Ships Functioning as Naval Buildings

[WhiteTreePaladin]

Some thoughts on ships:

I think ships should be treated more like naval buildings rather than naval units. In other words, they should be more rare, not interfere with regular unit training by having build limits instead of using population, they should train units, and they should be able to be captured. I think that would result in ships better supporting land battles and in more fun and manageable  naval battles.

Build limits rather than population (Featured in AoE3)

It's annoying to build up an army only to have to delete units in order to build ships to reach the enemy. The computer player isn't too good at this. If you attack the computer player and manage to destroy the enemy ships while keeping the computer busy training troops, then the AI player won't have the population room to train any boats. On the other hand, if you let the computer player build unlimited ships, it will often build so many that the land population is handicapped. This excess of ships more often than not will get clumped up and the AI will block itself it in. This prevents naval trading with allies and traps the ships near the dock that have the units the AI wanted to use in an attack.

Training units (Featured in AoE3)

I think we might already do this to a limited degree, but I think it might be nice to expand it. This prevents shuffling as many units back and forth. This is particularly valuable during exploration as you wouldn't have a smaller and smaller force as you left units behind to build on each island. The reinforcements provided at a battle would help with offensive attacks as attacking over water gives the defender enormous advantages. It wouldn't be too powerful, since there would be build limits on the ships. There wouldn't be enough ships to train large armies, but just enough to keep an attack going. Units trained from ships should have a longer train time than ones trained at buildings.

Capturing

The current arrow attack would remain, but an additional capture attack (accessed by holding CTRL) would be available that only works on other ships. It would move your ship next to the other ship (like load/unload) and your boat would attempt to capture the other ship. The other ship could fight, attempt to capture you, or flee. If the other ship tried to flee, you would have to trap the ship in order to try to convert. Once a ship is converted, the units inside convert too. (Heroes would be an exception. The hero would be removed and the original player could ransom the hero. (Basically, just repurchased as if the hero had been killed.) A tech like heresy in AoK could be researched to prevent conversion of units, but the ships themselves could still be captured. Garrisoning units would affect capturing in the same ways is it does for buildings currently. Unmanned ships would be especially vulnerable to conversion, while fully manned ships would be nearly impossible to capture unless the ship was heavily damaged.

Edited September 8, 2017 by WhiteTreePaladin

[Lion.Kanzen]

I agree, but can be nice increases the size some ships

[WhiteTreePaladin]

2 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

I agree, but can be nice increases the size some ships

I think our ships should be slightly cartoonized: a little fatter and shorter. They currently maneuver poorly and I think a little reshaping would make a better footprint. I don't think the effect should be extreme. It's something that shouldn't really be that noticeable unless you put one next to a correctly proportioned ship or you just happen to be very knowledgable in ancient ship profiles.

[Imarok]

We definitely need to improve ships.

Implementing Boarding (Capturing) and ramming (melee) could help with that.

Though one big problem is the size of ships: to have a real naval battle we either need very small ships or a huge sea...

[WhiteTreePaladin]

I'd personally prefer fewer "larger" ships over lots of small ones. However, I think many of the current ships are already too large and entirely too long, so I would actually shorten them.

Edited September 9, 2017 by WhiteTreePaladin

[av93]

My ideas, if they are useful for boarding and capturing:

-Ranged units adds ranged firepower

-Melee units adds "capturing power" rate.

When a ships is damaged, units inside also get damage and die (or the transport capacity is reduced, forcing to exit the unit, and die if it's in the middle of the sea). Captured units in the ship die automatically when the ship it's captured. Damaged ships are easier to capture.

 

Siege ships should have a powerful attack, but very vulnerable to boarding (reduced transport capacity) cause most civs don't have them.

I'm a favour to training units in the ships, but with a "Marine" class: limited in numbers, and can't build or work. Cause then you can just send ship and colonise. Isn't better to make the colonizers and careful move them and risking them to other places? Colonize then would be very easy if you can train them in the ships.

[wraitii]

I think it's an interesting idea, and I'd approve it. Ships in 0 A.D. don't work, plain and simple. I believe ramming and other realistic behaviour is impossible while our maps are so small (relatively), and AoE 3's behaviour did work quite well.