Things missing in Forged Alliance, Session 5
Session 5: Naval econ, naval base, floating and underwater.
We need to see a naval economy, and the ability to get a viable base up and running in the sea. I would even like to see a naval land factory that loads units into an amphibious assault craft (after you fix #4 of course) so that you can retake the land if you get forced off, or make incursion inland without having to have land based facilities. This naval base may even have the opportunity to submerge itself when under attack. This would, of course, stop production (and may even cause you to lose the unit your working on). To balance this added protection, give naval air and land factories lower hit points, making them more susceptible to lightning air raids. There should also be the option for 2 different econ buildings, one built on the surface, that yields the same as a land based version, and one built underwater, that yields less. PD should also be amphibious (to counter hovering units, which are not affected by torpedoes), but not able to shoot below the surface (the UEF t3 pd could be an exception, as well as t2 arty. The building on water part that is, not the shoot below the surface part).
Of course with all this talk of a sea based land factory one could argue the need for a land based sea factory. I say why not? why not have a naval yard that is built on the sandy beach with a slipway into the sea? That would make it practically invulnerable to torpedo assault and allow you to take back the water a lot faster than you currently can with just land base torpedo launchers. To keep it from becoming overpowered just reduce its build rate and efficiency.
December 10th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Now this is one area where I will politely disagree with my compatriot Lucus.
Now, no doubt a naval economy would be both fun and useful, and I agree it is one of the things missing from Total Annihilation. I don’t understand why SupCom doesn’t have things like underwater mexes, tidal generators, reclaimable ship wrecks, etc. All of these would add fun to the game and make control of the sea much more critical, as well as forcing players to do a bit more scouting to make sure there isn’t a base somewhere they don’t know about.
What I disagree with is the grandiose plan to make it all super-complex, with multiple layers and full self-sufficient base-building capability. I personally think if you have been pushed into the sea you are pretty much screwed, it should never be anything more than a minor secondary front. It could even become your primary econ, but it should never replace the land. I can see possibily a floating air factory, but a land factory at sea makes no sense (neither does a naval factory on land, IMO). Some old TA mods had “amphibious facilities” that you could build underwater and which would build amphibious tanks and submarines. Unless GPG adds more amphibious units, the only faction that could really do this is the Cybran with their Wagners. The other factions would all have to have a floating land factory which could only build hover units and engineers. I don’t like the idea of all PDs being buildable at sea either, though I can see something to help with the hover units, so maybe a special floating T2 PD would be cool.
So basically, underwater mexes = yes and Tidal generators = yes and a floating PD = yes. But nothing more than that.
But hey this is all my opinion, what do you guys think?
December 11th, 2007 at 1:10 am
well its been a day and only one responce so i should put in my 2cents now
haveing a LAND based sea factory ISNT a good idea (sorry Lucus) but haveing a LAND BASED torpedo launcher (that ive mentioned here and elsewhere many times) would be usefull! something like a T2 arty that shoots a torp in the air when it hits the sea it becomes a torp and ’swims’ to its target haveing a SLOW rate of fire but higher range then T2 torps, and finaly slightly higher damage, these would allow you to allways keep one leg in the sea
Finaly yes we need underwater mex’s and pgens, and fusion reactors! But ive allready seen custom maps with underwater mex’s so they are possible! (havent seen underwater pgens yet!) so the game can handle them it just requires either GPG or someone to make some buildings to fill the spot!
December 11th, 2007 at 3:58 am
Meh, this was all mostly just and idea blog, to get the discussion going. When i play i actually mostly ignore the water, preferring instead to control the air and do air drops with the awesome t3 continental. of course the reason i mostly ignore the sea is because there is not a lot of diversity there, and controlling the waves does not give to many benefits. what would really entice me into going naval would be a good option for troop transports. moving around a big army, even with a crapload of continentals is tough work. a few large sea transports would go a long way twords making me want to maintain control of the sea. i would also love to see *some* possibility for naval expansion, even if it is only “mass rigs” and tidal generators. give us *something* on the water worth fighting over. as it stands, when an opponent decides to go naval, i go air. he usually winds up with a bunch of subs, and i have ASF and gunships. i take out the surface ships (the only ones that are a marginal threat to my base. even battleships die fast vs t3 gunships) and ignore the rest. for him it winds up wasted mass. with good scouting i just fly my transports around his fleet, and land a bunch of bots behind his base. presto, whole navy rendered worthless. now if the sea had mass and energy, then it would be a different story, because he would be able to secure a lot of resources that i would not be able to fight over unless i also invested in a navy. (this is the primary reason that i suggested both surface and submerged mexs, so they could be protected from gunships and bombers)
also, if they fixed the move/build function, we would not need naval air factories, since we already have them. they are called aircraft carriers. the rest of the ideas would just make the sea interesting for me. i would revise the idea a bit though, and make the land factory submerged, and load units into a transport sub (say 18 t3, or 54 t1). combine that with the sonar shadows, and it could make for a nasty surprise. i would say make it a t4 experimental factory, with a bay to build the sub, and a bay to build the units, and a docking bay (so the subs can be loaded, while another sub is bing built) i don’t know if it would be possible for you to go all sea though, since you would not have access to air transports, SCUs, nukes (with a few slow and vulnerable exceptions), anti nukes, and about half of the experimentals. plus your engineers would be vulnerable most of the time (i would not advocate submersible engineers, other than ACU/SCUs, which can’t be built underwater), and air superiority would be difficult to maintain. shielding the naval factories would be impossible (and any other on surface structures such as AA), rendering you completely vulnerable to t3 arty, bombing raids, etc. i still think it would be cool to have it as an option (and, come to think of it, i really like the sea land factory now that its been revised. . . land sea factory, meh, maybe only for pumping out subs. other than that its a toss idea.)
