Naval Units

[ampoliros]

The General Discussion thread http://forum.wastelands-interactive....nd-interesting started talking about the Sea. Here's a first go at naval units.


I'm not well versed on Challenge Rating so I'm simply using a 10 point scale for combat values.
I'm also not well versed on D20 range. I think I remeber seeing short range units being like steps of 4 and very long range is steps of 10 - I'm going with that.
To stay true with MoM, water walking and flying units will be allowed to participate. This fact skews the reality of ships having much longer range than bows, but...
I'm running with Aaron's idea that there may be a way to retreat and add reinforcements and am adding a mechanic called "Engaged."
Engaged will allow a unit to engage in offensive combat. It's Tactical Speed will be reduced to simulate the difficulty of "coming to bear". Non-Engaged mode allows the unit to move full Strategic speed, but it can no longer initiate combat.


Naval Units will be Sailing/Non-Sailing. Sailing units will be affected by the Air Circle spells Fair Winds and Stale Winds. These spells could be both Strategic and Tactical. Strategic would affect 1 stack. Tactical would affect 1 unit or be global for the combat (either/or).
Fair Winds adds 1 to the units's movement. (Strategic upkeep of 1)
Stale Winds reduces the unit's movement to 0. (Strategic curse time limit of 2 turns, much higher mana cost than Fair Winds)


Number of units transported is assuming a stack limit of 9.


Naval Units
-----------
Trireme - basic ship
* 6 - Melee
* 0 - Range
* 2 - Defense
* 2 - Strategic Moves
* 2 - Tactical Moves
* False - Sailing
* 3 - Transport


Cog - light transport
* 1 - Melee
* 0 - Range
* 1 - Defense
* 2 - Strategic Moves
* 2 - Tactical Moves
* True - Sailing
* 5 - Transport


Frigate - light warship
* 2 - Melee
* 6 - Range
* 8 - Range stepping
* 2 - Defense
* 4 - Strategic Moves
* 2 - Tactical Moves (engaged)
* True - Sailing
* 1 - Transport


Galleon - heavy transport
* 3 - Melee
* 8 - Range
* 4 - Range stepping
* 3 - Defense
* 2 - Strategic Moves
* 1 - Tactical Moves (engaged)
* True - Sailing
* 8 - Transport


Man-O-War - heavy warship
* 4 - Melee
* 10 - Range
* 10 - Range stepping
* 4 - Defense
* 3 - Strategic Moves
* 2 - Tactical Moves (engaged)
* True - Sailing
* 2 - Transport

[Troy_Costisick]

That's all well and good for a base and I can tell you put a lot of thought and effort into your post. But each race will probably have its own unique ships, and some will be more naval focussed than others. How would your ideas apply to the factions we know will be in (High Men, Sylvan Elves, Dwarves, Undead, and Draconians)?

[Belgariad87]

I think that a couple of these ships would be standard for all races and then they can decide what units or special units to include or not depending on how water oriented the race is. Like draconians should have little to no need for a navy since they can fly (or because they might be getting the reptile race, in which case it would be because they get a dragon turtle), but High Men should have no problem choppin' some trees and making warships for the greater good of Man.

[ampoliros]

Originally I was thinking ships are not so different and these could be used for everybody with the possible restriction of some ships from faction to faction. But I just perused the regular units and noticed there are no repeats like MoM had, so...
These are obviously Human ships, so High-Men. Honestly I could do without the Trireme, but I imaging there are people who would want it in. Maybe it can go to another faction, like the Undead with a big horned Wyrm skull on the front.
I think the Dwarves should be bad at Sea, maybe only having a Longship which is along the lines of the Trireme, but better. Maybe also a big heavily defended and SLOW battleship with a flamethrower weapon.
Sylvan Elves? Are they Wood Elves? Wood Elves in my mind wouldn't be much better at ocean faring than Dwarves.
High elves on the other hand would be great at sailing, having fast elegant ships, but maybe not so much in the combat realm.
Are all Draconians flying? If so they don't need ships.

[ampoliros]

SMAC is on sale on GOG right now. (I do own CDs of SMAC and SMACX, but can't find them ) So I'm all about spending $2.39. I'm-a gonna play me some Nautilus Pirates .
(Hopefully a game with an ocean faction will inspire me.)

[Asmodai]

They seem to have gone out of their way thus far to avoid talking about ships, rofl. I'm not sure if that means the devs have some great system planned that they're not ready to reveal quite yet or if they are just setting it aside for the time being to consider later. In any event based off of how they are doing siege engines I kind of assume (and I could be totally wrong) that they are going to have naval ships per race. So Elves may have like Norse looking longships, High Men may have middle-age looking galleys, Dwarves may have like Ironclads, and Undead may have ghost ships or something. I'm not saying those are what they will be I'm just trying to make an example of racial differentiation. Some races may also have none at all like perhaps Orcs use Ogre Magi instead of ships (they can fly and have magic so could make their stack fly) and Draconions could use Dragon Turtles as ships, and Gnomes use Airships so they don't have boats. Again, just some examples. Perhaps some even have multiple ships like High Men maybe have both Galley's and Man-o-Wars if they want them to be more of a naval power. Again the point here just being that I suspect there won't be "shared" ships and that each race will have it's own take on them.

[ampoliros]

I realize more units means more art which means more cost... I suppose the base game may only have a basic transport type ship for each faction (the factions that need one anyway). But I would hope that in the long run there are more than one or two ships per faction for the factions that would be seagoing. There is at least some interest in the community to make the ocean more interesting than just a means to divide land.