Naval Tournaments and other Navy Stuff

[Sanguivorant]

I played a 2v2 game this morning in Sardinina vs Corsica. It descended into a 2v1, because my ally quit, but I swear, I am loving the naval combat already.

There was nothing more epic than racing to fortify your base as quick as possible with forts and towers, and building up a huge military that you take over to your enemies' island. I lost the game, but I enjoyed every minute of it.

Fish booms are indeed possible in this game. Instead of going for farms right away, I took my berries, rushed to get my dock up and gathered wood and fished, leaving farms for quite a while.

I just have to say, I can't wait for what's coming regarding navies.

My main concern is that not many people want to play on a naval map. So I have made this thread to discuss possible naval tournaments that can be run in the lobby. This will solve two things:

-Train people in naval combat

-Test the naval aspect of the game for balancing/tweaking.

When I played the game, I did notice some minor annoyances:

-It is really difficult to get a ship on land close enough for units to repair. It almost feels like repairing is useless and I might as well create new ships.

-It is also difficult to load and unload units. I have to do some intense micro to have it done correctly.

-A fully controlled island is almost impossible to take, because you can't build anything. Therefore, in addition to making a successful invasion, you have to take out the person's main army and a civic center. It is almost impossible, which makes sense because naval invasions are never easy.

Other than that, naval combat is a pretty awesome aspect of the game.

[thamlett]

Hi Sanguivorant,

I understand how you feel about the naval games. I do too .

About ship repairing: the benefit of repairing a ship is that you can do it anywhere. If you have run a naval blockade, you don't have to take a new ship out of the loose point in your enemy's blockade. And sometimes when you are all the way across the map, repairing really is a better option.

Ships don't have an experience level (I think that they should).

As for taking out enemy islands, try loading up a ship or two with champion units. When their health starts to get low, regarrison them in the ships. The ships will protect the units from any other counterattack, and if you have the "idle-unit-healing-while-doing-nothing" tech researched at the temple, the units will heal in the ships so that they will be ready for the last wave.

PS: here's a tip I have found for getting the upper hand in naval - use the Gauls (or in SVN now, use Gauls or Iberians). Their ship cannot ram (not yet implemented), but they have higher health and can carry 40 units instead of 30. Thus, if the ship meets another ship (fully garrisoned), it will take it out, hands down. I don't know if you have seen garrisoned Heavy Warships (they can be disastrous against sea defenses). Try garrisoning them with seige catapults (a lot of pop cap, I know, but worth it). They can do some damage, especially if the island defenses are within range.

[serveurix]

I've made a few naval map matches against Petra now that I have a good graphic card.

My first match was on Corsica and Sardinia (very good map !), I played with the persians on one island and three Petra AIs (Maurya, Iberian and Macedonian, IIRC) were controlling the other island. At this time Petra wasn't very good at naval invasions, so I wasn't very disturbed on my land, but I can't tell you how much I struggled to invade the other island ! Imagine 220 persians trying to disembark on a small piece of land that's full of towers, and controlled by a 620-units strong force, rushing to you at each landing. I had to trick the AI by splitting my army and make my units land on different points at the same time.

Then I played on Cycladic archipelago (2) (skirmish) with the Carthaginians against the Britons. It was a lot less interesting, except for trade. Carthaginians are excellent for naval trade : if you control the two most distants islands, and the naval route between them, then you don't have to care about economy anymore. When I destroyed the last briton civ center all my resources stocks had an order of magnitude of hundreds of thousands.

But pure naval fights are a bit disappointing for now. I can't wait to have ramming and eventually boarding (but I know that's not an easy task).

Carthaginians are not that strong on the sea, actually. You need to fill up the triremes with archers if you want them to be efficient against celtic barges. And the naval shipyard (available late, big and hard to place, very slow to build) gives the carthaginians a too big malus on sea, in my opinion. The only option for celts should be piracy (harass naval trade routes), they shouldn't be that strong in naval battles.

