ships Naval Boarding - seizure of ships

[Guest]

Imagine me building my first arrow ship and out of nowhere an enemy ai's ramming ship stocked with champions stole my ship and return to fog of war waiting for more oppurtunistic booty and I'm now officially landless for all eternity.

[CheckTester]

On 27/01/2026 at 1:10 PM, Tapothei said:

Imagine me building my first arrow ship and out of nowhere an enemy ai's ramming ship stocked with champions stole my ship and return to fog of war waiting for more oppurtunistic booty and I'm now officially landless for all eternity.

Why not.

But this fail may be possible and without garrisoned champions on ram ship. Three ram ships also will beat one arrow ship, as I understand.

The enemy may disembark units from the ship and give you a hard time. What does it mean ? This is war reality. 
When enemy have more units and use it with mind he will beat you any time. Try to find the solution! For example - sink his ramming ship with javelinners or archers. Small amount of distant units will sink one ram ship with ALL the champions for short period. Fastly!

"The enemy will have more units and I will be defeated" — it is not the real reason to decline the feature. 

 

In case you lost the unique ship. And lost your shipyard. There are a lot of ways how to build new doc and new ship, even you have not gold and gold mines around. Just make a market and trade the food (or other goods) for the gold.  By the way. The dock is also a market.

But.. In other way.
You may garrison some units to the trade ship as a garrison and capture any war ship without units. Only imagine...

And this is also war reality.

Defend your units. Be carefull! Use the tactics! Guard everything.

This is real strategy! 

Edited January 28 by CheckTester

[Guest]

@CheckTesterit was a joke that came up onto me, so I wanted to share a laugh. I look forward for this feature to be implemented. I also want a troll ai that does what I thought of. Trully it will caught people off guard, those whose used to it will get annoyed which serves the purpose of trolling. Man, my urge to troll is high....

[CheckTester]

I have created a ticket to develop this feature: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/issues/8696

[Thalatta]

I think only ramming ships should be able to board, and should have a harder time with faster ships, needing to ram them a bit beforehand. Then, a defending “base garrison” would need to also be overcome in “virtual combat”. This base garrison could be depleted by ramming, making the target ship incur a speed (and maybe attack) penalty. After capture, the base garrison from the attacking ship (never involved in boarding actions) should be automatically distributed among both ships. Base garrisons could slowly replenish at sea, fast at ports. All this easily removes the necessity of having to garrison everything, while making things realistic by keeping boarding fairly common (as it was) but preventing snowballing from opportunistically hoarding ships.

 

Better explained:

 

It would be annoying to have good ships get captured by hit and run tactics from slower ships with a small crew and when not even engaged in combat (which happened mostly with sails lowered, but I guess the game simplifies this and that’s why the ramming ship has them like that). This is the Fortress capture problem at sea (which these ideas also try to solve). Boarding should then be done only by ramming ships, the one representing close combat. They should have a “Grappling Hooks” button that would work when really close, but the target ship should have a chance to get away depending on its speed relative to the attacker’s ship. Ramming was done not just to sink ships, but also to slow or stop them by shearing their oars (which would injure or kill the oarsmen). Only then using grappling hooks for boarding would be feasible. The corvus could prevent the target ship from getting away, but it wasn’t just “way more efficient at boarding”, it was necessary because the first Roman ships were slow compared to the Carthaginians’, after a couple of battles their ships improved and they ditched the corvus (which apparently made ships unstable), so it shouldn't be seen as a technology that improved things from then on but as a short lived early necessity.

 

I’d change needing “4 or more garrisoned troops” and instead give every ship a “base garrison”, taken into account for the defenders when in virtual combat. This would be just a few parameters regarding how many they are, their attack, and defense (and loot, which I’d reserve for a successful boarding, but maybe that’s extra code and not how the game works). The number of troops needed to take an ungarrisoned ship would then depend on the ship itself (would be annoying having to garrison the biggest ships because of small ships with 4 archers lurking about). I feel units like cavalry or elephants shouldn’t count in any of this. An attacker can choose to disengage the grappling hooks if things are going south, which would also automatically happen if the defenders repel the attack (leaving the attacking ship only with its untouched base garrison).

