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spmetla
03-08-2003, 07:50
Erasing the past...

muffinman14
03-08-2003, 08:31
That would be really cool but think of all the other stuff you had to worry about in MTW with land only(well sort of). Im curious if CA is going to have this in the game cos it would be really sweet.

Knight_Yellow
03-08-2003, 09:25
pro's

never been done before

would be cool

con's

might be to diff from land fights

might become boring and repative.

its an all new style of gameplay so hence maybe an addon?

Basileus
03-08-2003, 12:42
Would be kool but i doubt it, we will propably see sea battles like in Medieval

Spino
03-08-2003, 19:40
Quote[/b] ]Will there be ship battles. With ramming, ravens being dropped. Infantry boardign parties. Galleys in action. Slaves rowing etc..

NO You'll get nothing... and like it

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

Kongamato
03-08-2003, 21:02
I see it as a must for this new fusion of battlemap and terrain to allow amphibious landings.

This allows for boats.

This new battlemap, unless the water is differently handled, must call for each boat to be in a specific place.

Boats then would be handled like soldiers and must appear on the battlemap.

LadyAnn
03-08-2003, 23:41
The cited reasons the prevent MTW to have naval battle is because it may requires either:
1. Movable artillery, for a boat-to-boat artillery duel
2. Manable object, like walls, where units will board. The sea battle would be like letting the soldiers to board the vessels and then board the beach, etc.

I believe that both conditions might be removed by the new RTW engine.

However, I was not totally convinced what specifically prevent this kind of implementation:

1. A fleet is like an army, 16 battle-group. A battle-group is composed of N boats, moving together. The number of boats could be 12, 20, 40 or 100.

2. Each boat behaves like a man in the land unit: going along with the unit but fight individually. Boats could shoot arrows, etc. not necessarily shoot cannon balls.

3. The sea would be like level0 water (which I think the land units can walk over anyways). There could be islands, harbors, pier, etc.

Unfortunately, Annie is not a progrmmer and may not know all the tech. difficulties behind this.

Annie

Prodigal
03-10-2003, 15:32
I can appreciate all the problems that would lie in developing sea battles, but it would be good to have sea battles tweaked a bit. Maybe piracy, or cruise, settings for ships, in other words attack anything that comes into the sea you're in, or move from a - z attacking enemy vessels...The same battle calculator, but with a bit more intelligence & polish.

It just seems, imho, that the sea-side of it all looks rather like it was added as an afterthought; of course it maybe that it's the other areas of TW make it stand out.

LordKhaine
03-11-2003, 02:16
I just hope its better than MTW. I'm fed up of how overly powerful the command ratings were in that. I've seen a single level 1 ship destroy top level ship before. Its just crazy, one little ship gets lucky and gets a kill. So you send a bigger ship to kill it, and with the higher command rating the little ship manages to win again... so you send a fleet of ships, and with its higher command rating this one little ship destroys the fleet, and then you need insanely large fleets to catch up with this one little killer ship. And since the little ships so much faster it just moves around ripping apart your navy. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

Hakonarson
03-11-2003, 05:43
Piracy was a big thing in the Med - IIRC Mark Anthony (of Anthony and Cleopatra fame) made a good part of his military reputaiton cleaning pirates out, especially around the coast of what is now Turkey.

As for the limitations of ship-borne artilery - within the abstractions that the game already has ships don't ned to have stone throwers, and bolt shooters can be simulated by archery anyway......it's be nice to be able to do teh Roman naval assault on Syracuse, but I dont' think we're goign to see anything that complicated http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