only a few more things are needed to give the sea real meaning, a submerged torpedo launcher, areal or hovering sonar (like the scout, short range sonar for hunting subs), a t3 torpedo bomber, land based torpedo launchers (weren’t they going to put these in/did they put these in?) and a few more different kinds of ships (maybe a devastating anti sea experimental, more devastating than the Atlantis. im thinking “wall of torpedo death” here. costs *mass* to fire. only good counter is torpedo bombers). plus the bigger ships, like carriers, should be able to be built stand alone, like experimentals (so they are more like an air factory). and an option to render the water more clear for better visibility.
idea needs work im sure, but at least *i* think it holds the promise to make sea as dynamic, variable and interesting as the land ;-)
December 11th, 2007 at 5:26 am
I still don’t understand your obsession with naval mexes and naval eco; For me it always felt like some sort of “attachment”, that was added later and not designed in the first place;
Also note, that many consider SupCom already difficult enough; by adding another layer…..
Also note that you *can* already place mex points and hydrocarbon “rocks” on the sea bed ^_^
December 11th, 2007 at 10:34 am
Underwater mass extractors and tidal power gens would be a nice addition, without them the sea is a lot less valuable, the only reason to go naval is the firepower and range of high end ships. Underwater structures would be vulnerable to subs and torpedo bombers but not much else and difficult to find.
As for additional factories, an underwater sub-pen might be an idea. There aren’t really enough amphibious units to justify a floating land factory.
Has it not been said that the next expansion will be centered on experimental units? An experimental sub that transports land units would be an idea.
December 11th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
I’d agree with Engineer. We don’t need anything tooo elaborate. It is very, very important that we get some of this in the next addon pack though. It’d have much more of an impact than shiny new experimental units. Water maps just aren’t fun to play at the moment. That’s why they never seem to last long in the ranked map selection. If the water maps were faster (i.e. had more resources and more naval raiding) then things would be massively improved.
December 11th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
LucusLoC give up on the sea/land factory with transporting subs & bays etc etc it wont happen to much effort for very little reward! keep to the possible and what might be achievable PROPER underwater mex’s, tidal gens & fusion reactors! these have a chance of makeing it into the game OR someone putting them into a unit pack that everyone downloads as standard!
hover sonar wouldnt work (just for the pplz that want realism) sonar NEEDS to be submerged! (and for hunting subs a torpbomber allready has sonar capabilitys!
a land based torp launcher is still needed so a player can reclaim their bay after being torped out of it! and dont tell me torp bombers are the answer they hit for sooo little damage that normaly u need a army of them to keep the subs out and it allways ends up with you ABOUT to relaim your bay to get back into the sea just for a swarm of inn’s to fly over take out EVERY bomber u have and you to be back to square one!
Landbased torp launcher is needed to keep subs out of your bay and with a large enough range to make destoryers think twice before launching a assult!
battleships and crusiers will still out range it but its means on island maps a single destroyer parked on your coast doesnt mean your out of the game!
December 12th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Ok, looks like i was voted down on my more interesting idea for the “strategic ambush factory,” (insert low mumbles about no one understanding my genius here) but in response to BlackKnight, the reason we want naval econ is to have a reason to fight on the sea. currently, as Variable said, the only reason to go naval is for the battleships. and by the time you invest in a battleship and all the support vessels and infrastructure, you may as well have built several experimentals. the only reasons to have a navy at this point is A.) its a naval map or B.) you have air superiority over the sea and your opponent has a really strong land based defense. other than those two special cases, its usually cheaper to invest in air (ASF, gunships, strat bombers and torpedo bombers, though i usually shy away from the torpedo bombers, since they can only be used against ships and subs, and i really only care about stopping surface vessels, which the gunships and bombers can hit.)
as it stands right now, naval is pretty useless, as there are usually more efficient ways to do things.
where does the vote stand on a submersible sea transport? one that caries between 18 and 24 t3 units? any ideas about how fast or slow it should be? on board armament? cost? what about a smaller, faster beach lander? say the size of the continental?
December 13th, 2007 at 11:48 am
where does the vote stand on a submersible sea transport? one that caries between 18 and 24 t3 units? any ideas about how fast or slow it should be? on board armament? cost? what about a smaller, faster beach lander? say the size of the continental?