 

Most oarsmen were skilled armed free men, who were killed or taken prisoner, not generally made row a captured ship (which is very complicated, they had to be willing and motivated). This is why I disagree with “the first ship will receive part of the second ship's garrison”, it's not rooted in reality, and it's too snowbally. If the boarding is successful, the base garrison from the defending ship could be considered killed (or sold to slavery considering loot, etc), and the one from the attacking ship would need to be split (maybe in proportion to capacity). A depleted base garrison should give speed penalties to the ship. After all, captured ships had to be scuttled or were slow after battles for being poorly manned. The base garrison could replenish slowly, fast if close to a port. All this makes keeping ships harder than just boarding and capturing, allowing for more strategic decisions and preventing disproportionate gains. When everyone is killed in the target ship, one would take control of it and, while still hooked, one should be able to choose if to keep it or scuttle it (and maybe if just abandon it). For now I'm not proposing any base garrison manual redistribution not to complicate things.

 

I’d make ships suffer damage mostly from ramming only, I feel ships are too weak to arrows in this game, they should be more like rams, while arrows should mostly affect their garrisoned troops, and the base garrison should be affected mostly by ramming (oar shearing and hull breaching). I would add this mechanism on everything, siege engines and buildings. Fortresses would have a decent base garrison with a bigger defense bonus than on a ship. They wouldn’t count as population, they’re just a “resistance to be taken” parameter (which is going to be implemented one way or another anyway, better to rename things realistically for immersion and intuition, all this is a bunch of parameters only), and a “speed (and maybe base arrow rate) penalty” if depleted, for things to work nicely on ships to take faster ones.

 

Big ships is one of the things that are good about this game, no need to try to be just another RTS clone. A few words about realism: what I said before greatly simplifies reality, even when much was written. The only difference from the original proposal is the few parameters to characterise a base garrison, whose quantity would influence the speed of ships and be reduced by being rammed (if just being damaged can be considered for now that’s ok), and that faster ships could get away from the grappling hooks (Edit: and removing the arbitrary troop quantity requirement to be able to board, one might try capturing a small ship with 4 soldiers, but a big one would be suicide). If one would want more realism, ramming should be done on the sides (made difficult when ships are formed side by side), and shearing should be done with an angle from the front (diekplous), or back after going around (periplous), but I know this is too much detail for a game like this (although the more is taken into account the better for tactics).

Edited January 29 by Thalatta

[CheckTester]

The idea of reusing building capture logic for ships is excellent, but I believe it needs one critical addition: both ships should take hull damage during the boarding process. Otherwise, boarding becomes a no-risk, high-reward action that undermines naval warfare.

Why it's important

Historically, boarding was a brutal melee that damaged the ships themselves (broken oars, rails, rigging). In gameplay terms: if you can capture an enemy trireme for free just by having 10 hoplites on a transport, why bother building warships?

Proposed mechanics (simple and implementable)

1. Ongoing damage: During boarding, both ships lose a small percentage of HP per second. Damage rate depends on:

   • Ratio of garrison military strength (fiercer fighting = more damage).

   • Ship type (warships are tougher, transports are fragile).

   • Technologies (e.g., "Grappling Hooks" could reduce damage for the attacker).

2. Final penalty for captured ship: After a successful boarding, the captured ship suffers an additional HP loss (e.g., 15–20% of its current HP), representing the final deck struggle.

3. Attacker also pays a price: The attacker's ship takes damage over time and loses some of its garrison (e.g., 2–4 units killed). Half of the surviving attacker's garrison (rounded up) transfers to the captured ship; the rest remain on the original ship. This is in addition to the unit transfer already discussed. Defender's garrison is entirely eliminated (killed or captured).

4. Risk of sinking: If a ship's HP reaches zero during boarding, it sinks and the boarding is interrupted (or the surviving ship wins if the fight was almost over).

Why this improves the game

• Balance: Boarding becomes a costly operation, not a free alternative to destruction.

• Tactical depth: You can soften a ship with ranged attacks, then board to capture it with fewer losses.

• Realism: Reflects ancient naval tactics (ram, then board).

• Interesting choices: Do you risk your transport full of elite infantry to capture an enemy flagship?

• Prevents snowballing: The captured ship starts with very low HP and requires repairs, making it vulnerable to immediate counter-attack.

Example numbers for testing

• Base damage: 2% of max HP per second to each ship.

• Damage multiplier: (defender_strength + 1) / (attacker_strength + 1), clamped to [0.5, 2.0]. (If defender has twice as many soldiers, damage doubles.)