But what make the archipelago maps less interesting than the big island maps is probably the difficulty to load and unload ships efficiently. The code that handles units moves when loading isn't efficient (the land units move to the place the boat is, the boat move to the place the units are, so units arrive on the place the boat was previously, and the boat arrives at the place the units were previously, and when they realise they don't meet, they start the process again), so when your boat reaches the shore you have to order it to stay in place while the land units are coming). Also there's no "go and unload there" order (but I realise I haven't tried to chain the orders, so maybe it's possible to do this Edit: it's not.).

Also, it's easy to protect a shore, but it's a lot harder to protect a handful of islands. You need to place a lot of outposts to control your territory, and a lot of towers and fortresses (provided you have a civ center in the place, fortunately the archipelago maps are sufficiently well designed so you can put a cc on every island), and this task is made difficult by the minimum distance between towers and fortresses.

I've also played with the egyptians on Aegan sea (random) against some celt civ (britons I guess). Controlling the waters with the egyptians is a lot easier than with other civs, because they have lighthouses, which are kinds of "super outposts" for shores. The AI protected its shores with towers quite efficiently, I protected mine with fortresses and walls. Landing on enemy's shores was still difficult, but it was a lot easier than on Corsica and Sardinia, as you can guess : there was only one AI and the coast was very long and straight. I just unloaded a handful of troops as a bait on one side, made the whole enemy army rush to it (while taking the arrows of all my biremes stationed on the shores), and unload my elephants and pikemen of the other side.

My suggestions to improve naval warfare :

- make warships a bit faster to increase the pace of the action

- give a "lighthouse" building to everyone, that will work like an outpost, but on the sea. The building should be buildable on the shore (neutral or friendly), have a small life and small obstruction size, like the outpost, so you can build it on a tiny rock if you manage to put a builder on it, and should be easy to destroy. But it should have a bigger vision range than outposts (becase ships go fast and straight). The egyptian lighthouse should be a special building that reveals all waters of the map. It should be strong and have a big obtruction size, like now.

An alternative would be to give a "lighthouse" capacity to ports which give them a bigger vision range on water than they have now.

Also, give outposts and towers a bigger vision range when built on cliffs. Sometimes it should be worth building an outpost in altitude rather than a lighthouse.

- give naval trade a bonus over land trade to everyone, not just the carthaginians. Carthaginians should just have a bigger bonus. Players should be strongly incited to choose naval trade routes over land trade routes when they can, and defend them with navy and/or towers on the surrounding islands.

- Remove the naval shipyard malus for the carthaginians. Carthaginians should be able to train biremes and tririemes without a ridiculously big and slow to build building. Maybe the naval shipyard could be a unique building that gives a certain bonus to the carthaginians on sea, like increasing the strength and decreasing the training time of the ships significantly, or allow to develop technologies that give bonuses to warships.

- make siege ships stronger against buildings. The quinquiremes equipped with ballistas should be able to fire at a fortress without suffering backfire (unless there's an altitude bonus), like the land ballistas do.

- make the AI clever enough to protect the shore with fortresses too (and not just towers). When the AI will be able to build walls, it should be able to build them on the shore to prevent landing.

- implement all the cool stuff (these are already on the todo-list I guess) : ramming, fire propagation, perhaps boarding (I don't see a necessity for this now, but it could bring something on the historical or tactical side), perhaps the possibility to sink ships in shallow water to temporarily prevent other ships to pass (again, not necessary and I don't even know if it's technically possible, but it could be interesting for strategy or history)

- make a "line" formation for ships, where all the ships would place themselves in single file, all the obstruction boxes sticking to each other, and not rotate. This would prevent a transportation ship to pass, but would make the ships very vulnerable to ramming

- when ramming and fire propagation/delayed damage will be implemented, balance the civs so the celts and iberians are better at guerilla/piracy/harassing vessels and put them on fire, and the greek/romans/carthaginans are better at naval battles, ramming and destroying everything when charging at full speed

Just throwing ideas there

Edited June 20, 2014 by serveurix

[Radagast.]

