman version and some other identifier for the other civs.
• Can counter Ramming Ships if they are not destroyed in the enemy's first strike and are good against Artillery Ships if used en masse. Can capture enemy Docks as well. Vulnerable to attack from other ships while it's attempting to capture the target ship.

Artillery Ship

• Role: Long Range siege attacks
• Attack: Artillery Bolt x2; Catapult Rock (Upgrade); Unit AI
• Garrison: 30
• Garrison Effect: +5% firing rate per 5 units; +5% capture resistance per 5 units
• Your Quinqueremes and other Polyremes. They come with a siege weapon on the foredeck.
• These are used for long range bombardment of massed enemy naval formations or shore structures such as docks, towers, and other buildings. Due to their slow firing rate, they are very vulnerable to faster ships such as Ramming Ships and Boarding Ships. They absolutely massacre Arrow Ships.

I like this quite a bit. I think the numbers will need to be adjusted a bit (it sounds like naval battles will be very quick otherwise), but I like the overall concepts. 

Also, I vote free scouting ship or to cut it all together. 

Lastly, I presume you would keep merchant and fishing ships the same? No objections from me, if so. 

Nice work!

Edit: I know you've been working on ship art lately. Could you post the classes' corresponding art? It would be nice to get an idea of the relative sizes. 

Edited January 10, 2023 by chrstgtr

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

13 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Also, I vote free scouting ship or to cut it all together. 

A free Scout Ship would be a really nice little feature. Every civ can get one, along with an Arrow Ship. 

 

14 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Lastly, I presume you would keep merchant and fishing ships the same? No objections from me, if so. 

Yeah, pretty much the same. I may suggest splitting the Dock into the Dock (economic) and Shipyard (naval), but that's a separate consideration. 

 

15 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Edit: I know you've been working on ship art lately. Could you post the classes' corresponding art? It would be nice to get an idea of the relative sizes. 

I'll see what I can do. Obviously there would need to be some modeling work, specifically to reduce the ship model sizes and make them less unwieldy. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

I like what we have going here:

2 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Scout Ship

• Role: Scouting, Gathering Treasures
• Attack: None
• Garrison: 5
• Garrison Effect: +5% capture resistance per 5 units.
• Has no attack and is basically an arrow-less Light Warship (can even use the same base model, minus oars, just a sail or vice versa)
• Can only train 1 at a time, but is super cheap (perhaps free?) so can be rebuilt very easily. Can be used to land a small scouting party, maybe good for scenarios too.

Arrow Ship/Light Warship

• Role: Arrow Shooter; harrasser
• Attack: Arrows x3 (unit AI), Arrows x1 (building AI)
• Garrison: 10
• Garrison Effect: 1 extra (unit AI) Arrow per 5 units; +5% capture resistance per 5 units
• This is your bireme, your liburna, your hemiolia, your pentekonter, your pirate ship. 
• Very good against Merchant Ships (perhaps with an attack bonus) and Melee ships (Ramming Ships and Boarding Ships) due to having no minimum range. Countered decisively by Artillery Ships. 

Ramming Ship

• Role: One-Hit kill ramming attack.
• Attack: Melee Ram, Arrows x1 (building AI)
• Garrison: 20
• Garrison Effect: +5% speed per 5 units; +5% capture resistance per 5 units
• This is your famous Trireme. Athenians get a special technology for these ships. Its primary role is to sink enemy ships with a melee attack, which has has to recharge. They are tough ships, but are vulnerable to Arrow Ships during the approach due to their paltry 1 arrow defensive ranged attack, and Boarding Ships if their ram attack did not sink the boarding ship in one strike. Due to recharging nature of their melee attack, these ships require the most APM/micromanagement and are often naturally suicidal if not microed effectively.
• Very Good against Artillery Ships and other Ramming Ships.

Boarding Ship

• Role: Capturing enemy ships and docks
• Attack: Freezing Melee attack with a Boarding Ramp for Roman civs (a bonus) or grappling hooks for other civs; Arrows x1 (building AI)
• Garrison: 20
• Garrison Effect: +5% capture attack per 5 units; +5% capture resistance per 5 units
• This represents the boarding actions common in naval battles. Romans have the Corvus technology which boosts their Boarding Ships. These will look similar to the Ramming Ship, but with a ramp for the Roman version and some other identifier for the other civs.
• Can counter Ramming Ships if they are not destroyed in the enemy's first strike and are good against Artillery Ships if used en masse. Can capture enemy Docks as well. Vulnerable to attack from other ships while it's attempting to capture the target ship.

