Scale Of Ships.

[Ulysses S Griffin]

Obviously im not part of the 0AD team, but i was just wandering what everyone thoughts on the subject would be. Maybe the team has already decided on the scale(tell us if you have btw) but either way i would like to know:)

i personally would like to see medium large or to scale

also will you have ships specifically for transport or can all ships transport people, (which i would like to see )?

[Tonto_Icy_Tripod]

They will be to scale I believe. You'll atleast be able to put units on them and change the characteristics of the boats that way.

[Wijitmaker]

We really want to make them to scale and put units on the decks... time will tell if that is feasible or not.

[Black Op]

Whatever is most historically accurate, I'll prefer the most. Who's the local historian here?

[The_Avenger]

Well, are you sure you want to make boats 100% historically accurate? Considering, say, how many people a bireme or a trireme had, your ships would be bigger than in Cossacks, and everyone who's played that knows that the ships took up nearly all of the screen.

If you have them bigger than AOM, say, but not too big, they should be fine. I do recall that AOM used to have huge ships too, and garrisoning units to change their types, as an idea.. ah well.

How about boarding ships, could we have that at all? I doubt it, but that'd be really cool... but then you'd need to treat each unit on board as an individual unit that moves and has stats, and there's nothing to stop someone from sinking a boat nearly taken over, unless you add slowly-dying ships, like Cossacks buildings.

[The_Conjurer]

To scale would rule It's gonna be a very accurate game so make those ships realistic please. Why not use 3 zoom levels like in Anno1503 (1503 AD in USA)? That would make the game perfect (anyway, offtopic)

[Marcus Petrius]

I thought ships would be treated as if they were pieces of movable land in the water?

That way it wouldn't be hard to have units board ships, because they would just be walking over land engine-wise.

[Klaas]

Hmm the land thing would be cool in scenarios but would require too much micro-management in multi games. Garissoning would be better I guess, like the AoK towers for example, shooting more arrows.

Using the historical accurate size would fill a whole screen easily, a trireme was huge, so a whole fleet would probably cover a whole map. You could compare the size to a decent Roman temple. Same goes to buildings, using the real size would make the game maybe more beautiful but reduce the fun facter and playability immensely.

[The_Avenger]

True. But if each ship had a "Boarding Attack" stat, for example, and each garrisoned unit contributed its original attack value... e.g. 5 soldiers each with 5atk would make the ship have 25 boarding attack stat. And then if you use the "Board" function on an enemy ship, you would use the "boarding attack" stat instead of the normal attack stat to attack the enemy; and if the enemy ship's hp reaches 0, it converts to your ship with full HP. Maybe..

[Ulysses S Griffin]

Id rather this happen: lets say you put a catapult on a ship, the ship will be able to use the catapult as an attack, if you put infantry units on a ship, that will give you the power to board enemy ships and sieze them(infantry wont damage the ship though but will kill the enemies crew)and if you put archers on the ship, youll be able to shoot out dozens of flaming arrows at units on an enemy ship's units and the ships sails, making the sails fall apart and slowing them down.

the ship doesnt have to be perfectly to scale, all the units dont have to be on the top decks...

ships without garrisoned units will have their own attack to use, but they'd be better off with garrisoned units.

[Marcus Petrius]

I don't want to see ships that fire huge projectiles for no particular reason. That's one thing that has always bugged me with AoE and AoK.

[Ulysses S Griffin]

yeah, but they wouldnt be launched out of nowhere, they'd be lauched from the garrisoned catapult(catapult animation and everything).

[Render]

I like the Idea of attack increasing depending on the number of units aboard a ship. Could we extend this to increasing the ships speed as well>? Makes sence more people working the ship the faster it goes. And If were doing weather why not a wind factor in the game also...or is that to complex?

[Ulysses S Griffin]

i think it would work...but only with ships that have oars

the wind on the other hand would be hard, because you would have to have randomly generated wind directions with some sort of diagram showing which direction its going and that, i think would be hard to do

[Marcus Petrius]

The fact that winds blow the other way in some parts of the map would be hard too. What to do with the place where these winds meet? If a ship with sails ends up in there, it would possibly be caught forever.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Half actual size would be big enough for me. The ships in AOE-AOK-AOM are about 1/10th scale. I think something like 2/5 scale would work best.

[Wijitmaker]

Wind sounds complex to me

[Murchad]

to scale or almost to scale

[Ulysses S Griffin]

actually when i thinkg about it, having the ships, 1/2 to 1/3 the atual size would better, and more functional

heres how big the ships should look like imo(dont take notice of the buildings, unless you like the view):

the picture

[Mythos_Ruler]

WOW

Needless to say I'm getting that game!

I think ships that size would look amazing for 0AD.

Okay, now... I have to mention something that's been bothering me a bit about ships of this era as depicted by other RTS games. Namely, the whole siege/arrow firing bit. Yes, these tactics were used, but what ships of this era did to sink the enemy ships was by RAMMING them. I'd like to see our ships follow this historical precedent. Perhaps they fire arrows and siege missles as a primary weapon, but much like the naval myth units in AOM, have a "special attack" akin to ramming.

[Ulysses S Griffin]

ah yes, i was thinking about this yesterday

maybe loading ships with conscripts or slaves(if in the game) can give battle ships the "power" of ramming speed

[Murchad]

That game looks cool. There are so many RTS games these days it's hard to keep track of them all.

[The_Avenger]

Something with villagers, perhaps. Either garrisoning to increase speed, or perhaps having villagers build ships, with docks for upgrades adn enabling ship building? It's probably too complex for not much return, though.

[Ornlu]

Gameplay >> Realism

That's why I think they shouldn't be too big, and pretty fast. Otherwise, sea battles will be boring and slow, and you will have difficulties managing all ships if they're too big, like Cossacks.

[Acumen]

Tonto_Sanjab, you've just summarised my design philosophy ; realism wherever possible, as long as it does not affect gameplay. Unfortunately, keeping the game fun and accessible means we have to make a lot of concessions to gameplay.

And Mythos_Ruler, I'm pleased to report that your plea for ship rams was already speced for inclusion some time ago. Please read the Unit Classes section in the Design Document for more information.