I'll be honest rockets and artillery can't move and shoot because they have to secure the vehicle before shooting, a battlecruiser is heavy enought to laugh at that, so in my opinion instead of 7 range I would leave it at 6 and allow it to move and shoot in the same turn like in Days of Ruin. But the rest of the changes he did I like them, but cruisers should be able to hit land too.
you get the words of my mouth, I was thinking about the improving of naval, and it was one of the ideas I've got... Maybe, you should get a small range of movement that they can move and shot, and if you wish to move the complete distance, you cannot do that.
@@projectpitchfork860 SPGs have to sit still to aim, in contrast to tanks having stabilizers that allows for fire on the move. I think the best I've seen so far was like, 5 sec to stop and shoot.
@@lupvirga No. An SPG drives into position and aimes and fires in a few secounds. Same for an SPRL. A howitzer first needs to be detachted from the towing vehicle and takes longer to set up.
I find it interesting that naval units in Wargroove were so powerful that if a map had water you pretty much disregard all land units and just try to fight for control of the sea.
I think going the days of ruin approach with the battleship is the better way to fix that one, because MAN a mobile indirect is some crazy stuff that can justify the cost if you use it well. I also kind of want to see the DOR carrier, though with a lower cost to build the seaplanes since its already putting in a huge investment for the boat. Of course I'm also biased because days of ruin was my first game in the series. Aside from that, I like these changes, especially the pitch for the destroyer. May be something worth trying to jam into a romhack.
Days of Ruin simply "ruins" the rest of the series. The improvements and tweaks were incredible and it's easily the most fun game out of all of them. Feels like it's less about magic powers and more about commanders leading their forces.
I also love the DoR aircraft carriers. Though I would say they were a tad overpriced and too slow. I think to improve them we should have them start out with a sea plane already inside when they are build and to off-set this we should make their cost 30.000. The sea planes themselves are fine but they should perhaps cost 14k instead. I think those tweaks are all that's needed.
This whole discussion, is the reason why I made my custom CO entry. I made some heavy calculations and came to the conclusion that the fairer price change to all naval units was close to -30%. This is: Battleships costing 19,600g; Submarines 14,000g; Cruisers 12,600g; Landers 8,400; This made it possible for them to be more viable against Air Units. I also agree with increasing the defense and offense of Cruisers to Air Units. Finally giving Cruisers the ability to temporarily attack on land, and Battleships to attack on Air, made both units quite more useful. Upon playtesting my CO against air specialists and S tier COs, I came to the conclusion that indeed, just a simple price reduction to them made them viable against the rest of the units of the game. Of course haters will always repeat the mantra that 'Naval Units suck and you should invariably hate them'
@@ColdEmperor The gunboat from Days of Ruins is cool, can transport 1 infantry/mech and has a 1 ammo shot with similar power of a tank. They trade great with other naval units and you can always return them to a provisional port for reloads on the front 7 move and costs 6K It works as a good way to roll out infantry accross water and works as disposable damage once you no longer need it. Vision is 2 but it still works for scouting thanks to the movement
@@LunarSage69and it also works the other way. A tank won’t be stopped by a battle copter in the air and a sub won’t be stopped by one guy sitting on a bridge.
@@SuperDestroyerFox Since the units are entire squadrons and the tiles can be whole cities or forests, a friendly unit being unable to walk through an enemy unit is a simple matter of "if they did, they would enter combat". In that sense, attacking the tile in front of you would be the only possible command for the purpose of "passing through" those units.
@@SuperDestroyerFox Mostly in the sense of that tile being an area in which the two armies wouldn't want their units to be so close to each other, even if they cannot directly attack. Since some tiles can be entire cities, there really isn't anything physical preventing an ally tank from passing through an enemy tank, but it makes sense that they wouldn't from a strategic perspective, as it would be the equivalent of dribbling a ball past 4 guys with them just standing there.
Historically, and also currently, destroyers are extremely effective at hunting submarines. I think that since you want the submarine to be priced at 10000, and the destroyer to be 8000, having the destroyer do base 80% damage to surfaced submarines and 100% base damage to submerged submarines, is fair.
I think he'd rather rename that ship to something the missile boat from days of ruin before making the counter cheaper and more versatile than the submarine.
@@MrMarinus18 frigate is a weird term. It describes very different ships depending on time period and country, so it's very hard to lock down what a frigate is or should be, especially in the sense of a video game where the units are mostly fictitious anyway.