Extraordinary post.

Increasing vision range by altitude was partly outruled by our lead programmer lately. Increased range by altitude is what we already have and is already quite nice + realistic.

ramming, fire propagation, perhaps boarding (I don't see a necessity for this now, but it could bring something on the historical or tactical side), perhaps the possibility to sink ships in shallow water to temporarily prevent other ships to pass (again, not necessary and I don't even know if it's technically possible, but it could be interesting for strategy or history)

Technically it's possible, essentially it's only setting the boat's velocity to 0, such that it's unmanoevrable. It fits nicely with stamina + health: The lower health + stamina are the less quick a unit (soldier, ship, ..) can move. In my opinion soldiers + ships even get unmanoevrable when severely wounded (less than 10% health). Soldiers would sink to ground, for ships the same could happen.

It's then up to you to take a prisoner / lift the wrack at some point and repair the ship or to finish off the poor soldier or ship.

This would also mean that past battle fields would be fought for as you might save your wounded soldiers / recover your + enemy's damaged ships.

Later we could even add more loot like weapons + armour (for resources as loot this basically already exists but is not visible).

- make a "line" formation for ships, where all the ships would place themselves in single file, all the obstruction boxes sticking to each other, and not rotate. This would prevent a transportation ship to pass, but would make them very vulnerable to ramming

Great idea for a formation for ships. The vulnerability to be rammed + sinked instantly by other ships (because of the flanks of a ship being very vulnerable) makes it a very interesting formation with a certain risk.

[Radagast.]

essentially it's only setting the boat's velocity to 0, such that it's unmanoevrable

I would even go farther and make a ship that lost all garrisoned units be unmanoevrable no matter if it's still fully intact or not. (basically the people 'resource' requirement when constructing a ship as it is currently would then become immediately garrisoned units i.e. added as attackable props to the ship).

Possible thanks to sander's amazing prop works lately.

[serveurix]

Increasing vision range by altitude was partly outruled by our lead programmer lately. Increased range by altitude is what we already have and is already quite nice + realistic.

Personally I think it's unrealistic when a building has a firing range that's bigger than his vision range.

I also find it very frustrating to manage to put a tower/outpost on top of a mountain and have no vision bonus.

I made a ticket about this and the answer that was given to me is that vision should depend on obstruction, not just altitude. But couldn't the same reasoning be applied to firing range ? Firing range should depend on obstruction too, yet it has a bonus altitude. Units and buildings are able to shoot through walls, it's not realistic but it's not a big deal in my opinion. It's better to have inaccurate physics on something than no physics at all, right ?

I think being able to exploit the advantages of the terrain for intelligence are very important. Sadly, intelligence and terrain use are given too few importance in most real-time strategy games, despite it should be crucial, in my opinion.

Technically it's possible, essentially it's only setting the boat's velocity to 0, such that it's unmanoevrable. It fits nicely with stamina + health: The lower health + stamina are the less quick a unit (soldier, ship, ..) can move. In my opinion soldiers + ships even get unmanoevrable when severely wounded (less than 10% health). Soldiers would sink to ground, for ships the same could happen.

How would it happen on the graphical side ? What I think about is the player putting his biggest ships at the entrance of his port, killing them, then they quicky sink until they reach the ground, and once they have reached the ground they sink into it slowly (or just stay there and disappear after a while). During the time they rest on the ground, if the water is shallow enough, ships can't pass above them (maybe it could depend on the size of the ship).

It's then up to you to take a prisoner / lift the wrack at some point and repair the ship or to finish off the poor soldier or ship.

This would also mean that past battle fields would be fought for as you might save your wounded soldiers / recover your + enemy's damaged ships.

This is good, it would allow to implement capturing without implementing boarding. (capturing is important for historical accuracy : the naval battles were more focused on capturing enemy's expensive ships that destroying them)

Later we could even add more loot like weapons + armour (for resources as loot this basically already exists but is not visible).