Alastair II
03-11-2003, 07:52
I personally would prefer not to have naval combat in RTW, or VI, because that would be a different game. The TW series is built on its incredible tactical depth and entertainment value ON LAND. A sea battle would require an effectively new battle engine, and would not be the logical next step in the TW series. Currently, MTW has a number of problems with its land battle engine that need clearing up, and there are some obvious improvements to the land battle system that would increase replay value and tactical depth tremendously. These, which I will list below, are far, far more easily implemented than a new sea battle engine.
First, mobile land artillery would greatly increase tactical depth, partially because it would allow the Napoleonic tactic of blowing a hole in an opponent's line and then streaming cavalry through the hole, and partially because, well, BOOMIE http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
Secondly, the implementation of visible signs of activity on the battlefield would be much easier and better than a naval battle. I mean by this the visibility of activities such as wavering, exhaustion, impetuousness, confusion, etc. That would add to what little realism there is, and would also make it much easier to see at a glance the performance of troops in a melee.
There are undoubtedly other, easier improvements to the land battles that I can't think of at the moment (probably because it's 10:11 at night) which should be considered long before any naval battle engine, too.

spmetla
03-11-2003, 10:58
Erasing the past...

Alastair II
03-12-2003, 02:35
Spmetla, do you play multiplayer? That is where the incredible tactical depth comes in. In the SP campaign, I must agree with you; neither the tactics nor the strategy are very deep at all, and, what's more, they become quite repetitive.

Also, could you try to define 'Total war' other than the name of this series?

spmetla
03-13-2003, 10:03
Erasing the past...

Alastair II
03-14-2003, 03:09
First I need to define some terms that not everybody may know:

By the word tactics, I mean the maneuvers and ideas used within a battle to win it. This corresponds to our current battle system.

By the word strategy, I mean the maneuvers BEFORE a battle made in order to gain a good situation for battle.

By the phrase grand strategy, I mean the implementation of forces on a theater; this sort of corresponds to which province you would attack, but it's a little more fluid than that in war.

By policy, I mean the decisions made by the government to best use the resources of a country to win a war.

Containing all aspects of even a land war would be quite impractical at this stage, since they have yet to implement either a strategic or much of a grand strategic component to the game. All we have is policy, rudimentary grand strategy, and tactics. IMO, we should complete the treatment of land war before we get into the other aspects.

We also don't have many of the other aspects; our economy is currently very simplistic and leaves out many factors such as the population of a given province, disease, culture, the political interaction between a head of state and his nobles (in which, during this period, the nobles had much of the power), and many other things. In my opinion, this is quite irrelevant to the series; the series is much more focused on the actual war than on policy, which encompasses many of the terms you used. Therefore, we haven't most of the elements of a total land war, and so, should we want to have total war, we should finish land war first. If you want a game claiming to encompass all aspects of statesmanship, go play Civ III.

spmetla
03-14-2003, 09:58
Erasing the past...

Alastair II
03-15-2003, 03:10
Sorry about that; I love to argue. I didn't play Shogun multiplayer, so I can't really compare. IMO, however, the current tactics are very complex. They include unit choice, the resulting choice of static defense, defensive offense, offensive defense, and rush. Within each of those are many complications unique to each map, army makeup, and player, including unit-to-unit matchups, terrain, mobility, concentration, and many other intricacies. That also totally leaves out the considerations of team strategy. IMO, for an RTS in this day and age, that is incredible tactical depth.

About your wishlist, yeah, that'd be good, but there are more important things than those wishes, such as faction balance, morale adjustments, and hillbonusses.

wordsmith
03-15-2003, 05:15
lmao...
funny thread.

first of all, there is no precident for realistic sea battles on the micromanagement scale of the TW series. So any one who says it would be boring, not possible, ect ect has no valid basis to make those statements on besides wild conjecture and assumptions.

secondly, the first game that can make exciting fast paced naval battles that depict the use of all aspects of naval weaponery and stragies of the period will be renound among the gaming community. I would buy a game that was able to depict naval battles well just because it has never been done before and there is very little originality in video games any more.

Thirdly, the wide varity of tactics and weaponery avialable on ships of the medievil era would provide for extreamly fast paced, high adrenile battles. With the rewards being as high as filling your holds full of booty and slaves and the price of failure possibly being as drastic as losing the entirity of the vast army you attempting to land on enemy shores.

now im not saying that its a good or bad idea, that can only be told in the attempt. Should the MTW designers attempt it I feel that they would do a good job and perhaps open up a whole new genre of gaming.