I would lean into the elements. Make the cruiser, destroyer, and frigate be similar ships with slightly different naval specialities. Frigate is generic allrounder, the sea tank. While cruiser can fight naval unit and land units, they specialise in fighting air units. Destroyers can fight very well, but mainly specialise against subs, either being able to detect them stealthed in a certain range or have a power to force them to surface with a depth charge power. The depth charge power could be blind and cost ammo or fuel to use, meaning destroyers players would need to predict where subs are to get them to surface. A well predicted depth charge can spell doom for a sub, while poor prediction can spell doom for the destroyer. Subs could be improved if while submerged, they could pass under enemy naval units while moving(though attacking reveals them), but automatically surface if going onto sholes. They would need to spend a action to resubmerge in open waters. Adding more stuff to advanced wars naval roster would help. For cheap less durable naval unit options, the torpedo boat could serve as naval infantry/mech equivalent. Lower ammo for its anti sub and naval weapons and very easily destroyed, but quick on the water and can punch hard into naval units if they get the first strike(with their torpedos). Resupplying ammo and fuel at sea would be the unarmed tug boat, the weaker cousin to the black boat(since it cannot repair). With a suitable roster, and the changes mangs suggested, naval battles could be a very viable front with lots of moving parts. Tugs flitting about the map trying to supply key groups and resupply each others, while ships duke it out at sea, cruisers sweeping in to knock off air units, while destroyers hunt for the elusive subs that are harassing the tugs and landers, frigates clash and the battleship bombards the enemy from afar. Meanwhile torpedo boats are pulling hit and run attacks against naval units where they can.
I never thought about adding a Destroyer! That's a great idea! However, I also really loved the cruiser in Dual Strike. I actually thought their price wasn't too bad. If I would have to choose between the Destroyer and the cruiser, I think I would choose the cruiser with a few adjustments of course.
they kinda have that unit already in DoR called gun boat, very cheap to build, but it only has 1 ammo. only if that thing has at least 4 ammo instead with a bit adjustment to reduce its fire power.
Though I think he should rename it to a frigate since that is what it is. The game already has a destroyer which is the incorrectly named 'cruiser'. The 'cruiser' is a destroyer in every way. Destroyers were lightly armored ships made mainly to fight against air units and subs. Cruisers in reality were more so budget battleships that were meant to fight other ships of similar or smaller size. If they are going to add a frigate maybe adding a proper cruiser would be good as well. It would dominate most naval units and maybe have the unique ability to shoot directly after moving and shoot indirectly if standing still. It would dominate frigates and destroyers but be vulnerable to subs and crushed by battleships and bombers.
@@MrMarinus18 In super famicom wars, where the cruiser original comes from, it was called an 'escort frigate' in the Japanese. That name of course, doesn't have enough room to fit on the english localization of advance wars.
The battleship fix will actually make the battleship deployable. Yet I have to disagree on the submarine's fixed price because it is too low, on practice this will cause an all naval combat that will mostly end up on a stalemate due to the waters being uncrossable now.
I doubt people are just going to spam naval units to keep control of the seas like that. The most important combat happens on land, spamming subs just to keep control of the seas sounds like a terrible idea. It's like saying people would spam fighters to keep control of the skies(which are more valuable than the sea). But no one actually does that because you're better off spending on ground units
@@rompevuevitos222 you're missing a very valuable piece of information there, doc. Fighters cost 20k, Subs with this hypothetical fix would cost 10k, half as much. Also, for air units you have access to anti air, which is just as good as the fighter at warding off helicopters if not better since it's cheaper and thus more cost effective. The only time a Fighter for it's insane pricetag would be considered necessary is if a bomber enters the fray which decimates anti air, and even then Fighrers are cheaper than Bombers so they're still a cost effective response. There is however no cheaper way to counter a sub, cruisers are 4k more expensive in this patch which would make them cost ineffective at hunting subs which is the only thing they have going for them currently. Thus subs would have free reign over the ocean as long as they have a minimal amount of anti-cruiser support.
I like the destroyer idea. However, giving it 6 vision would be too much, as the submarine was already intended to be the scouting unit at sea, which also gives the submarine 1 more use other than just countering ships. Giving the destroyer 3, much like the standard tank, would be fine though.
Honestly, should be the other way round. Subs have, historically, not been as aware of their surroundings as a surface warship is. If the destroyer was to be added, making it the recon of the seas would be the way to go, and adjusting the submarine so that it is less able to see, maybe 4 tiles.
Strong disagree. Subs almost never are used in a picket role, meanwhile DDs have been used in a picket role VERY often, be it AA picket, standard vision picket or radar picket.
