Would this idea improve maps that mix land and water?

A ship-carrying flying unit that would cost around 250-400. It would move and turn slowly because I still want ships to be limited in terms of movement. Its speed should be reduced further when the load is very heavy. However, the unit being carried would be able to fire.

The new unit would have no weapons and I think it should be encased in heavy armor because avoiding damage would be challenging. One could have the gunship factory build it, but it doesn't have anything that could be picked up.

I need to know more. What would you carry, and why?

What would be the exact reason to build this unit.... if you could just use lobster instead?

Manu12

The amphibious bot factory isn't always available. Its high HP would probably be useful and it could fly at a high altitude too. I think there would be much less micromanagement after one has picked every ship up.

However, I admit the level of similarity is slightly uncomfortable.

This sounds like a solid take for an even less elegant solution than ivory's mantra of "give ships legs!".

please bring flying lobster back

What do you even need a flying ship for? if you need transport there's lobster and GS, if you need firepower there's 9 other land facs to choose from. if you need ZKness there's terraform. hell, build starligh and build a canel with it!

I agree that ships feel like they need some kind of balance change, especially against amphibs. But I don't think that giving ships their own 'lobster' is going to make the interaction more enjoyable for non-troll players.

Its not usually good play, but I suspect flying ships would also not usually be good play.

If you have long-range ships such as envoys or shogun lying around uselessly in a sea that has won its battle long ago, and they somehow don't have enough range to contribute to the current land fight, throwing them on land can be a good idea since you already have them anyways. However, our maps are not that big and the sea maps usually have fairly dominating seas, so this situation seems unlikely.

For the same reason, if the ship carrier was a niche unit, it would probably see very little use. If it was good enough to make ships effective on land, it would trivialize the shipness of ships, so we might as well have walking ships.

That is a good point, and its a pattern observed not just in Zero-K but RTS in general.

I sometimes ponder what Zero-K would look like if we mostly removed sea play and let sea just be an obstacle, maybe with terraforming costs underwater greatly increased so that creating/removing your own sea is expensive.

To make the battles to airlift/bomb things over sea more interesting, a third air factory would be added, which would have aircraft even bigger and slower than gunships. Maybe blimp-style or capital-ship style.

...which I guess loops back to the idea on this thread, but having dedicated flying ships makes more sense than having sea ships that can become flying ships with help from a different unit, I feel.