General sea discussion

It seems to be the common opinion that sea is inferior-ZK and much less worth playing. This is an unfortunate state of affairs.

Personally I think the current state of sea is an improvement on much that has come before (Duck meta, anyone?) but still frequently makes for boring and samey games.

The following is not the sum total of my thoughts about sea but it will do for a start. Much more would become super wall-of-texty. Might add more later once these points have been digested.

Is it even possible to do sea well?

Sea has two fundamental properties that land does not:
1) The surface of the sea is flat. The terrain is much less interesting.
2) Land battles have two domains (land and air) [?]; sea battles have three to four (water surface, under water, air, and sometimes land).

1) just tends to make many sea battles the same, an effect which is further pushed by the comparative lack of variety in sea options. Some sea maps are exceptions; in my experience Flooded Valley typically makes for interesting games.

2) leads to less units in each factory being applicable to each of the combat domains. The majority of sea-going units are totally helpless against an underwater threat, for instance, which forces you to escort everything with something that can hit subs.

The second issue is less of a concern on maps like Onyx Cauldron which incorporate bits of water; Ship is not relevant here and both Amph and Hover can affect the land and water surface equally.

Underwater Defences

Part of the way in which land games deal with the separation between land and air domains is by putting most of the complexity in ground-to-air units in static defences, which all factories have equal access to. This means that each factory can get away with only 1-2 units which significantly interact with air, without feeling too shortchanged in their capability to deal with diverse air threats.

At sea, each factory has a similar (slightly larger) handful of units which interact with underwater enemies:
- Dagger, Claymore
- Duck, Scallop
- Snake, Hunter, Crusader sidearm, technically Serpent

However, there's all of two defensive structures which interact with underwater units (Urchin and Gauss); furthermore Gauss is largely an afterthought and can't even be built on sea surface [?].

This means that Urchin has to be very much a generalist, to be able to handle Duck, Scallop and Snake (plus possibly Buoy, Grizzly, whatever) [?]. By working with Gauss (making it buildable on sea would be a start) and possibly adding another anti-sub defence, I think it would then be feasible to make Urchin less generalist, introduce an element of actual choice in deciding what defences to make at sea, and taking a bit of the burden off the individual factories' anti-sub units.

(Incidentally I am also not a fan of Urchins being buildable outside water. Leads to some very wonky interactions with Amph factory, especially with benefit of terraform.)

Sea Map Design

As noted above I find Flooded Valley much more interesting than most sea maps. Perhaps more small sea maps are required. The design space is limited but surely there's more than one or two maps in it. Sands of War is OKish, I'm not a huge fan of Coastal.

Maps with two seas divided by a land bridge (Small Supreme Battlefield and Tangerine come to mind) tend to play very wonky unless one is playing with a very large team (8v8 upwards) since the three separate fronts have difficulty reinforcing each other; a mismatch on one side translates direcly into a win in a way the same situation on Comet Catcher would not.

Please tell me I just got Poe's law-ed.

I think it's more of a design problem than a balance one. Sure, you could tweak the numbers on the current situation some, but I don't know that it would make sea much more fun.

My opinion has always been that sea should be a side-show to the land main-course. Get rid of any naval-dominant maps and find a way to make land-labs have some activity on the sea. Get rid of sonar, force more amphibs to surface when firing, and add some boats and subs to the building list so every lab can build them. The ship lab, if it should exist at all, should focus on inland fire-support.

I think that rather than creating alternative units for use underwater, we should just make existent units multifunctional. It's a shitty feel when half the units in your fac don't really work on a sea map. It makes for games where you feel you don't have many options. Entire amph game is basically mex+tidal+urchin+conch+duck+scallop. Sometimes you get to make buoys too. This is on top of maps having no features. There's just less decisions to make.

Hypothetical examples:
Nobody likes claymore on land or mace in sea -> make them one unit.

Archer is bad in water -> give it the skirmisher portion from old scallop.

Fusion is pointless in sea since tidal is better in every way -> make it more efficient when submerged (because like science or something).

Grizz and buoy are sort of exactly the same in water -> give grizzly something else to do like submerged melee attack

Solars can't be built in water -> flip them over as buoyant platforms to build on top of

Gauss can't be built in water -> make it both buildable and functional when submerged, but maybe cut regen/armor

Scalpel no good on water -> don't change a thing

Also urchins should not be allowed to be built on land. It's worse than skydust because even a small spire makes it invincible.

Well no... But if there are other changes made then yes.

If nothing can kill a submerged gauss with no armor/regen, there is something seriously wrong with unit diversity in sea.


I guess raven, or shielded scallops.

I picked on Gauss because at least presently it can attack underwater. Also note the following:

quote: and possibly adding another anti-sub defence

I can't picture Stinger, Faraday or Stardust being modified in a way that would make them shooting underwater make sense.

I don't think that adding more specialist turrets to see will instantly make sea good, but I think that Urchin being generically good against everything is one of [?] the things holding sea back.

I don't see why you say this:

quote: You would need about as many sea-variant turrets as you currently have land-variants, and that's a LOT.

quote: I think the reason sea has been wrecked for years now is the Amph factory.

A point which has merit IMO.

My personal neonstorm is to make Buoy move by floating and remain stationary while submerged. That would make its role very distinct from Grizzly, and give a bit of room to nerf Duck and Scallop (maybe even remove the underwater attack of one of them entirely) without totally ruining sea.

(Neonstorm mark 2: make Duck able to move while submerged or floating but only able to shoot while floating.) [?]

With changes like these that reduce the problematic aspects of underwater units, more defensive structures might not be required.

EDIT: Today I learned that tooltips cannot into apostrophes.

RyMarq was recently spotted watching replays and commenting that people have no idea how to play sea. So i'll concede that my observations are probably rooted in incompetent meta.

Terraurchins lose to one Crusader, and then you have the unkillable (except with roach drops) death-blob marching on you again. Basically, i think terraurchins are at most a speedbump for the dread machine.

Hunters might be better but in my experience they aren't that stellar. Again, maybe incompetent enemies. Or a side effect of everything being halfblind.

Roach drop being a counter is interesting. Someone finally found a real use for the Ghetto Wyvern!

Yes but the shields extend their supremacy somewhat, making them resistant to their would-be counters.

I would like to see Rymarqs idea of how its played and compare to how it works in practice.

IT jsut lacks veriety.. It's borign and monotonious.. And what rly broke it, in my oppinion, was making eveyr unit interfere with every. Like, torpedos hitting hovers, gauss hitting subs etc...