I'd honestly like battle ships to have a "Salvo" ability, that works similar to missile silos, specializing them into the ground support unit battleships were. It could be a low-damage ability with a reduced firing range that costs 2 ammo, instead of the standard 1 per shot, but you'd gain the ability to do a set amount of damage, and reduce enemy movement speeds by one, making their advance slower while under the 'suppression' effect of the salvo. However, there are problems with it: - using it with movement impairing COs, such as Olaf, would be dumb - It would get very expensive, very quickly as you'd need to retreat to resupply in AW1+2 - COs that resupply would also quickly become super powerful (keeping up the salvos) Just with these 3 reasons, I can see why it wouldn't work, but i'd still like to see the battleship take on a more ground supporting role, other than offering the occasional salvos of damage
Reducing Lander cost by that much initially seemed like overkill, but in the greater context of the other changes, I think it's a worthwhile consideration. I'm more in favor of reducing it to 8k, but playtesting would determine if that's worthwhile. I would add the ability to resupply. Battleships are the most expensive unit in AW2, and as we see with all expensive units, expense should mean high-risk domination. Neotanks hit like trucks but aren't as durable, Megatanks are hella durable but easy enough to cheese, etc. Battleships don't share this design philosophy, probably because when you're given them in the campaign, it's always in missions where you can take full advantage of them. More range is overkill, and would make Grit a logical choice for naval missions, and I also don't agree with lowering the cost. Instead, I would take the Megatank or Piperunner approach: Make them hard to kill and require a specific playstyle to counter them. I like the light-AA guns approach, and would go so far as to say that a full HP Bomber should only do 50%, meaning it can't two-turn kill it due to counter-fire. DoR's addition of firing after moving feels like a logical decision, and would increase their threat level. This wouldn't be too strong of a change, because... Subs being lowered in cost and increased in strength makes them effectively the Md. Tanks of the sea. You wouldn't deploy too many of them unless your opponent is going hard into naval warfare. One or two is sufficient to be a threat, but if your opponent drops a BShip, suddenly you're going to really need them, since... Destroyers! I love the idea of a naval Tank. Not terrifying, but threatening enough to merit a response. This unit alone makes a substantially reduced Lander cost worth it. BBoats are a phenomenal unit, my favorite from AWDS. They should cost the same as Landers, as they trade off the ability to transport any unit for the ability to repair units. Which is a frighteningly powerful ability, particularly in the context of horrifyingly durable BShips. And let's throw in Carriers while we're at it. They're way too expensive, but their ability to annihilate air units from a distance is terrifying. That alone basically makes them worth 30k, but they should also be able to make seaplanes. And fire after moving. Oh and I don't like Cruisers. At all. Never have. They're an utterly useless unit. They need to be as terrifying as AA and they need to take little damage from land units apart from Rockets. I like your suggestions.
i don't like the idea of the battleship having counter-attack, it's an indirect and you should not be able to deploy it without support, if you're attack by a bomber, you need a cruiser or a fighter, but since cruiser also deal with submarine, crusier are bad because battleship are bad, but with a major buff on battleship, with the extra range and the extra defense, cruiser are already better, they just need another small buff
One additional tweak: Supply Boats as a new unit, separate from Landers, but using them as a base for their stats. They can resupply naval units in the same vein as how APCs do for land units, but cannot transport them. Additionally, submarines have to be on the surface in order to restock from a Supply Boat.
I was thinking about utilizing the "material" mechanic from days of ruin. My idea was to give naval units a self heal, that would consume their 1 material. The amount healed would depend on the ship type. For example subs could heal 2. cruiser 3 and battleships 4
I'd add another ship to that line up, a small corvette with the ability to transport 1 infantry unit and capture ports by itself, but with only mines for combat, which can only attack submarines, and not as well as a destroyer. An alternative for landing units when the opponent has subs out, the ability to capture without having new sea buildings... it would be the mech of the sea
I absolutely approve of the Destroyer Unit, I find Naval Combat interesting and a bit fun but the steep prices are always such a turn off. A way to attack ground units with a Naval Unit who are adjacent to the sea would make Naval Combat much more fun.
I think Day of ruin did it quite well with battleships and carriers in term of usefulness and fire power, those things are very frightening...except for the price tags of course. So, if there is any changes, just take Day of Ruin and reduce the price tags for those 2. As for the cruisers, the changes you propose is quite nice, but I would add one more thing that they should also replenish gas, ammo and 2hp per turn for copter units.
