Navel units attacking sea bases

[Neil]

I think it's too easy for naval units to attack sea bases, which greatly decreases their strategic value. Ships move fast (so there is less opportunity to intercept them en route) and tend to receive high attack power compared to defender armor. It also never made sense to me how a ship could occupy an entire city anyways.

Aside from bombardment, I think that ships shouldn't be able to attack directly or capture sea bases. Amphibious units attacking from a transport should be the primary means of doing so. This would also make amphibious units actually useful for something.

I have no experience modding the game. Is this even possible?

[EmpathCrawler]

All other things aside, the AI would never be able to handle it. It's just not smart enough to know "I need to build a fleet of transports, load them all with units specifically designed with amphibious pods, and only send them at sea bases which I already softened with naval artillery."

[Neil]

AI can be improved, as we've seen in other mods. First I'm worried about whether the mechanic is even possible.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

and tend to receive high attack power compared to defender armor

What weapon has to do with ship specifically?

. It also never made sense to me how a ship could occupy an entire city anyways.

Land city with the port - probably not in life and not in game. Ocean base like one in the "Water world" - absolutely!
If you magnify Pirates base big enough you'll see they are actually resemble this "walls surrounding inner lake" type of "Water world" design.

All other things aside, the AI would never be able to handle it. It's just not smart enough to know "I need to build a fleet of transports, load them all with units specifically designed with amphibious pods, and only send them at sea bases which I already softened with naval artillery."

AI can be improved, as we've seen in other mods. First I'm worried about whether the mechanic is even possible.

Technically, everything is possible. I don't remember a single idea I was not able to implement. That is too generic question. We are less interested in possibility but rather feasibility. I.e. time efforts. We are striving to achieve more results in shorter timeframe. That is why each and every change is benefit/cost weighted.

Answering your specific proposal. I like the idea! Indeed, amphibious units are useless and I also thought how to give them some interesting purpose. However, as EmpathCrawler correctly pointed out, it would require global naval AI rewrite. We just won't be able to introduce this mechanics and then let AI think they can take ocean bases with ships while, in fact, they cannot. It would turn averagely stupid AI into complete garbage. So implementing this idea as is would cost two weeks of mechanics tweaking plus a year of AI rewrite. Probably won't fly.

Keep thinking. There were tons of idea discussed previously and many of them shaped out into something implementable after opinion exchange. I am all for 1) making sea bases more defendable and 2) making amphibious useful. If you can propose something not requiring massive AI rewrite that would be nice.

[bvanevery]

I think it's too easy for naval units to attack sea bases, which greatly decreases their strategic value. Ships move fast (so there is less opportunity to intercept them en route) and tend to receive high attack power compared to defender armor.

If you are complaining about defense in the original game, first play a mod and see if you still have a problem.  For instance in my SMACX AI Growth mod, the weapons and armors and bases are more slanted towards defense.  You are actually going to pay a lot for your armaments, it's not trivial to get a powerful weapon on a ship.  Also, I abolished the "ship caught in port" penalty.  I actually have a bit of the opposite problem: sometimes a mere armored Transport can become kind of a super defender against land units.

The Will To Power mod also does attack and defense balance differently.  Thinker mod, in contrast, sticks to mostly the original game.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I agree with bvanevery. Although I didn't mention this explicitly assuming you have tried other mods extensively. Every issue should be reviewed in context of specific mod. Both AIGrowth and WTP address weapon/armor balance. In these mods, for example, it is possible to build Naval Yard in all sea bases and place few infantry defenders to make them much tougher. They are still quite accessible all across the ocean but they, at least, not an easy prey.

Regarding original post, I would also propose to split question in two: sea base defense in general and amphibious. They may go together but should not be tied.

What I was thinking about amphibious is to treat it not like "amphibious assault from sea to shore" but as an actual amphibious chassis modification. I.e. boat with wheels that can go on land and sea alike. Need to think about restrictions to not make it OP and equal to gravship.

Possible options:

• Applies to land chassis reducing its speed by 1. Therefore, only speeder and hovertank can use it.
• Allows to go into water but not too far. Maybe 1-2 square from coast (or in shallow water).
• Does not change triad applicability. Land amphibious colony/former still cannot operate on sea.
• Can attack while at sea. Probably with penalty?

