Feature request: remove sea maps from !map rotation

Would be great to remove all/most of sea maps from !map rotation, leaving an ability to manually vote for any sea map with !votemap [blah-blah-blah] unless sea will be properly balanced.

Update from 17.06.2014
What I suggest to do for a proper sea:
- make aspis/eraser able to go sea
- make roache/tick/scuttle/ultimatum swims and be invisible under eraser
This itself will open a couple of new strategies and make game more interesting
(screening heavy units, proper micro, not just retarded reefs spam)
- cloaked units should be invisible inside water the same they are on land
- heavy striders should be able to walk sea like land with lower speed without ability to use weapons(dante, bantha, scorpi, detri)
I'd like to keep the current detriment design: an ability to hit underwater units, as an exception for this unit - the most powerful strider in the game.

- I'd like to see sea commanders back(torpedo), why we can use coms on land but we can't on water? Looks like synthetic limitation.
If they are too OP, swimming scuttles, roaches and ticks or even an ultimatum, give ability to deal with them easily.

Going next:
- completely remove or hugely nerf anti nuke subs(half their anti/radius, or double their cost, or give them 50% probability of missing nuke, or whatever else you find an appropriate nerf).
I'd rather see them completely wiped from the game. We already have reef and at least it's possible to counter it. Subs can sit deeply behind porc lines, making it totally impossible to identify them and counter. Game turns into boring porc-fest. On this stages of land game we use nukes/emp silo combo to cleanup area and give an ability to push further.

Now having anti nuke sub completely block nukes, sea also have reef. Land has NOTHING of this. This is huge disproportion between land/sea.

Regarding current hover/sea balance:
hovers hitting subs and subs hitting hovers is just silly in my opinion. I do not like this change and want things back. Hovers supposed to fly above water...
Hovers supposed to seamlessly counter pure urchins spam, yes this is additional complexity in sea, but this makes game richer and smarter.

I'd keep in maps that include water as a gameplay element, but maps where water is expected to be a major focus of the game (IE maps where there is no land-bridge between the two bases or the land-bridge is so narrow that all units on it are vulnerable to Crusader fire) are not fun, and they're not getting better.

Maps tend to be extremes, either pure land or pure sea. Very few maps have a small lake in the middle or something that would make picking amphibs justifiable while keeping other factories usable.

quote: there is no work on it at the moment

...because the Devs aren't getting any helpful feedback - as noone plays sea maps

So, suggestions to improve sea balance? What's the thing that making it so bad? Torps hitting hovers? Horrible aegis/aspis spam? Only 3 factory choices? Or are the sea maps just designed poorly?

Interesting to see your specific suggestions. And here's some of my own comments:

quote: make aspis/eraser able to go sea

These units are amphibious. And their immobile counterparts are buildable on water. They can morph to each other on water as well.

[quote]make roaches/ticks/scuttles/ultimatum swim and be invisible under eraser[quote]
The crawling bombs are excellent and fun units. However, I'm not sure having a few units from random land facs able to go sea would be enough - perhaps sea facs could get their own units using mechanics like this.

Also, what do you mean by swimming? Walk on sea bottom or swim on surface?

quote: cloaked units should be invisible inside water the same they are on land

Cloaking at sea could indeed make it much more interesting. However, cloaked underwater units might prove annoying and problematic, so this would probably require some extra balancing efforts afterwards.

quote: heavy striders should be able to walk sea like land with lower speed without ability to use weapons(dante, bantha, scorpi, detri)

Why not, I suppose. It would be consistent to have all striders be amphibious, and I can't see it massively changing the overall balance, for the worse at least. Only worry would be, that scorpion would become a unit able to go anywhere on any map. Currently there is no such unit apart from recon commander. But I don't think this'd make scorpion OP or anything.

quote: I'd like to see sea commanders back(torpedo)

Commanders (lvl5) have their own set of problems, and imo it's best to keep commanders unable to fight at sea, if at all possible, until people are satisfied with sea balance as a whole.

quote: Now having anti nuke sub completely block nukes, sea also have reef. Land has NOTHING of this. This is huge disproportion between land/sea.

Indeed, sea is pretty much immune to nukes, which removes the stalemate-busting power of nukes from the game. Easiest way to make sea play the same as land in this regard would be to remove antinuke from Reef and Leviathan, and make Protector buildable on water (floating).

However, it might be even better to look at the things that make mid/lategame sea a boring porcfest and address those issues. Like perhaps looking at making shields unusable at water again (shields used to unbuildable on water and get disabled underwater, and I don't think anyone complained about this).

quote: Hovers supposed to seamlessly counter pure urchins spam, yes this is additional complexity in sea, but this makes game richer and smarter.

I gotta agree, hovers being immune to torpedoes was interesting and gave hovers a distinct role in sea battles.

But I don't think it's impossible to balance sea to be fun even with torps being able to hit hovers.

quote: Okay, my suggestions to make sea better experience.

Engage neon gun.

I like torps hitting hovers. Imho, it's not the big problem with sea.

My problem with sea is

1) Water opacity. Half the water settings make it impossible to distinguish submerged Amphibs from surface Amphibs, and the other half make it impossible to see amphibs on the ocean floor.

2) The land/sea disconnect. Many sea maps feel like we're playing two separate games on the same map.

3) Minimal interaction between Ships and land units. Crusader is the only one that can project force inland, but it's low trajectory so it relies on very flat beaches... but the rare cases where it can be used it feels completely OP.

4) Torpedo launchers. I appreciate that they're OP by design, but it's frustrating that amphibs have so few options short of the Grizzly for assaulting them, meanwhile Crusaders make incredibly short work of them.

5) The whole nature of the "one underwater weapon" means it's such a hard-countery environment. This is improving now with the underwater weapons going on the Hovers, but still - it's not good.

quote: But pillager is always at risk of being counterattacked when firing, whereas this bombardment ship would be able to happily sit some way from shore, safe from most land units. Maybe this would be too hard to deal with.

Just make it a sea Impaler then. There's even a quite fitting model i think (Daimyo).

(And rip out Reef cruise missile while screaming Quant's Law)

Change Reefs epix-merl-like missle into abiility to make planes and viola! Quant's Law is met again