Cruisers were also better in DOR. Copters and subs would hardly dent it and would 1 hit every air unit. The only units that would hit it hard were bombers, rockets, and battleships. They also cost 2000 less.
@@ajabacan1886 I think DoR battleships were broken for naval combat but kinda sucked against land units still simply bc 5 units isn't really enough imo
@@ajabacan1886 reducing their damage on cruiser is always an option to keep thing more balanced. In day of ruin, battleship has -1 range, so rocket can actually retaliate.
The Destroyer should act like a anti-tank from days of ruin, except with the stats you propose. The AT in DoR was a bit over tuned but a more expensive, weaker, all purpose sea version with a range of 1-3 that can be used to fill the gaps of the other specialized ones sounds like a good way to change things up.
Late to the party, but here's a thought: Battleships were brimming with guns, lots of them short-range. I would keep their "main" attack the same or buff the damage and NOT give them attack-and-move, but I would give them a weak-to-mid strength all--purpose normal attack. Make it slower too. So you have a slow lumbering behemoth. If you can set it up, it's massive main guns can devastate the shoreline or other ships, but it can still survive and retaliate in a close-quarter scrap. Edit: Look at the picture of it! It even has secondary guns on the sides!
I think letting boats move on shoals and bridges would allow for some pretty nice map designs. There are some league maps on AWBW that have ports near the "ocean", and little shoal lakes, allowing for black boat shenanigans. You could possibly allow rivers too, and make them reduce movement speed. Another idea I've had is increasing ocean tiles to 1 defense, and reefs to 2 or 3 defense. These changes, and letting boats move on to certain 0 def tiles, would allow you to have tactics similar to land units, and possibly breath some life into naval combat.
Personally, I think the big problems with naval combat are: 1) Their price. This is pretty easy to fix, just reduce the cost. This is by far the easiest to fix. 2) Their lack of interaction with ground units. Advance Wars revolves around the ground, but boats hardly interact with them. Air units all revolves around ground units: t-copters transport infantry, b-copters harass, bombers kill everything and dusters/fighters protect serve as super anti-air to protect ground units. Naval units have little effect on ground units, with the battleship and lander being the only exceptions. To fix this, I believe cruisers should have a variation of the anti-air's vulcan cannon, one-shotting infantry capturing near the ocean and dealing decent damage to other ground units. The destroyer is a good idea (implemented perfectly in Advance Wars Story, a great AW Romhack btw) as it can deal good damage to ground units and counter vs cruisers, and giving it a sub weakness would also promote submarines as a useful counter unit. Additionally, giving boats better terrain movement (1 move over shoals/bridges and 2 move over rivers) would allow them to get up close with ground units better. If anybody sees any flaws with my ideas, just reply them below, but I believe these changes would make naval combat significantly more enjoyable. Also, in Flak's powers his naval units should be able to move over land to explain how he got his battleships where he did.
Since TLDRs are pretty common for the youth of today, I'll add one here. Reduce the price of naval units and make them interact more with ground units.
Honestly, giving Flak and the other meme tier CO’s memey powers like ships having 1 tile of land movement would at least make them unique and open up a niche for them.
Fairly Interesting stuff you bring up here, love these kind of videos. It's much fun to think about such Ideas. Actually would balance naval quite similiar to what you have explained. Here is my take: *Lander:* - Exactly the same. Reduce the cost to 6000 - Maybe add the ability to use remaining move costs after loading and unloading units to spice it up. *Submarine:* - Reduce costs to 10000 - Let them dive/undive and fire at the same turn to make them more versatile. - Can only be detected by naval units. (Air units can share a tile with them) *Cruiser:* - Reduce costs to 12000, set movement to 5 (I think it is already, but whatever) - Copters can start and land on Cruisers like on carriers in Days of Ruin instead of being loaded/unloaded. - Main weapon (I assume now it is the missiles) can also attack Land units, doing about 50% dmg against light vehicles, Infantry and 10 - 20% dmg against heavy vehicles. - missiles also do less damage against submarines 50% instead of (from my memory) 85% dmg - Else the cruiser should be changed to be pretty much the same as in Days of Ruin. Wich inlcudes higher resistance against attacks, dealing more damage to air units, and being able to attack other naval units and so on. *Battleship:* - Reduce costs to 20000, set movement to 4 - add light howitzer with 4 ammo , 1 - 3 range that deal about 50% to Infantry and light vehicles, but only about 10 - 20% dmg against heavy vehicles, copters and naval units. Can also be used after moving with the ship in