• Captured ship extra damage: –15% of its current HP after capture.

• Minimum boarding time: 5 seconds (prevents instant capture).

• Attacker garrison losses on success: 2–4 random units + half of the survivors move to the captured ship.

Visual feedback

Initially, simple effects would suffice: sounds of fighting, smoke/blood particles. Later, ship entanglement visuals (ropes or a boarding ramp) would be great. It would be nice if the ship's texture became more damaged.

Regarding the "base garrison" idea from @Thalatta – I see its value for reducing micro, but my proposal works with the existing garrison system. Perhaps both could be combined in the future.

I encourage everyone interested to share their thoughts. If there is support, I can help with testing and refining the numbers.

Thanks for considering!

Edited April 22 by CheckTester

[Thalatta]

@CheckTester, I'm quite confused about your proposal. Let's imagine the case where a ship with a garrison of 30 boards an ungarrisoned ship. According to what I understand, successful boarding happens in 5 seconds, the captured ship suffers HP loss, and the attacker loses just 2-4 units? Always? What if the defender ship also had a garrison of 30? What does “almost over” mean? What does “soften” mean? That the garrison is vulnerable to ranged attacks? If the defender has more defenders, damage doubles where? On the attacker ship? Where is the fight even happening? It is unclear to me what happens with garrisons depending on which ship sinks. Seems like complicated ship combat where the parameters are the garrisons.

I don’t think it’s realistic for ships to take this much damage from boarding, this is mixing a couple of different things: either you ram a ship to sink it, or you ram (shear) the oars, to slow it down for boarding (and hurt the rowers, decreasing the number of defenders). You don’t want to ram a ship, breach its hull, and then board it, because the boarders risk going down with the ship (although this is controversial, some claim they didn't completely sink, and the risk was being boarded themselves). In fact, after breaching, the ramming ship has to move backward, to avoid getting stuck. That’s why ships getting so much damage that sink during boarding would have been quite rare, many measures were taken to avoid such suicide. What did happen is that ramming ships could get damaged (something simple that could actually be added to the game, considering they do a lot of damage anyway), but not really during boarding.

I would rework your mechanism like this: if attacker ship has N garrisoned units, defender ship has M garrisoned units, defender base HP is H and present HP X, then final surviving units that get split on both ships are F=N-(M+k)(X/H), where k is a parameter to set, and is how many attackers are killed if the defender ship has no garrison and full HP (just doing the trivial math, F=N-(0+k)(H/H)=N-k => k=N-F, attackers minus final survivors, that is, killed attackers). So k can be any coherent formula, from 2 to 4 as you said (the formula would give more survivors if the defending ship is damaged), or preferably something depending on the number of attackers and with how many the defending crew can handle, C, thus a simple formula could be C(C/N) (with this, crew resistance becomes inefficient when overwhelmed), that is, with C=5, 5 attackers get all killed (5(5/5)=5), and then goes down until from 17 attackers only one gets killed (5(5/17)=1.47), rounding up, and not taking yet into account defending garrison and ship HP, the final formula is of course F=N-(M+C^2/N)(X/H), which as a complete example, N=20 attackers against a ship with 100% HP that can handle C=10 attackers would mean F=15 survivors, that must be split in 2 ships, but if the defending ship is damaged first down to 50%, then there will be 18 survivors, and if the defending ship had a garrison of M=5, then these numbers would have been 10 and 15 survivors, respectively. If M=15 there are 0 survivors. If M=20, F=-5, which could mean 5 survived from the defender’s garrison (one has to be careful with extreme numbers, N=1 gives F=-24, when it should cap at -20, but I made the formula intuitively and fast). Furthermore, if it’s deemed that the defending garrison should have even more advantage, a defense factor D greater than 1 can be added, and if it’s deemed that ship damage should have a greater softening effect, a softening factor S greater than 1 can be added, resulting in F=N-(DM+C^2/N)(X/H)^S. In any case, both this and what you propose (or at least what you said) have a big problem anyway: blindness on how strong units actually are. That’s why I think “virtual combat” is necessary.

