Naval brainstorming thread

[Phalanx]

So, naval warfare was an important part of ancient warfare. It was the deciding factor in two major wars (1st Punic and Persian ) but in 0 A.D., it is second rate. The Petra A.I. will only use it under great duress. So, I made this thread to try to discuss the Naval warfare in 0 A.D. and how it can be optimized. Obviously it'll be a lot better once directional combat bonuses and charging are implemented, so try to leave out the current lack of ramming, because that is already well in the devs' radar.

I think that the new code for fire and shoot for cav should be applied to boats as well, and the amount of arrows per vessel should be increased, or at least have their damage buffed. Also, it would be awesome if the penteres fired arrows and stones ( and a sound for firing and impact ).

Capturing could also be implemented for naval combat. The previously expressed problem with this would be infantry models not being the same scale as naval models. The infantry could be scaled down when on boats, or they don't even need to be visible. As for the actual capturing calculations, each vessel could have two new stats called boarding attack and boarding defense. These stats directly correlate with the attack and defense of the garrisoned units, they will just be added together. If the vessel has two hastati in it. Then its attack will be the hastatus attack times two. And when the two vessels capture each other ( GUI like building capture mechanic ), the boarding attack and defense will act like attack and hitpoints respectively. If a vessel is successfully captured, then half of the remaining attack crew will stay onboard the captured vessel, while the other half returns to the original.