LucusLoc you are reading my mind with this one. I would be awsome if it was even amphibius the uef transport sub would have tracks, cybran one have legs and the aeon/seraphim could float.
What I am also still missing is a sub with a good surface to surface weapon.
And building an eco on the bottom of the sea would be fun to. Power plants could gain more energy because of the cooling water. (as in TA)
An eco on the bottom would make the sea a new battlefield.
December 13th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
“What I am also still missing is a sub with a good surface to surface weapon.”
Psst… Tempest!
December 13th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
it would make for some cool all navy maps.
December 14th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
Psst… Tempest
sorry forgot to say at tech 2
December 15th, 2007 at 9:36 am
hey just a idea. Cant you change the subject from “things missing in FA” to “ideas for coming expansion” or simply “gameplay ideas” well you decide ofcourse but it sounds so negative with “things missing in FA”. This is your ideas but not really “missing” things. Maybe you can make a mod for some of the ideas?
Anyway i love the game as it is now but sure new ideas are great. But we really need to go through them and see what can be done and what the good ideas are.
cya =)
December 15th, 2007 at 9:41 am
yeah i agree with u bamsemannen. It do sound a bit negative :P This is a marvelous game and even thou it might not have everything it is the best strategy game ive played easily.
December 17th, 2007 at 4:57 pm
I would like a hidden submarine factory/base Mr. Bond.
December 17th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
im sorry for the negative sounding title (it didn’t really seem that way to me but i can see that you are right now). i too love the changes they made to FA. it is a 100% improvement over old sup com (also a good game imho, but in need of some fixes, which we got in FA. boy is that redundant. . .) this series was mainly intended to be to start a community discussion on what we would like to see either patched in or added to the next game. it is in my opinion that FA, as good as it is (on of the best in recent years) still needs some polish. GPG demonstrated to me that they are willing to listen to community input, and change the way the game works to satisfy the desires of their community.This is a wonderful thing, and is the main reason i put this together. i want us, as a whole, to push for that added polish. of course for this to work we have to decide what that polish is. it is not meant to be critical, it is meant to take advantage of GPG’s willingness to accept input. There are guaranteed to be disagreements. take my underwater ambush factory idea for example, which i *still* think would be awesome. you are all jerks ;-). i hope this will become a forum for beating out the disagreements and coming to a few resolutions about what would like to see as a whole. then we can use our collective voice to see those changes made. i of course do not expect to find a resolution to every point. a few of the points here i myself do not care about, but i included them because i see them expressed on the forums. a few of the points already seem to have universal agreement, and while i can understand that they are technically difficult to implement, nonetheless we still want to see them in the game asap (range effected by altitude for example). in short, don’t see this as a criticism, but rather a recommendation for improvement, and the more people contributing, the better quality that recommendation will be.
i will work on having a title change done, so it does not seem so negative. again, my apologies.
in response to H-master:
the t3 transport sub i was thinking of would behave more like an actual sub, but would be able to quickly crawl up on land, quickly disgorge its units and quickly get back below the waves. it would carry 24 t3 and drop them in 3 lines of 8 on the shore. walls/buildings would block its access, but it would be able to crawl as far up as it could, and drop as many of the front units as its exposed length would allow. the smaller, t2, 8 to 10 t3 transport would be a surface sped-boat, cheep and expendable, it would scream up to the shore, dump its units in 2 lines of 4 or 5, back up, and take off. the t3 transport sub could be rather expensive, since its main point is near invulnerability to air. the t2 would need to be cheaper, relatively, since it would not have that protection. it would need to be priced so you would not be sad if you only got 1 run out of it. obviously units in the sub transport could not fire, but i cant decide if the ones on the surface ships should be allowed to.
and finally, one last ditch effort to save my sea factory.
Make it a ship experimental for the UEF. give it deck storage for the equivalent of 20 to 40 t3. give it one battleship cannon, decent anti sub, and weak anti air. on the fore deck would be the t3 land factory (either 1 or 2). in the rear would be the t2 sea transport factory. the sea transports load up by docking on the side, either 2 or 4 t a time, and take almost the full deck worth of units. it cannot load onto the sub transports (maybe). units can also be loaded onto it via the transports. discuss if deck mounted units should be allowed to fire. maybe also include an airpad for loading units into air transports. yes, i know the thing would be huge. its supposed to be, its an amphibious assault support craft. call it the tsunami, because it’s “a wave of death for the shore.” if that does not sound cool then i officially give up.
December 17th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Tsunami is already taken - that’s the name of the UEF T2 torpedo launcher.
I don’t know, I suppose it’s not a bad idea, but I’m worried that it would be too much micro. The transports would want to be automated somehow - maybe even uncontrollable, like the drones from a hive.
December 18th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
all they would really need would be a waypoint system like the air ones. and for the t4 ship, they will need one endpoint to always follow the ship. combine that with a toggle to either only launch when full, or launch whenever there is a unit (or maybe a slider to get more detailed, like launch on half full) and you will have a workable assault support vessel. you may also need a hold button, so that you can launch all four at once. other than that thats it. not to complicated at all i think.