the same turn and fires back if being attack in direct combat - add a light AA-gun similar in strenght and funtion of the carrier in Day of Ruin - The remaining main Heavy cannon has ammo reduced to 3 from 6, with the range adjusted to 4-6 instead of 2-6, can only fire stationary and deals devastating damage to all Sea and Land units (about 80% base damage vs heavy vehicles, naval units, and 100% vs Infantry, light vehicles and copters) - you can use the heavy, light and anti-air after each other in a single turn *Destroyer:* (Rocket- /Gunboat?) Really like the idea of destroyers, AW1-3 really lacking on that part. - A light ship that costs 6000, has a movement of 6 and does decent damage against naval and land units, and is also able to attack and detect Submarines better than other ships. - Main weapon are missiles similar to cruisers with the same usage above - Every cruiser is able to set up 1 seamine that traps every enemy ship but destroyers. Needs to be shoot at in order to be destroyed. - The destroyer is able to detect submarines and seamines at 1-2 range and isn't trapped by submerged submarines (can act after it is stoppped by one and is able to fire and use remaining movement points) - Takes more damage from all sources as opposed to other ships (similiar to the Days of Ruin gunboat) - no secondary weapon - able to move on shoals
They don’t need to add a new unit like the destroyer, they just need to rework the cruiser to give it some of those ideal features you were talking about like attacking ground troops by the shore
I recall some old advance wars forums cooked up a Hovercraft unit that would work like a tank, except having Tires-tier speed on land and Thread-tier speed on water, and a Zeppelin that worked as an airborne indirect unit and honestly I really wish both of those would exist. Maybe add a Marine (as in the soldier, not naval stuff) infantry unit that captures just like in Wargroove but gets a defense debuff on land.
It would be cool to have a supply ship, something that can refuel and rearm ships at sea, and possibly helicopters as well. You could even just make the APC amphibious. Another option, you could give the submarine one infantry transport slot. Instead of a destroyer as the cheap early game naval unit how about a PT boat. That fits more with the ocean going tank idea, it's got a machine gun for hitting infantry or copters but it also has torpedoes to use against naval vessels and it's fast. It could be capable of operating in the shallows or rivers.
I actually think the black boat serves all those purposes very well. I don't think you should give the submarine an infantry transport slot. It actually reduces the value of winning naval battles and that's the opposite of what we're trying to achieve here. Landers should be vulnerable and visible so that you need naval superiority to take islands. An awkward thing is that there already is a destroyer in the game which is the cruiser. The cruiser is a destroyer in function. What Mangs is describing is a frigate.
I actually was thinking about gjving all ships long range attacks without no move restriction, only for battleships to have such restriction, but, you know, battleships shoot far and can stay in lakes. Cruisers can even long range against air units. I know it is not a balance per se, but it changes the warfare for me.
I've never played any Advance Wars games, and probably never will, but these are some of my favorite videos on this channel. I guess I just like Mangs Does Game Design.
...should we tell him about Gunboats from Days of Ruin? They are an interesting naval units that work well with the new sea terrain and temp. harbours that the rigs build. Early game naval unit with paper thin defenses, they pack a punch but have low ammo (Just one attack), they're all purpose and rather fast, but they need the vision from subs and the Anti Air capabilities of Cruisers. Probably the best unit to round out the naval roster.
I forgot to bring them up, but I don't think they do anything to revitalize naval combat. They can only shoot once, so they’re not useful for prolonged harassment. They don’t serve the same role as a tank or a recon on land. They also only have 2 vision.
@@Mangs1337 I disagree their role is to transport infantry in the early game for quicker contestation of property and they do it very well with higher move and lower cost than lander ,The one ammo only isnt a problem with temp harbour and still does decent damage to lander also their move help spot sub a lot
@@Mangs1337 they may have 2 vision, but vision also works differently in DoR, so they do actually spot a lot of things, especially when you have 4 or 5 of them
Gunboat would be a great addition to the game, cheap naval unit that could contest the sea in early stages while transporting troops and have BBs support for continued harrasment.
His idea of a Destroyer Unit is basically what they tried to do with the Gunboat. However, the gunboat's design more of an infantry transport, while the Destroyer is more of a fast ship escort and scout. Personally, I'd give the Destroyer at least some damage vs Submerged Subs, since their namesake's role in naval combat was to deal with close range aggressors.