Now, I think you misunderstand the “base garrison” idea. It does take into account boarding not being no-risk, high-reward. To do ship damage is recommended to reduce it (I’m mixing ramming and shearing because the game doesn’t differentiate them, but it’s not the same as truly mixing them during boarding, that’s why it’s more realistic). It precisely avoids being able to “capture an enemy trireme for free just by having 10 hoplites”, since the hoplites have to fight the base garrison first, and then both their survivors and the attackers base garrison has to be split, greatly preventing snowballing. Garrisons should be vulnerable to ranged fire. If the existing system doesn’t include some form of virtual combat, then nothing reasonable can be done, because having a garrison of 30 workers would be the same as 30 champions. If it’s included, then base garrison is a trivial thing to add, and the same mechanism could be used for capturing buildings. The only worry would be that the AI would need to be taught all this stuff, which is something that has come to my attention a couple of times lately, and it’s indeed not a minor issue.

Edited June 9 by Thalatta
I changed SX/H (S<1) to (X/H)^S (S>1) because the first version "softens" even when HP is at 100%, while the second version "softens" at increasing rate with damage.

[Grautvornix]

The discussion is starting to get REALLY interesting now!

[Guest]

@Thalatta Kate, is that you?

Anyway, I'm not doing that much math. I stand by my opinion that the game should be simple to learn and harder to master. New players already don't want to spend a lot of time learning this game.

In fact, I believe that feature creep (especially since AoE III was released) has pushed people away from RTS. Couple this with the short attention span of younger generation, and you get only a fraction of former player base. No wonder that AoE 2 and AoE 1 (via Return of Rome) are still very popular. It's simpler, it works and is just wining timeless formula. There are some specific people who like to obsess over feature creep, sheets, statistics, and they are a minority.

But, I digress.

Edited April 22 by Deicide4u
is - > are. Grammar hard.

[Thalatta]

1 hour ago, Deicide4u said:

@Thalatta Kate, is that you?

Anyway, I'm not doing that much math. I stand by my opinion that the game should be simple to learn and harder to master. New players already don't want to spend a lot of time learning this game.

No, I'm not Kate, and this forum is the first I have taken part in like 20 years, if I remember correctly.

Everything is math under the hood, but no one ever does it (not even me), one just gets a feeling of what will work when. One doesn't calculate exactly how many seconds a certain amount of units will take to capture some structure, but there's a formula behind it, and one just has some intuitive idea after some time. I was just trying to do that same thing with something a bit similar to what CheckTester said, with some realistic reconsiderations. And then arguing that virtual combat with base garrisons would be more realistic, simple, and help with intuitiveness.

Edited April 23 by Thalatta

[Nicolaus_von_Kues]

A core crew should be established, and the ship should have captains and all kinds of authorities who can rise through the ranks. This will boost the morale of the Garrison; higher morale means greater resistance to capture.

I imagine photos of the crew with their health bar and morale bar in addition to their experience level.

- Helmsman: increases the ship's rotation speed and maneuverability.

- Chief of Oarsmen: increases the ship's movement speed and improves ramming effectiveness, with ramming damage applying only to ships designed for ramming.

- Marine Officer: increases the ship's boarding and capture power.

- Commander: determines the ship's command rank and its defensive capture capacity, defining the ship's capture points.

 

The officers would therefore give each ship different functional capabilities rather than simply adding more crew members. The commander would determine how difficult the ship is to capture, while the Marine Officer would improve its ability to capture enemy ships.

 

####

The helmsman could make it less likely to be caught with the hook.

Edited October 4 by Nicolaus_von_Kues

[Nicolaus_von_Kues]

47 minutes ago, Nicolaus_von_Kues said:

A core crew should be established, and the ship should have captains and all kinds of authorities who can rise through the ranks. This will boost the morale of the Garrison; higher morale means greater resistance to capture.

I imagine photos of the crew with their health bar and morale bar in addition to their experience level.

- Helmsman: increases the ship's rotation speed and maneuverability.

- Chief of Oarsmen: increases the ship's movement speed and improves ramming effectiveness, with ramming damage applying only to ships designed for ramming.

- Marine Officer: increases the ship's boarding and capture power.

- Commander: determines the ship's command rank and its defensive capture capacity, defining the ship's capture points.

 

The officers would therefore give each ship different functional capabilities rather than simply adding more crew members. The commander would determine how difficult the ship is to capture, while the Marine Officer would improve its ability to capture enemy ships.

 

####

The helmsman could make it less likely to be caught with the hook.

