Ways to make Sea Fun

From Norm's Sea Aesthetics post, I decided to make a post dedicated to the gameplay changes of sea.

Sea has seemed to be one of the worse aspects of zero-k since.. forever. Many times I've seen sea orientated maps get !map'ed due to "balance issues" but that may not be the real issue here. The real issue with sea may be the lack of interesting game play. Its bland. Rymarq's balance stuff may one day take the unbalancedness out of sea, but it still leaves the issue of a lackluster gameplay element. Sea games aren't interesting or fun. They're mostly all the same with a different face. Spam ducks, spam scallops, spam this, spam that. Unlike land battles, there's not a lot of interesting units to make sea feel fun or exciting. So what can we do to change that? What would make sea fun to play?

My 2c:
Sea is bound to be less interesting tha land due to terrain (or rather, lack thereof). The surface is always flat and 99% of existing water maps also have flat oceanfloors.

Current sea isn't interesting partially due to Duck monoculture. Amph has no real underwater counter to Duck (apart from own Ducks, but that obviously doesn't count). Since there are only 2 amphs that can fire underwater (Duck & Scallop) there can be no RPS triangle. Therefore, some third amph needs to be able to fight submerged. Now, Archer overlaps with Scallop on land (riot), seems kinda crappy when floating (low range, immobile, targetable by surface weapons) and is useless underwater (can't even shoot). Why not make Archer the underwater Duck counter?

Considering Archer has water-based weaponry and has a water tank, I came up with two ideas:

1) Make it create waves in the water, Outlaw style.
+ completes the underwater RPS triangle
+ gives an obsolete unit a role
+ easy to implement (steal Outlaw)
+ can have different effects to Outlaw (dunno, prolly impulse like the land guns?) to make it unique instead of an Outlaw clone
+ somewhat interesting (Outlaw mechanic doesn't exist in the sea yet)
+ fluff-wise makes sense
+ could be made to work with the water tank mechanic
-/+ won't affect land (I don't want to touch land but apparently Amph kinda sucks there)
- affects surface balance somewhat - at low depth and when floating up waves can reach sufrace
- Archer already has interesting mechanics (the water tank)

2) Give it the ability to "overload water tank" or something, basically a self-d dgun.
+ completes the underwater RPS triangle
+ gives an obsolete unit a role
+ can work with the tank mechanic (damage proportional to tank: makes sure it's at full power underwater for anti-Duck while limiting how it affects land)
+ can be made to also work outside of ability on normal death/self-D if needed
+ fluff-wise makes sense
+/- affects surface (through use while floating) and land but in an interesting way (creates a decision: use as a bomb for burst damage and lose the unit, or keep shooting waterjet for DPS and drain the tank?)
+/- unit that is both a dedicated kamikaze and a normal damage dealer is unprecedented (well, there's Panther self-D that can be used as an improvised Tick but that's not its dedicated role)
- cannot be fully automated so is micro sink. Probably an on/off toggle for self-D autocast would be good enough for that purpose though
- Archer already has interesting mechanics
- harder to implement

I have become Neon, poster of terrible ideas... anyway, as you can see, both ideas have a ton of downsides, but the main upside is that an existing unit is given a role in a domain where it's otherwise useless without the need for a new one. RyMarq wants to introduce a new dedicated anti-Duck amph (most likely Limpet-like) which is probably more elegant but lacks this upside:
+ completes the underwater RPS triangle
+ assets (model etc.) already exist (Limpet) so super easy to implement
+ leaves other amphs' balance intact
+ can use effects not present on existing bombs (to be unique and interesting, and not just a swimming Roach) like disarm, impulse or slow (though slow started being kinda overused already)
+/- affects land
- amph already has roles filled on land, so a new unit might introduce obsolescence; an oceanfloor bomb will also be useless vs ships unless it also floats (which might generally be a good idea, but then it makes ships even worse vs amph)
- bomb might be problematic to counter without changing other stuff: amph lacks accurate long-range weapons and it'd be able to be prematurely set off by sending a forward Duck, reversing the counter relationship

Having RPS is vital to an interesting gameplay because it requires you to mix units, counter, scout for enemy composition and react etc. instead of spam monoculture.

Honestly? Making sea interesting solves the wrong problem.

Big oceans are basically a different game from main ZK. I don't want to play that game, I want to play ZK.

Unfeature all maps that have a big "must-cross" ocean. Sea must be a sideshow, never the main course.

Then improve the Shipyard to get greater interaction with land. More drones, ability to build land-units from ships, stuff like that.

Make sea combat itself simple, because it's the side-show. Something you can explain to a new player in 30 seconds. Instead, ZK sea is even more complicated than ZK land. with the additional list of which weapons can fire into water, plus the perverse rules for sonar.

The issue with removing sea only maps from that map pool is that it slows down feedback and refining of Sea.

quote: The issue with removing sea only maps from that map pool is that it slows down feedback and refining of Sea.

That's a point I suppose. Well since it's only a few maps it's not a big deal... And those maps usually get skipped when they come up.

Edit:

quote: ...plus the perverse rules for sonar.

Agreed, sonar is needless complication and mechanic clutter.

What I'd like to see is that ships are the usual choice in water like in earlier times while amphibs are viable as well, especially if there is some land. Ships are more interesting to play than pure Duck/Scallop spam, especially when there are not only torpedo firing ships, but also above water firing ones.. Even more interesting is a certain diversity of unit TYPES interacting with each other. Maybe one or another unit with a nice role and not a torpedo weapon could be added.

Typhoon, Hunter and Snake form a triangle for ships vs ships and should cost exactly the same imo. Amphibs may need a better way than Duck/Scallop to deal with Hunter, because Hunter should be effective against them. Maybe Duck/Scallop should be nerfed against Hunter and Buoy used against Hunter.

For Hovers, Amphib-Hover interaction has already been increased. Imo Claymore should be removed and Halberd given (not too strong) Torpedo Launcher or its normal weapon could be given the ability to fire in water.

There should also be more sea/land interaction like in supcom. (Supcom doesn't have high variety of amphib bots or buildings though.) In supcom, if sea is lost, the coast is lost, too. This can be done with a (much) more accurate destroyer and a long range tactical missile cruiser.

And Sonar should have a range of at least 1100.

It would seem more fun and interesting than current sea.

I wonder what people would eventually come up with against the Duck spam with if balance wasn't touched. Valkyries dropping Roaches into water, naval mine style? Terraform oceanfloor walls so Ducks can't path? Planting Pylons as crude mines (they have powerful self-D explosion. Protoss imba)? Smurfing Outlaws?

Old buggy Smurfboard was broken as hell but at least it was more interesting than mindless Duck spaem

but Leviathan is still useless. It's not even able to fire sea targets. (bug already reported)