Artillery Ship

• Role: Long Range siege attacks
• Attack: Artillery Bolt x2; Catapult Rock (Upgrade); Unit AI
• Garrison: 30
• Garrison Effect: +5% firing rate per 5 units; +5% capture resistance per 5 units
• Your Quinqueremes and other Polyremes. They come with a siege weapon on the foredeck.
• These are used for long range bombardment of massed enemy naval formations or shore structures such as docks, towers, and other buildings. Due to their slow firing rate, they are very vulnerable to faster ships such as Ramming Ships and Boarding Ships. They absolutely massacre Arrow Ships.

I'd say a couple things:

first, I think there should't be a building AI arrow count. If a ship has an attack that is player controlled, I don't see the point of adding a buildingAI arrow count. It would be best to keep that part simple.

also, I am not sure of the garrison effects. I would prefer that the ships are fully functional "out of the box" and that garrisoning should be a transport concern, but I am open minded to trying these effects out.

I think these classes you bring up could fit into parent classes based on ship size (light,medium,heavy) with the following characteristics:

• light: less health, more speed, acceleration
• medium: medium health, speed, acceleration
• heavy: more health, less speed, less acceleration

scout and light warships could belong to light; ramming ships, boarding ships, and medium warships belong to medium; and siege ships belong to heavy. Each ship would have its own abilities while still belonging to a parent class.

This way, I could go ahead and make the core light, medium, and heavy classes playable in the community mod for brainstorming while art and gameplay mechanic developments allow for the specialized ships to be introduced.

Edited January 10, 2023 by real_tabasco_sauce

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Sure, the BuildingAI arrows can be removed. Not wedded to that, only to say it would be nice for the melee ships to have some kind of ranged defense, even if minimal, but maybe that dilutes the concept a bit.

 

12 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I think these classes you bring up could fit into parent classes based on ship size (light,medium,heavy) with the following characteristics:

• light: less health, range(flexible here) more speed, acceleration
• medium: medium health, range, speed, acceleration
• heavy: more health, range, less speed, less acceleration

scout and light warships could belong to light; ramming ships, boarding ships, and medium warships belong to medium; and siege ships belong to heavy. Each ship would have its own abilities while still belonging to a parent class.

This way, I could go ahead and make the core light, medium, and heavy classes playable in the community mod for brainstorming while art and gameplay mechanic developments allow for the specialized ships to be introduced.

Sure, initially we can use the existing parent templates, but I think eventually we'd make brand new ones.

 

EDIT: But also if we just make brand new parent templates right off the bat they can exist parallel with the old ones and we don't have to worry about screwing up the existing paradigm (such as it is, lol) by editing the old parent templates to work with our experiments.

Edited January 10, 2023 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[real_tabasco_sauce]

10 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Sure, the BuildingAI arrows can be removed. Not wedded to that, only to say it would be nice for the melee ships to have some kind of ranged defense, even if minimal, but maybe that dilutes the concept a bit.

I'd say you put it right, it dilutes the concept. I think the player should instead use some ranged boats for sheltering melee boats from pursuing vessels. The system we are devising here should work well with a combination of ships.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

specifically to reduce the ship model sizes and make them less unwieldy. 

Yes, reducing their size would be great, and I think slowing their top speed and reducing vision could allow for more strategy and could make waterways seem larger.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

24 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Sure, initially we can use the existing parent templates, but I think eventually we'd make brand new ones.

I'm just thinking a core structure to ship classes based on size would be helpful

[Gurken Khan]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

melee ships to have some kind of ranged defense, even if minimal

In favor of (limited) range defense. I'd imagine that to be historically correct too.

 

54 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

slowing their top speed

Oh please, NO.

[chrstgtr]

Chiming in again to explain since there seems to be some contention. I don’t necessarily disagree with anything said by @real_tabasco_sauce or @wowgetoffyourcellphone. The reason why I like what @wowgetoffyourcellphone put forward is because it gets away from our current model which is just one “type” of ship where the only strategy is to get more full ships earlier than your opponent. @wowgetoffyourcellphone’s system is more or less a rock paper scissors approach, which introduces strategy and relatively easy to balance 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

I think this looks great! Sub-classes like real-tabasco mentioned might be good if we want to have some upgrades affect more than one or all ship types.

