W3C - The Navy

I saw suggestions for making the navy more usable. I would like to move into this direction.

At this time, you can setup one of four available navy groups. In the process, you can decide on the quantity of weapons, ships, and carriers you want in the navy group.

None of the four navy groups includes all available navy weapons.

we can add an additional navy group, that includes all the available weapons and ammunition types that are available to navies, allowing you to customize the navy group to what you are interested in.

Please let me know if you see this as a good solution and if not, what exactly is the problem and what kind of navy is needed.

That is exactly what I was hoping for. Please make it so that there is no minimums required for any of the specific weapon types except for the actual aircraft carrier or helicopter carrier unit. Can't have a fleet without that. Definitely require a minimum size for the fleet though so that people don't spam armies of tiny fleets.

I think you will need 2 custom fleet types though, one that can accommodate Navy Fighter Planes + Aircraft Carrier, and another that can accommodate Navy Helicopters + Helicopter Carrier.

That to me would solve the biggest problem of the navy, which is not enough offensive power to match the garrisons. Allowing players to customize would open the door to having more offensive power in your fleets at the cost of some defensive ability, which I would be completely comfortable with.

What size fleet were you thinking? I think 1000-1200 weapons would be a good number, what are your thoughts?

To do something tangible in war you would still need hundreds of fleets, but having in mind that you need to navigate them through th oceans it is too cumbersome. I think fleets should at least contain 15-20k of each weapons but could only use 1000-1500 when attacking, the same with defence.

Quite a difference of opinions on the size.

A carrier has a number of navy fighters that is similar, to the number in a fighters wing.

If you want many, you will need many carriers.

Having a navy with 50 air wings means that huge military power will be able to move everywhere and you have no idea what will appear suddenly close to your country out of nowhere.

Moving very large numbers of weapons in this way should not be trivial.

we could however increase the number of aircraft on a carriers.

Also in general, increase the number of weapons per ship to reduce the number of ships needed.

The problem seems to be in the minimum number required.
currently you cannot use zero weapons of any type.
I will look into that.

max number will remain but may be larger than now. 15.000 weapons goes very far and makes navies too powerful. we had that in the past.

I do agree that we sho

Let's do that step by step.

I think a navy should be around the same size of a land division. That way whether you go navy or land, its the same number of clicking.

I would be fine with larger units as long as everything is proportional. I dont think navies should be 20k size if land units are still stuck at 1.5k.

I dont think we need to be concerned about what numbers are realistic. The most important thing is balance and gameplay. Sim country is not a realistic world. Everything is supersized in this game, so large units dont worry me. As long as it is fair and fun I am happy.

No problem.

we will make a first step (this week) and see what you think.

Just to explain my logic of the numbers i proposed. In my mind fleet is like a moving base. If i need to start a war far away i have two options - get land base near my target or to move my fleet near the target. I don't want all 20k weapons to participate in a single attack but only the much smaller number which is ok not to make this super power.

There is a time window before war starts after it is being declared, so there is no suprice factor here.

I would propose the same approach with land/ air units to reduce amount of units and clicks needed while number of weapons participating in attack doesn't change.

Mndz I can get behind larger units to reduce clicking as long as it’s across the board. Land air and Navy. One problem however is if you can only use 1000 to attack, Defense will be too strong because you could stack the large units with big defences. If you go large units to reduce clicks I would think you would need to increase the 1000 attack limit proportionally.

John, all depends on numbers I guess, to balance it right.

Can we add marines?

The strategic navy unit is now 40% larger.
we will experiment with it.

currently, I see no reason to add a new navy unit.

we have seals units.

The navy is not used in large numbers.
there is talk about using it.
we will wait and see.

Andy you are my hero. Navies are useful once again. They are comparable with their land based counterparts now, with two very appropriate caveats: 1) they are more expensive, and 2) they must be pre-deployed as ships do not fit in space shuttles. This is the perfect balance of paying a higher price for the flexibility that navies provide.

I will be testing out some navy deployments very soon and let you know if any issues come up.

In reality, there aren't more than 20 or so aircraft carriers in the world. Is there a way to have carriers, or other larger ships become more significant? They get wiped out rather quickly for large, powerful vessels. I guess this is where I think having "hit points" per larger ship, sustaining damage that could later be repaired. This would remove the "all or nothing" approach when using large weapons such as a massive ship the size of a small city. Just a musing of mine..

I have no evidence of carriers being easy targets.
we probably need to test it again.

they are well protected by many missiles.
need to have it reevaluated before we jump to conclusions.

but if they are to easy to destroy, there is a lot that can be done.
they should not be invincible and if you check, their price is also much lower than ever before.

Carriers in the past were not an easy target but the last time I had them is a long time ago perhaps things have changed.

I think the carriers will be balanced now. With 1412 weapons per fleet, they are comparable to the 1510 weapons in a long range division. They should be able to hold their own in a fight now. The higher price of the weapons is fair given the flexibility you get with fleets.

Small bug report, when building your fleet it always says this in red at the bottom of the build screen "You do not have the required weapons for this unit". Even when you have the max number of units it says this, but it has no effect. Even though the next button is greyed out you can still click it and form the fleet.

I saw this message and saw some numbers of weapons and ammo that were under the max needed.
when I purchased everything needed, the message was not there any more.

also look at the materials at the bottom. these too could cause this.

I will check anyway.

I know what is causing it. If you choose to include 0 of some weapon types, it flags it as being below the default levels and gives the warning at the bottom. It doesn't stop you from building the fleet though at least so it's really a minor issue.

Another navy bug discovered. Fleets are only visible on the map to countries that border the owner of the fleet. If I move my fleet over to your country on LU Andy, you wont see it on your map. I believe the reason this happens is because the fleet only shows its position as coordinates and not what country it is near like other units do. Because it only shows coordinates I believe the game assumes it is in its home country so it wont display the fleet on maps of distant countries.

For clarity. My fleet is off the coast of The Pinktator Memorial, but it can only be see by countries bordering the Fountainhead. You can see it from Atlas Shrugged on big map but not The Pinktator Memorial because Atlas borders the home country of the fleet.

Can we look into making seal units attack land units as well?

Some Suggestions For Improving Navies After Experimenting

1) I think supply ships should not be an offensive weapon, but rather should be a commodity like trucks in order to be more fairly balanced with land forces. Supply ships cost quite a bit of manpower, whereas trucks cost nothing.

2) Navies should always be visible on the map, regardless of what country you are currently selected on. I'm not sure how much of an impact this would have on processing power, but I don't imagine it would be too bad because the number of navies in the game is never very large. These are important weapons that shouldn't be invisible to other players given that they are able to move anywhere on the map.

3) I think gasoline and supply use should be toned down a bit. Some of my fleets use 6 million gasoline per month.

I agree, fleets should use cheap nuclear power.