 

 

Officer functions

 

- Helmsman: increases the ship's rotation speed and maneuverability.

- Chief of Oarsmen: increases the ship's movement speed. On ships capable of ramming, it also improves ramming damage.

- Marine Officer: increases the ship's boarding and capture power.

- Commander: determines the ship's command rank and defensive capture capacity, defining its capture points.

 

The officers would not simply provide generic bonuses. Their importance would depend on the ship's role.

 

For example, the Chief of Oarsmen would be particularly important on a Ram Ship, while the Commander would be more important for a heavily defended warship.

 

The Marine Officer could work together with the soldiers garrisoned aboard the ship to determine its ability to capture enemy ships.

 

This would make naval combat more than a simple exchange of hit points. A ship could lose specific capabilities as its officers are killed or incapacitated:

 

- Losing the Helmsman reduces rotation speed.

- Losing the Chief of Oarsmen reduces movement speed and ramming effectiveness.

- Losing the Marine Officer reduces boarding power.

- Losing the Commander reduces the ship's defensive capture capacity.

 

The ship class would determine which special abilities it can use. For example, only ships designed for ramming would deal ramming damage, while a Fire Ship would specialize in incendiary attacks rather than ramming.

[Asher]

12 hours ago, Nicolaus_von_Kues said:

and the ship should have captains and all kinds of authorities who can rise through the ranks

So, like centurions for boats? I'll consider this for my boats mod

[Nicolaus_von_Kues]

I'm creating some mock-ups

Here I am placing the commander.

[Thalatta]

On 05/10/2026 at 1:43 AM, Nicolaus_von_Kues said:

Officer functions

- Helmsman: increases the ship's rotation speed and maneuverability.

- Chief of Oarsmen: increases the ship's movement speed. On ships capable of ramming, it also improves ramming damage.

- Marine Officer: increases the ship's boarding and capture power.

- Commander: determines the ship's command rank and defensive capture capacity, defining its capture points.

As with everything, I strongly advise to consult the available information. Greek ship crews are well attested, for an Athenian triḗrēs for example: "the specialist assistants to the trierarch" are "the ὑπηρεσία" (hypēresía), which "in the strict sense was composed, in threes, of 30 men: the helmsman (κυβερνήτης) with an aft deck-gang of 5, the bow officer (πρωράτης πρωρεύς) with a forward deck gang of 5, the rowing master (κελευστής), the purser (πεντηκόντάρχoς), shipwright (ναυπηγός) and the piper (αὐλητής). In addition there were ten hoplites and four archers. These, with the 170 oarsmen made up the three's crew of 200" (201 including the trierarch, apparently), from Greek and Roman Oared Warships, 399-30 B.C., by J. S. Morrison. He then describes the crew of a Rhodian tetrḗrēs, and so on. This whole book is a necessary read on the subject.

[Nicolaus_von_Kues]

19 minutes ago, Thalatta said:

As with everything, I strongly advise to consult the available information. Greek ship crews are well attested, for an Athenian triḗrēs for example: "the specialist assistants to the trierarch" are "the ὑπηρεσία" (hypēresía), which "in the strict sense was composed, in threes, of 30 men: the helmsman (κυβερνήτης) with an aft deck-gang of 5, the bow officer (πρωράτης πρωρεύς) with a forward deck gang of 5, the rowing master (κελευστής), the purser (πεντηκόντάρχoς), shipwright (ναυπηγός) and the piper (αὐλητής). In addition there were ten hoplites and four archers. These, with the 170 oarsmen made up the three's crew of 200" (201 including the trierarch, apparently), from Greek and Roman Oared Warships, 399-30 B.C., by J. S. Morrison. He then describes the crew of a Rhodian tetrḗrēs, and so on. This whole book is a necessary read on the subject.

I'm currently reading about the topic and looking for appearance.

 

First, I'll do a basic implementation — I'll probably use Greek or Hellenistic ships as the standard.

For the first implementation, I'll only use the crew's controls. That's the thing I mentioned. Also, in theory, they should give bonuses to the ships.

The boarding combat simulation will be important.

It probably needs to render some troops as virtual, without a 3D graphical existence like their ground counterparts.

 

It would work like an inventory system in RPGs; if you change something, it will change the ship's stats.