The idea of scout ship is awesome, for transporting small rushes early on or scouting. I think this would be a great first ship in p1.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

23 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

. @wowgetoffyourcellphone’s system is more or less a rock paper scissors approach, which introduces strategy and relatively easy to balance 

The cool thing about a simple RPS system like this, with its small number of classes, is that we can do it fairly easily with no specific attack bonuses. Mechanics do most of the work. Melee ships (rammers and boarders) beat Artillery ships because they bridge the gap too quickly for the firing rate of the Artillery ship to compensate. The melee ships are soft countered by Arrow ships because the Arrow ships can fire more rapidly and more precisely than the Artillery ships. And then the Arrow ships are massacred by Artillery ships because of the way ranged combat works. Boarders throw a nice monkey into things to see if you can't capture some enemy ships. Rammers are the hard hitting, nearly suicidal, units (they survive due to some good micro). And even better, it's all pretty intuitive. 

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The cool thing about a simple RPS system like this, with its small number of classes, is that we can do it fairly easily with no specific attack bonuses. Mechanics do most of the work. Melee ships (rammers and boarders) beat Artillery ships because they bridge the gap too quickly for the firing rate of the Artillery ship to compensate. The melee ships are soft countered by Arrow ships because the Arrow ships can fire more rapidly and more precisely than the Artillery ships. And then the Arrow ships are massacred by Artillery ships because of the way ranged combat works. Boarders throw a nice monkey into things to see if you can't capture some enemy ships. Rammers are the hard hitting, nearly suicidal, units (they survive due to some good micro). And even better, it's all pretty intuitive. 

Yeah, I really like the multiple armor and attack system we have for cav and inf, but it’s a huge pain to try to get right. I just don’t care enough about ships to do something more complicated and your proposal works/is a huge improvement compared to what we have

[real_tabasco_sauce]

@wowgetoffyourcellphone how about this for a ramming ship implementation:

Either make ram damage a function (maybe sigmoidal) of speed, or require a particular speed the boat should be going for the ram attack to be successful.

In either case, the ram "charge up" is the ship's acceleration, which I think is a neat approach since we already have it in the game.

 

[alre]

11 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Arrow ships are massacred by Artillery ships because of the way ranged combat works. 

How's that?

[alre]

Also,  do you plan to give artillery ships to all civs? If not, how do you plan to compensate for the lack of one of the elements of the RPS? 

[Outis]

Very glad ship overhaul is considered, thank you @wowgetoffyourcellphone and very glad to see great ideas from all .

At the expense of some criticism, i want to mention a couple points:

I think ramming and boarding should definitely be there for both historical and gameplay reasons. However, i find the idea of a "ramming ship" unit and a "boarding ship" ship unit limiting. All ancient ships were/could be equipped with rams and personnel. I think it is strange for a ramming ship chasing a non-ramming ship with the only viable response of the non-ramming ship being flight rather than maneuver to ram itself. Or it is strange that the boarding ship is boarding a ship which is just sitting and not trying to resist and even counter-attack by boarding. These actions should be available to most ships rather than a specific type. How well they can perform these actions depend on the ship size and faction chosen maybe. For instance, small ships can outmaneuver medium ships but do not cause enough ramming damage to sink a medium ship. Or Greek tririme has high speed and can ram better than other medium ships. Boarding may consider the no of crews aboard. Artillery ship is where unit type is justified because only heavy ships can carry artillery.

[Outis]

11 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

@wowgetoffyourcellphone how about this for a ramming ship implementation:

Either make ram damage a function (maybe sigmoidal) of speed, or require a particular speed the boat should be going for the ram attack to be successful.

In either case, the ram "charge up" is the ship's acceleration, which I think is a neat approach since we already have it in the game.

 

I think charge up requirement couls be to have a minimum distance from which you should initiate the attack. Any closer and you cannot hit the button to ram. Smaller and lighter ships have a smaller minimum distance. Damage is proportional to size/mass.

[Genava55]

Which civs would have the boarding ships and which civs would have the ramming ships?

Edited January 11, 2023 by Genava55

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

7 hours ago, alre said:

How's that?

Because 1:1 an artillery ship > arrow ship in dps. Ranged units tend to just park and shoot, while melee units close the distance and deal high dps strikes.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Another option is to add ranking/promotion to warships. 

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Another option is to add ranking/promotion to warships. 

I’d rather do what’s discussed above. Plus it’s already really tough to recover if you lose an initial naval battle—promotions would just make it more difficult 

[AIEND]

11 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

我宁愿做上面讨论的事情。 另外，如果你输掉了最初的海战，你已经很难恢复了——晋升只会让恢复变得更加困难 

I think that instead of upgrading the level of the warship itself, it is better to upgrade the level of the shooters on the ship, so that these soldiers can exert their own combat power as if they are standing on a city wall. This can also reduce the cost of the warship, even if it is a larger warship. It also just means bigger crew bays and more sailors, it doesn't mean it has more firepower than a light warship unless you have more elite marksmen.