The Destroyer sounds like it might be too powerful. Based on your description it seems like it does good damage to anything in its theater, meaning it can deal with all other naval units as well as air units, with the added bonus of being able to fire on ground units if it can get next to them. I get that it isn't good on defense, but when you can build 3 of them for the price of a battleship, that would seem to push battleships out of being useful again. Destroyers have better vision and movement than subs while costing less, so subs don't seem like a good counter either. And Destroyers can easily race inside the minimum range of battleships to start chipping them down. I definitely don't mind the idea of another naval unit to make things interesting, but I'm a bit wary based on this description. Would be cool to see it developed, tested, and iterated on.
I find it interesting that DoR does several of the things you mention, since I find its naval combat dynamic and satisfying, leaving AW2 navy primitive in comparison. Prices weren't reduced as much as you suggest, but average -10% to Battleship, Cruiser, and Lander. Cruisers got so many buffs that I estimate they DOUBLED in power; I don't even try fighting on the water without them. At base, they one-shot every air unit, bombers take them down to 50% HP, and B-Copters barely scratch them. They still can't attack land units, but are such effective guard dogs for ships that can that investing in the navy actually feels worth it. Gunboat fills the ship-to-ship function of the Destroyer you suggest almost exactly. Though they have only 1 ammo, they have most cost effective ship-to-ship attack. They cannot attack land, but function as capture-transports by loading infantry and mechs. Due to how DoR handles Fog of War, gunboats' mobility makes them decent scouts.
Noticed you took the image for the additional naval unit you suggested from the game Battle Nations. I used to play that game years ago, so it put a smile on face to see that image again.
I like your destroyer idea, but I think it would be a bit too overtuned, especially for a cheap early-game unit. If you lowered its movement to 5 and its vision to 4, it would be a lot more reasonnable.
@@ColdEmperor I disagree. 7 move on a naval unit is insane, because the only terrain that can slow it down are reefs. Recons have more movement, but because they have tires, they get significant movement penalties from plains, forests, etc. 6 vision is also too much, because destroyers, which are meant to be all-purpose, would have more vision than dedicated scouting units like recons or missiles (lol). Mangs also wants to give them good combat capabilities. Sure, they get destroyed by bombers and battleships, but those 2 are late game units and its going to take a few days before they show up. Because of this, they really shouldn't be better scouts than recons while also being decent combat units for only 8k.
My opinion of change of naval units: Battlecruiser :it is a expensive hq command ship and are full of supplies, my change are have infinite ammo and fuel, no reason that huge ship with almost unlimited cargo get out of fuel on a battle. Cruiser:Same(maybe more defense against air units as you sugested) but now can refuel other naval units like submarines and lander. Submarine:Same ,but when are under water have always a defensive bonus , this bonus will stack with another bonus like terrain or drake bonus. Lander:same cost, but units on landers now have amphibious attacks, so he can attack when get drop by lander, if they dont destroy the unit,they come back safety to the lander.
i definitely agree with your ideas and changes, naval units are limited as they are, and not being able to engage with some units altogether such as land units, severely affects there usability and viability, air units are effective against all unit types, whereas naval are barely competent at naval, incompetent at air combat, and situational in land combat
I remember playing this as a kid and loving advanced wars although I always favored bombers heavy. Didn't realize so many people were still so into it. Great to see I did always think navy was underwhelming of the 3
Something unique I would probably suggest as something to flesh out naval combat would be adding ships that historically existed for very specific roles. For example: the monitor: a heavily armed, heavily armoured, very slow class of coastal ships that could bombard anyone that got too close to the shore and could even go up rivers if required. In practice it'd be like a riverine or coastal defence artillery that is tough but would be forced to stay close to land lest its fuel run out or it takes damage The fleet oiler: essentially an APC at sea. Slow, but can resupply units at sea, allowing them to operate further from home. This has historically been important for submarines, and modern carrier groups use similar supply ships Torpedo boats: small, fragile, but can pack a big if limited punch. Just dangerous enough to make someone cautious about going too near coasts where they could be hiding. Dark Conflict missile boats are probably the closest comparison Minelayers: ships that are weak and can't shoot, but can drop a mine that acts like a submerged sub that just explodes is landed on. Useful for area denial The big guns of the fleet would have to be buffed to counter these smaller specific ships, but for their price it should be justifiable