[Nicolaus_von_Kues]

1 hour ago, Nicolaus_von_Kues said:

I'm currently reading about the topic and looking for appearance.

 

First, I'll do a basic implementation — I'll probably use Greek or Hellenistic ships as the standard.

For the first implementation, I'll only use the crew's controls. That's the thing I mentioned. Also, in theory, they should give bonuses to the ships.

The boarding combat simulation will be important.

It probably needs to render some troops as virtual, without a 3D graphical existence like their ground counterparts.

 

It would work like an inventory system in RPGs; if you change something, it will change the ship's stats.

 

Two concepts can form a new one.

Edited 16 hours ago by Nicolaus_von_Kues

[Nicolaus_von_Kues]

58 minutes ago, Nicolaus_von_Kues said:

 

Two concepts can form a new one.

First draft:

 

Naval Combat, Crew Experience, Boarding, and Ship Progression in 0 A.D.

 

1. Three Layers of Naval Combat

 

The naval combat system should be divided into three interconnected layers: the base crew, embarked combat units, and naval officers.

 

Layer 1: Base Crew

 

The base crew consists of the personnel required to operate the ship, including rowers, the helmsman, and other essential sailors.

 

These units do not necessarily need to fight individually. Their contribution can be represented through global ship statistics, including:

 

- Speed and maneuverability.

- Ability to maintain course during combat.

- Propulsion efficiency.

- Operational performance.

 

If the crew suffers casualties, the ship should lose some of its capabilities.

 

Layer 2: Embarked Combat Units

 

These are the hoplites, swordsmen, archers, and other combat units transported aboard the ship.

 

Their composition, statistics, experience, and upgrades should determine their effectiveness during naval engagements.

 

- Hoplites provide a defensive line and resist enemy boarding attempts.

- Swordsmen specialize in close-quarters combat.

- Archers and other ranged units can inflict casualties before ships make contact.

- Specialized units may provide additional advantages depending on the situation.

 

These units should play a decisive role in determining the outcome of boarding actions and fighting on deck.

 

Layer 3: Naval Officers

 

Naval officers include the commander, helmsman, chief of rowers, and marine officer.

 

Their role is to improve the performance of the crew and embarked combat units rather than replace them.

 

For example, the marine officer could improve boarding effectiveness, while the commander could provide a general leadership bonus.

 

2. Global Ship Statistics

 

When two ships engage in combat, their outcomes should depend on several factors:

 

1. Statistics: determine each ship's overall combat capabilities.

2. Crew and troop composition: determine the strengths and weaknesses of each vessel.

3. Experience and upgrades: improve combat performance over time.

4. Controlled randomness: represents unpredictable events, tactical opportunities, and battlefield confusion.

 

If two ships have identical crews, combat units, experience, and upgrades, neither should have a permanent advantage. Both should have comparable chances of victory.

 

Randomness should remain limited by the ships' actual capabilities. A significantly superior ship should not routinely lose to a much weaker opponent simply because of random chance.

 

3. Crew Experience and Progression

 

Every naval engagement should provide experience to the participating crew, regardless of whether the ship wins or loses.

 

Two separate experience systems could coexist:

 

- Crew experience: represents collective coordination and naval proficiency. It could improve maneuverability, coordination, and overall naval performance.

- Individual soldier experience: represents the combat experience of embarked units and improves their fighting abilities.

 

An optional third system could provide experience to naval officers, allowing them to develop specialized leadership bonuses.

 

Ship upgrades should remain distinct from experience. They could improve structural durability, speed, or other permanent characteristics.

 

Experience gains should depend on meaningful participation and the difficulty of the engagement. Repeatedly fighting insignificant opponents should not provide an easy way to accumulate unlimited experience.

 

4. Capturing Enemy Ships

 

Captured ships should have strategic value beyond simply removing an enemy vessel from the battlefield.

 

An important design question is whether experience belongs to the ship itself or to its crew.

 

One possible solution is to preserve part of a vessel's accumulated naval experience when it is captured, while introducing penalties or an adaptation period for its new crew.

 

Capturing a veteran ship would therefore be rewarding, but it would not automatically provide a perfectly loyal and fully integrated crew.

 

Boarding actions should also award experience to the units that participate in the fighting and successfully capture the vessel.

 

5. Experience for Capturing Buildings

 

Capturing buildings should contribute to unit progression.