Prodigal
03-18-2003, 15:29
@ Wordsmith, I have to agree there aren't any games out that deal on a micro management level with naval combat, but if you're looking for a good sea battle game check out sea dogs 2. Of course it may never be released, been waiting over a year now & there's still no actual date http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/angry.gif

Btw, do the dev's ever come into this part of the forum? The only thing I've heard about shipping is from ECS in the Main Hall, & that was that the ship AI is going to be smarter...No new options were mentioned http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

LadyAnn
03-19-2003, 01:04
No ship? Then how can I replay the Battle between the Romans and the Egyptians? What Cleopatra would do without her fleet (although not as powerful as Roman fleet but still...) And Punic War without naval battles?

I hope they will make it. I don't think it is too hard:
1. Make each man in a unit a ship (some new glyph I guess)
2. Make a unit of reasonnable size, says 20 ships.
3. Make the ships unit stat so that they can shoot arrows or throw naphta, or whatver fancy thing a ship could do. Perhaps ramming opponents (flanking a ship is deadly&#33http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
4. Make 16 units into a fleet, same as an army.
5. Make a map where it is flatland with tile color blue;
6. Make the island and coasts in the map "non-accessible area" for the ship.

So you will have naval battles.

Don't try fancy things like boarding vessels, movable seige weapons, etc.

Why is that so hard to do? Even current engine could do that I would imagine. Just perhaps the devs had no time to do it....

Annie

spmetla
03-19-2003, 07:21
Erasing the past...

MongolWarrior
03-21-2003, 17:30
Do you know how complicated that would be to make waves and such? It Would be awesome though......

Nelson
03-21-2003, 18:32
Total War already gives us two games in one, war at the strategic level and tactical land combat. Tactical naval with boarding actions (couldn’t be right without them) would add yet another whole system. It would be real cool but I don’t see it happening. How much can we reasonably expect for $40? Rome is taking TW a giant leap forward as it is.

Oberiko
03-21-2003, 19:04
I have to agree with Nelson.

Though naval battles are always important, they would distract resources that could go into improving the (IMO) more important land battles and strategy system.

However, I don't think it would be out of the question for the inevitable expansion...

LadyAnn
03-23-2003, 01:43
Looks like people didn't read into my post.

I thought I just explained how it is easy to have the current engine to do naval battle (without boarding ships, use catapult on ships, etc.). The complexity is same as making a few new units and some new maps. I didn't see a post the argue that my suggestion is infeasible.

Annie

Nelson
03-23-2003, 02:07
I read your post, Lady Ann. I believe that a naval game like you described would be too over simplified to be very fun or interesting. It would be rather like castle assaults in Shogun. Better than nothing perhaps but not all that great because too much is missing.

spmetla
04-12-2003, 09:37
Erasing the past...

Galestrum
04-12-2003, 10:06
naval battles is a must.

Businesses should meet or exceed our expectations, dont let them off the hook cuz it "may" be "hard" geesh, for 40 dollars i expect a helluva alot.

If CA is smart they would read what their customers want and find a way to get it to them

Belisarius
04-20-2003, 23:11
I really missed naval battles in MTW, and it if RTW dont include at least some way for the player to influence the outcome of a naval battle, the game will be less fun to play IMHO.... I mean come on, the old classical PC game, Centurion allowed you to take control of your flagship and attempt to sink the opponents one http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif.

As for how naval battles was fought, mainly through boarding, in which the Romans had an advantage due to its superior infantry.
Blasting the opponent to pieces wasn´t really used (it was used, though not decisivly) in naval warfare until the demise of the Great Armada in 1588.

rory_20_uk
05-03-2003, 00:35
I think the idea of decent naval warfare as an addon would be the best idea, as then it could be treated with the depth it deserves. The strategic way needs to be tweaked to heop the AI mainly with trade routes, but to have it go tactical would require so much time that it could onlt do achieved as an addon.
In relation to the thoughts on piracy, I think that having more pirate boats that do not require the usual building ques at a designated rebel site would be good, as after all rebels normally operate of islands that are far too small to rate on a map, else from secluded coves or the like - it would be more interesting so that one does not get complacent regarding trade routes.