This was a fun video to watch, I clicked on it almost instantly and watched it all. I hope you do more of these kinds of videos with like, your structured thoughts and musings, could also work with games like Fire Emblem too but yeah, it was enjoyable. Could also do different concepts, but in a similar style like this video. Doesn't have to be a "series" or anything, just like, hearing your thoughts and ideas on stuff like this is interesting. "How X could've been (or could be) improved" or "Why Y is my favorite villain" or "Z gameplay mechanic really needs fixing" and so on
I've thought about this in the past and have been a huge WW2, Cold War and modern warfare navy enthusiast. Cruisers in AW are actually more like Destroyers in modern navies - ocean going escort ships that carry ASW (anti-sub) weapons and have a light gun that can fire upon airborne & surface targets. The US Navy Spruance class or Russian Navy Udaloy class comes to mind, along with their ability to carry Helicopters as well. In this regard, they should be VASTLY cheaper to deploy and have stats similar to Anti-airs as you said to give them this particular patrol role, I'm suggesting maybe 10000~13000 range given their dedicated role in game. Submarines in AW are attack/hunter killer subs, mainly designed to target other naval vessels and use submerging as a stealth tactic. Their cost however for this role is WAY too high - they should be closer to 12000~15000, but one ability I would use to justify their cost is the have the ability to fire stand-off anti-surface missiles against non-naval targets, likely with 2~3 range like an Artillery unit on land. This is a reference to how modern attack submarine like the US Navy Virginia-class can fire TLAM or Tomahawk land attack missiles which are fired from their torpedo tubes or from VLS bays, which can be guided against land targets. Its limited range will have tactical use and make them a greater threat to use Cruisers/Destroyers/Frigates to hunt and take them out. Battleships are capital ships of the world and now largely irrelevant to modern battlefields...given that no navy in the world deploys them anymore, with the US Navy Iowa-class being last used during the Gulf War in the 90s and Iraq in early 2000s. Their guns are awesome but they're so vulnerable to every type of modern weapon from bombers to off-shore rocket fire (just like in AW) it makes sense they cost so much but can do so little in retaliation in direct combat. Giving them AA guns to return fire against Battle copters would be nice touch but honestly not really required. I think DoR with its "move and shoot" concept gives the battleship enough reason to justify their high cost but incredibly dangerous reason to have them destroyed ASAP. The Destroyer is a nice concept, but I think that role as you suggest should be given to the term "Frigate". These are even smaller vessels that are a mainstay in modern navies as the front line ships that are flexible to engage any type of target from air, surface or underwater and act as "shields" for the more expensive destroyers, cruisers and of course, aircraft carriers. They fit PERFECTLY as your concept as "sea tanks" in the early game and their role is perfect for sea battle contesting while allowing stronger ships like cruisers, subs and battleships to still have role in late game naval battle. The 8000 cost is very reasonable. Lastly, I think the biggest issue with naval units in AW is that air units like Battle copters and Bombers VASTLY outmanoeuvre with their great movement range and hard counter all ship types, on top of being CHEAPER to deploy than ships. In AW:DS they tried to counter this with the carrier, but in practice it was more of a glorified sea-going Missile that gave naval air deterrence. What I suggest instead of a Guided Missile Destroyer (or in real life, a DDG). This would be a 15000~18000 unit that would be a hard counter to players who spam air units to counter naval fleets, which gives a Missile like 3~6 square no fly zone which can protect your fleet from Battle copter spam and bombers strikes. Missile destroyers however will be vulnerable to direct attack from any other naval unit or submarines, but they can like Frigates do return fire against surface targets with their naval guns.
0:00 Intro 1:07 Notes 3:53 Lander 4:36 Cruiser 6:00 Submarine 7:04 Battleships (Hard Disagree on this one, much prefer Days of Ruin Battleships) 9:06 Destroyer 10:14 Summary 10:38 End
I like all those ideas, but thing here is, I want to buff the carrier, I want it to be able to strike at land, by launching aircraft, that deal great damage against infantry, and light armored vehicles, do decent damage against medium armored vehicles, do low damage against heavily armored vehicles. It does decent damage to naval units overall, but it does not kill them, does major damage to Landers, and Destroyers, decent damage against cruisers, low damage against battleships. Reduce the 30000 Cost to 28000 instead, Since in reality, carriers can attack air, or land, or sea effectively, while also being able to carry units, and, give the carrier an extra purpose, it essentially acts like a lander that can fight back, and carry air/ground units around. Cruisers should have atleast be able to attack everything like a destroyer, can it just act like Mostly anti air purpose, that can protect itself against naval ships, and has 3 range to attack land units? While being essentially a better yet slower version of a destroyer. Does that sound good?