 

- Units participating in an assault should receive experience for their combat contribution.

- Units completing the capture should receive an additional capture bonus.

- Defenders should gain experience for fighting attackers and successfully defending or recapturing the building.

 

To prevent players from exploiting the system by repeatedly capturing undefended buildings, bonus experience should depend on the objective's importance and the resistance encountered.

 

A similar principle should apply to capturing ships.

 

6. Loot and Rewards

 

Successful captures could provide a small amount of loot, representing recovered supplies, equipment, or requisitioned resources.

 

Loot should be an additional reward rather than the primary purpose of combat.

 

For naval captures, the amount of recoverable resources could depend on the condition of the captured vessel and whether it survives the engagement.

 

7. Health, Casualties, and Recovery

 

The system should distinguish between ship health and crew health.

 

- Ship health: represents structural damage and should require repairs.

- Crew health: represents injuries and combat exhaustion among individual soldiers and sailors. It should recover gradually over time.

 

Crew members should not necessarily recover all their health at the same rate. Structural damage should generally require repairs at a port or through a dedicated repair mechanic.

 

This would give retreats strategic importance and make ports valuable logistical assets.

 

8. Possible Implementation Models

 

Two principal approaches could be considered for implementation in 0 A.D.

 

Option A: Global Naval Combat

 

The statistics of both ships determine the engagement and its casualties. Embarked units influence the outcome through their numbers, composition, experience, and bonuses.

 

This approach would be comparatively straightforward to implement and would support large naval battles.

 

Option B: Individualized Naval Combat

 

When ships engage in boarding actions, soldiers physically fight on deck using individual animations, attacks, targets, and casualties.

 

This approach would be more visual and tactical but would introduce significant technical challenges involving unit movement, navigation, and combat on moving platforms.

 

Hybrid Approach

 

A hybrid system could combine global calculations for most naval engagements with individualized combat during decisive boarding actions.

 

This would preserve the importance of embarked combat units without requiring every naval engagement to simulate a complete land battle on a ship's deck.

 

Provisional recommendation: use global ship statistics as the foundation of naval combat, while reserving individualized combat for boarding actions. The final implementation should depend on the capabilities and limitations of the existing 0 A.D. engine.

 

9. Main Design Question

 

Should hoplites, swordsmen, and ranged units visibly fight individually on the deck, or should their statistics determine casualties while animations merely represent the engagement?

 

This decision will determine much of the technical architecture of the naval combat modification.

[Arup]

https://tenor.com/fGW1ncEOmbc.gif

[Thalatta]

9 hours ago, Nicolaus_von_Kues said:

Two concepts can form a new one.

I think this is too complicated, having to handle that for every ship you have will drive people nuts. Has to be simplified.

 

8 hours ago, Nicolaus_von_Kues said:

The naval combat system should be divided into three interconnected layers: the base crew, embarked combat units, and naval officers.

Yes, the first would be the base garrisons I've mentioned in the past. That's why I proposed an Athenian Tachunautousa Triērēs with no garrison slots (which could then be considered a "champion" machine) for "embarked combat units", just with crew and officers it would be optimised for its function.

 

8 hours ago, Nicolaus_von_Kues said:

The base crew consists of the personnel required to operate the ship, including rowers, the helmsman, and other essential sailors.

These units do not necessarily need to fight individually. Their contribution can be represented through global ship statistics

Well the helmsman would be an officer. Along with "global ship statistics", they could fight only if the ship is being boarded (although not all oarsmen need to be killed for that action to be successful), at least that was the initial idea for base garrisons: not to have capture points and weird capture dances any more, but this and virtual combat.

 

8 hours ago, Nicolaus_von_Kues said:

Archers and other ranged units can inflict casualties before ships make contact.

Ranged units being able to inflict damage and casualties on garrisoned units is something I'd like to see. Inflicting damage to the structure they are garrisoning in should be the job of some siege engines (while some would also affect garrisoned units).

 

8 hours ago, Nicolaus_von_Kues said:

Naval officers include the commander, helmsman, chief of rowers, and marine officer.