+1. I think it should be very beneficial to attack traders and merchant ships

Great idea for a formation for ships. The vulnerability to be rammed + sinked instantly by other ships (because of the flanks of a ship being very vulnerable) makes it a very interesting formation with a certain risk.

The main idea is to slow down or stop ships to prevent landing in an invasion-by-sea scenario, because now with just ships, towers and fortresses it's not enough (walls are the only option).

Edited June 20, 2014 by serveurix

[Radagast.]

... implement capturing without implementing boarding. (capturing is important for historical accuracy : the naval battles were more focused on capturing enemy's expensive ships that destroying them)

Capturing will be added by a mod.

Conversion of Units via loyalty influence and conversion of buildings via besieging will be added by the main 0AD team.

Boarding will also be added at some time. It's just too important in my opinion or how should your melee units garrisoned in the ship involve in a battle?

1) Pull the enemy ship next to yours. (needs pulling animations but could go without for the beginning)

2) Once the ships are close enough, i.e. e.g. obstructions are next to each other then the units should be able to move / walk / jump from one ship to the other.

If we simplify:

1) If ships close enough to each other:

2) Then play jumping animation for your garrisoned units and they walk ontop of the other ship using our walking height workaround (which you see has quite some applications ).

[Radagast.]

For severly damaged ships, they could be sinking very slowly and only once completely destroyed, they leave the game. by the very nature of obstructions (which remain until the ship is fully destroyed or recovered from the ground) no other ship could pass over it (not depending on ship's size for now to simplify a bi).

[serveurix]

Boarding will also be added at some time. It's just too important in my opinion or how should your melee units garrisoned in the ship involve in a battle?

1) Pull the enemy ship next to yours. (needs pulling animations but could go without for the beginning)

2) Once the ships are close enough, i.e. e.g. obstructions are next to each other then the units should be able to move / walk / jump from one ship to the other.

For the romans we could use the corvus. It's the device that made them win the first naval battles of the first punic war, by allowing them to use on the sea the tactical superiority they had on the land. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvus_%28boarding_device%29

[Sanguivorant]

About ship repairing: the benefit of repairing a ship is that you can do it anywhere. If you have run a naval blockade, you don't have to take a new ship out of the loose point in your enemy's blockade. And sometimes when you are all the way across the map, repairing really is a better option.

The problem with repairing is that the pathfinding makes it too difficult to get the ships close enough to the shore for people to repair it.

With intense adjusting, I was only able to get 5 people repairing a single ship, and it took a dangerously long time to get it from nearly destroyed to half health. It's just too annoying to try to repair ships at the moment.

IMO, ship repairing can be altered. Make an upgrade in the dock that allows ships to regenerate health depending on the amount of units boarding them. Obviously, the more units on board, the faster ship repair happens.

A ship will only repair if:

-It is not being attacked or firing arrows.

-It is within a dock's range.

Or that can be scratched to make it less complicated. But repairing in this fashion would make it less frustrating.

It can even be one of those tech choices between hull upgrades and regeneration rate.

Edited June 20, 2014 by Sanguivorant

[sanderd17]

Right, that repairing problem is actually quite simple. For building structures, we have a buildtime stat. If a single unit builds the structure, that's the time it will take.

But for repairing, we don't have such a stat yet, so units just repair stuff at 1 hp/s. Which is, for structures and ships, not viable.

Introducing a stat for it doesn't cost that much work, balancing it will be harder though.

[Radagast.]

Should it rather be

repair_rate = 1/1000 * full_health[repair_rate] = hp / s

instead of 1hp/s ?

Though in realistic terms you will take much longer to repair a ship or building than a siege unit. Thus I think 1hp/s is quite okay as you won't work quicker only because you now repair a bigger unit. In contrary, repairing a big ship alone will take much much longer and may never fully succeed (i.e. a single unit alone can't get it to 100%).

Edited June 20, 2014 by Hephaestion

[agentx]

Is there a way to have turning costs for ships, so they need time to jibe? May be depending on size?

[Radagast.]

I don't think so, but it could be added. Not sure if it's planned for mercenaries too.