Sea balance idea rant.

Fuck it, bullet points.

-scallops should be nerfed, remove additional DPS from torpedos. only flechett, revert flechett damage nerf,
-shotgun can fire through water. this means coms have a water weapon, support and recon. scallops float to fire shotgun, corsair can work as a raider/riot against any unit in the sea now with it's shotguns.
-siren. I hate siren. remove the 'riot' role, give it a plasma cannon like ravager that can fire through the water. Make the artillry piece a dgun so that unit AI works properly and I can focus fire them. make the plasma cannon special so that it can fire potshots at underwater targets: waterweapon=true. fast enough to hit a bobing grizly, slow enough to miss ducks.

Anything with a raider role can fire from underwater. anything with a riot role or higher must surface to fire and be suceptable to skirmishers.

I don't know what happens to torp boat with an allfireing corsair. I don't know how scalpel works against float to fire. bouy looks to be a really strong skirmisher that noone uses, with slow as well as 60HPS regen and the ability to bob underwater. I thnk I would have more use for it if retreat at 66% hp to repair would work like this for bouy: when blow HP threashold, drop to seafloor and do not fire. When above 66% act normal. Most float to fire units have big unit AI problems relating to the lack of ability to move when floating and attack range. Grizly has this longstanding problem where it can get stuck on fightmove on the seafloor with an attack command on a surface target.

I don't like how amph can dominate the meta by using underwater, on water, and air with just lobster and scallop. https://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/904202 everything else seems useless and this seems like an un-automateable task, opposite of zero-k design.

to be added.

Ships are useless after early game. As soon penetrators come up paired with scallops or even without ships are lost.

Honestly, Siren doesn't need the Impaler sidearm. Just give Envoy a trajectory toggle for dealing with stuff on cliffs.

I've been playing around with quickmodding in bot games and I've been turning the Siren into an actual Riot/Assault, using the starburst as a shorter-ranged homing assault weapon and the sonic as a proper riot weapon.

Sea needs a significant edge to be worth using ever, given that it cannot go on land. Hovers and amphibious bots can. It will never be worthwhile investing on sea as anything more than a support factory as long as you can get the same return with hovers/amphibious bots, because you can use them on land as well. Sea doesn't currently give you anything irreplaceable. You need speed or range, hovers can give you that. You need power, amphibious bots gives you that better.

I have also observed the unit AI problems with buoyant units. If they cannot be fixed, maybe the game should move away from this concept. I personally don't find buoyant units intuitive in the first place anyways, with the exception of the AA unit as it has a very good intuitive reason for doing what it does (it surprises aircraft).

I feel like amphibious bots shouldn't really be designed to fight on the sea. Maybe a few sidearms, maybe a bot designed to harass ships underwater, but it shouldn't be a factory theme. I feel like they should be amphibious assault specialists/specialists of exploring the land-sea boundary to deal damage and escape into the sea to avoid retaliation.

Making amphibious bots a capable force underwater has always had the problem of shifting the focus of water combat into the underwater realm, which is not very interesting because it doesn't interact much with the rest of the game. Making them buoyant has not done much to solve that issue.

It doesn't help that there are few units that can shot underwater across the board. Hover only has two, neither of which is particularly good. Dagger is too tiny to be of much use in frontline combat, Claymore is too gimmicky to be the only real option.

Edit: A thought occurred to me: I'd like to see what sea would look like if scallop could not fire in water at all. Scallop is the underpinning of the whole underwater dominance of sea. Without it firing in water, amphibious bots would be relegated to support fac in open sea but would still be useful, and ships/hovers would have a lot more room to breathe.

quote: but would still be useful

Then submarines would become the go to spam unit. Or worse: failing that, the game would devolve into cloak balls in sea as we've seen before. I don't think fighting cloak balls in sea is particularly fun.

Maybe the ships could become heavy tank like? Higher weight, some units gain an extra role, and perhaps some different weaponry?

Lobster could be more costly and that might help reduce the effectiveness of scallop-lobster.

Scallops shouldn't be able to launch torpedoes while airborne.

we need a new unit to rescue sinking ship factory...
I have already a idea and draw the model!

it saves our souls
better
it saves our seafarers



* it shoots long range torpedoes and was removed for the sake of sea balance some time ( maybe 2 years? ) ago. It was called sniper sub. Monospam with some cover units was kinda win for sea, likely how sea loses to lances now.

Serpent kind of looks like an ekranoplan, just saying...

quote: we need a new unit to rescue sinking ship factory... I have already a idea and draw the model!