I guess you mean, in Greek terminology, trierarch, helmsman, rowing master, and bow officer. Returning to simplification, while these officers could be represented as default units (like are siege operators currently), a simple icon in the unit panel should indicate their presence (as mentioned, you could also have other specialists like a purser for some loot bonus, a shipwright for automatic repair bonus, a piper for an extra mobility bonus, and there were others for larger types). Rowers and the default deck troops (170+24 for the Athenian triḗrēs example) should be indicated just as numbers (the latter also units, but with this amount they are not really designed for boarding, that'd be for the embarked combat units), the first related to mobility, while all add to boarding resistance, that's why it'd be easier to defend than to attack, preventing annoying situations. To take a ship, embarked combat units should kill all defending combat units, and a proportion of rowers to be decided. Then all rowers would redistribute over the ships involved (there are reports that ships would have less than 1/3 of recently captured rowers, to avoid rebellions), incurring then in a mobility penalty to the winner, preventing snowballing.

 

8 hours ago, Nicolaus_von_Kues said:

Every naval engagement should provide experience to the participating crew, regardless of whether the ship wins or loses.

Depending on the nature of the loss. For a takeover, all combat units would be killed (maybe some captured, this related to the slavery discussion, or to have some valuable prisoner, like a Hero), but it could be that the action is becoming too costly (although rowers would be weak, they would defend themselves, virtually) and the action has to be aborted. All in all, things would end behaving similar to naval combat in Shogun 2 TW.

 

8 hours ago, Nicolaus_von_Kues said:

Ship upgrades should remain distinct from experience. They could improve structural durability, speed, or other permanent characteristics.

These should come from facts from the period (not the usual "equip random @#&#036;%" when there's a lack of historical knowledge, which cheapens the game). I've mentioned in Thoughts on the Athenians things like epotides, parablemata or cataphracts, but some of these basically already come with certain civs or ship types.

 

8 hours ago, Nicolaus_von_Kues said:

An important design question is whether experience belongs to the ship itself or to its crew.

Not the ship, that would be unrealistic and snowbally. And the taken rowers won't be very happy, so their experience could actually be reset, and one could assume they get diluted with time with actually loyal rowers. Capturing a good type of ship (maybe some even the civ doesn't have) would be the reward in itself.

 

8 hours ago, Nicolaus_von_Kues said:

bonus experience should depend on the objective's importance and the resistance encountered.

Sure, it should come from the actual virtual combat.

 

8 hours ago, Nicolaus_von_Kues said:

Successful captures could provide a small amount of loot, representing recovered supplies, equipment, or requisitioned resources.

Loot should be an additional reward rather than the primary purpose of combat.

For naval captures, the amount of recoverable resources could depend on the condition of the captured vessel and whether it survives the engagement.

The option of doing all this but in the end not capturing the ship (thus no rower redistribution, but killing all of them) should also be possible.

 

8 hours ago, Nicolaus_von_Kues said:

Crew members should not necessarily recover all their health at the same rate. Structural damage should generally require repairs at a port or through a dedicated repair mechanic.

Back to specialists, for the Rhodian Four I mentioned you would additionally have a masseur and a doctor, which could provide a bonus on health regeneration. The "repair mechanic" is the shipwright. I proposed in Thoughts on the Spartans to replace the Shipwright tech with Shipsheds, since they were more seriously built at this time, while shipwrights come from way before, while for all this stuff it makes more sense to "equip" them (again, techs shouldn't be like that, but actual developments from the period).

 

8 hours ago, Nicolaus_von_Kues said:

This would give retreats strategic importance and make ports valuable logistical assets.

Sure, everything would be properly regenerated close to a port, while at sea a very small regeneration could come from the bonuses associated with each specialist. For example, actual numbers (of rowers, etc) could slowly regenerate if the trierarch is present (he's the one hiring people, so losing him would be a blow), also because one can assume that naval activity is more than what's being explicitly represented.

 

8 hours ago, Nicolaus_von_Kues said:

Possible Implementation Models

This should slowly evolve, starting from the less ambitious. Boarding details are not that necessary for tactics, but different kinds of ships with distinct roles, already developed in Thoughts on the Athenians based mainly in Morrison's book (and others, of course). In fact, all that system had in mind the implementation of boarding as it's being discussed right now.

[Nicolaus_von_Kues]

3 hours ago, Thalatta said:

I think this is too complicated, having to handle that for every ship you have will drive people nuts. Has to be simplified.

I thought from the start that when you train the ship, it should already come with a basic crew.

 

Let's think of something simple: a modest exploration ship with a couple of warriors

and a basic naval commander.