This way amphibious units can cross narrow body of water without transport.

[Neil]

What weapon has to do with ship specifically?

Nothing specific, it's just that in this game weapons are more powerful than armor. As you say, there are mods to address that. I'm not entirely against the advantage, as defenders can receive bonuses. But whereas perimeter defense is available early, it's hard to protect sea bases early in the game.

Land city with the port - probably not in life and not in game. Ocean base like one in the "Water world" - absolutely!

I think it's implicit in the game that a land base and sea base are very similar internally, hence why with a pressure dome a base can transform seamlessly between land and sea. Sea bases aren't a floating ragtag of barges, at least in general. Capturing a base requires door-to-door fighting, which is why infantry receive a bonus. I just don't see a ship doing that, or its crew being properly trained or equipped. Maybe you imagine differently, but I just don't see it.

Regarding original post, I would also propose to split question in two: sea base defense in general and amphibious. They may go together but should not be tied.

I'm not sure what you mean. I wasn't proposing a change to amphibious units. They work fine now; they're just relatively useless compared to the alternatives.

Alas, it seems that this idea would be too difficult to implement.. Thanks for the feedback.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

What weapon has to do with ship specifically?

Nothing specific, it's just that in this game weapons are more powerful than armor. As you say, there are mods to address that. I'm not entirely against the advantage, as defenders can receive bonuses. But whereas perimeter defense is available early, it's hard to protect sea bases early in the game.

Formally true. However, given that Doctrine: Flexibility is a direct prerequisite for Doctrine: Initiative, the gap between sea units availability and Naval Yard is the same as between land units availability and PD. I.e. practically none. Have you waged a lot of sea battles when NY is not yet available?

Land city with the port - probably not in life and not in game. Ocean base like one in the "Water world" - absolutely!

I think it's implicit in the game that a land base and sea base are very similar internally, hence why with a pressure dome a base can transform seamlessly between land and sea. Sea bases aren't a floating ragtag of barges, at least in general. Capturing a base requires door-to-door fighting, which is why infantry receive a bonus. I just don't see a ship doing that, or its crew being properly trained or equipped. Maybe you imagine differently, but I just don't see it.

I am not entirely sure how implicit is it. I always interpreted game lore in directly opposite way. Ocean base is a completely new addition predecessors didn't have. It is placed on/in the water, not on a patch of a ground or artificial island. The territory of a base is water and completely passable to ships - they can enter and cross the whole city as they pleased. Citizen are living on some structures sticking out of the water and probably transport themselves primarily with boats like in Venice. At the same time it is impassable to ground units. They can travel there by boats and unload there but they cannot just march into. Boats are natural transportation device for everybody. I don't see why military boat cannot capture the whole city.

Pressure Dome description reads: allows base to survive submersion! Meaning land gets completely covered by water and becomes passable to boats but not ground units without boats anymore.

However, this interpretation is all not important thing of the game anyway. Not worth arguing.

[Neil]

Ships moving through bases is a bit abstract in this game. If you have a land base on a tile that connects two separate oceans, ships can move between them, as if there were a canal.

To me, most sea bases look similar to land bases and some indeed look like artificial (metal) islands (such as University and Morganites). I don't see any canals. Land units can't march over the water between the shore and the base, but that would be the same whether bases are "solid" or have canals inside.

[Flygon]

All other things aside, the AI would never be able to handle it. It's just not smart enough to know "I need to build a fleet of transports, load them all with units specifically designed with amphibious pods, and only send them at sea bases which I already softened with naval artillery."

Pardon me digging up a 10 month old thread, but this bugged me enough that I felt the need to reply.

In Civilization II, when you play maps with 1 tile big islands and plop cities onto them, the AI is actually smart enough to load transports or Frigates with units, bombard a city, and then capture the city. It's actually terrifyingly good at doing so.

The question of whether the relevant scripting has carried over to Alpha Centauri (especially since it does retain the same "one-tile island" mechanic) is another question. But even in a variant of the game where the AI isn't the brightest, it can still pull off the one-two combo.

Of course, the issue is that it's not needing to deal with Amphibious Landing bonuses to do so - Marines in CivII are only needed from attacking bases from sea, not actually capturing them.