I've given it a fair bit of thoughts and here's what I came up with. I do am a WWII and specifically sea power enjoyer, for context. For starters : Battleship, Cruiser and Destroyer can all shoot their main guns from point blank to range, Battleship being the strongest and longest range, Cruiser, then Destroyer. These three units can shoot at other naval units while moving in the same turn, but not against land-based units, they need to stay still for that. These naval units can retaliate to other ship-based shelling if their range allows it. They also all come equipped with secondary anti-aircraft guns, allowing effective defense against B-Copters but not Bombers and Tac Bombers. B-Copters should be particularly weak to anti-aircraft fire from naval units to the point attacking with them should not be a good monetary trade-off. Those anti-aircraft gun also retaliate first. Bombers having to pass through flak clouds to deliver their bombs, basically. Now for specific units : The Destroyer is a great concept but Mangs viewing it as a sea-tank doesn't sounds fun or palatable. With my change to naval main gun shelling, Mang's Destroyer now needs a better historically accurate purpose defined down below. Destroyer : A Destroyer fitted with torpedoes, range 0 to 1. Moderate ammo but deadly. Still comes with weak shelling capabilities and weak anti-air defenses. This is your glass cannon ship-to-ship combat unit. If it can get within torpedo range it should heavily damage any other ship, rendering any retaliatory shelling a non-issue. Comes with depth charges. Backbone of your fleet, to make any advance risky to other ships and submarines if spotted. Cruiser : loses its main anti-air main gun for moderately good naval main guns. Shoots other cruisers or destroyers without fearing retaliation with their slight range advantage. Good anti-air defenses. Air units should not want to attack them, the tradeoff wouldn't be great since naval units shoots first against aircraft. Also comes with depth charges. A counter to Destroyer spam while also fulfilling its original anti-air role, and submarine hunting. Carrier : loses any offensive capabilities. Price massively reduced but should still be an investment. New role : mobile air resupply, transport and repair station. Size 3 hangar. Air units deployed from a carrier can act immediately. Sea-APC for aircraft. Submarines : cannot attack each others. This isn't historically accurate nor something that benefits the game's balance, so let's remove this from the game. The torpedoes now have 0 to 1 range like Destroyer do. Submarine are always considered stealthed unless they end their turn next to another unit, as usual. Very weak to naval shelling, but diving renders them immune to that, but not to depth charges. Destroying a submarine should require spotting and the effort of a few ships to depth charge it to oblivion. Diving reduces vision to 1. The fleet disruptor/stealth scout/back-row assassin.
Conventionally , the units are designed so the hardcounter always cost less than the unit its countering like for bcopter vs AAs, and stealth vs fighters or submarine/bomber vs battleships so cruiser should be costing less than submarines when designing their prices
I especially like the idea of the Destroyer. I personally always felt that the key flaw that naval combat units faced was that no matter what option you went with, they were all invariably way too expensive for you to build up enough of them with which to properly respond to sudden enemy attacks through water terrain, so having a cheap unit that has the best traits of both mechs and scouts that can be rapidly deployed to hold back a sudden naval attack would be incredible.
One unit I would personally add is a scout ship which #1: has good vision, #2: its main "weapon" is a scan which it can use to find all hidden units within 4 range, I would also give said scan ability to recons. However in return, it recons only get one use and scout ships only have 3 (lack of water APCs) so plan carefully
I too enjoy Naval Combat and I have a couple of game recommendations you might enjoy assuming you haven't heard about them already. The first is still being made but it's called Ultimate Admirals: Dreadnoughts. You are the commander of a nations navy and you design, deploy and command the ships through battles and full campaigns. The second is Rule the Waves 2. It's similar to Ultimate Admirals Dreadnoughts, but with less graphics. It is complete at this time though and also features carriers and airplanes. It's also getting a sequel. and it's sorta turn based. The final is Atlantic Fleet. it's very turned based and you can control ships from ww2 in the Atlantic the battles tend to be much smaller but you also have more control getting to manually aim the guns and torpedo and getting to even choose what ammo is loaded.
Why does Noone talk about the gunboats from Days of Ruin? Theyre one of the most versatile ships in the game. Cheap, carries infantry and can damage all other naval units except submerged subs. I think it helps balance and justify naval combat quite a bit more.
i've been working on an AW2 clone in my spare time, and I had almost the exact same thoughts. Great minds think alike I guess. The destroyer I implemented works almost exactly like you describe, except it's weak to subs and air. I also considered adding something like the naval properties from wargoove, which would give you the same income as a city and allowing destroyers to capture those + naval bases. Another idea was to make cruisers more like missiles, giving them a shorter-ranged indirect attack against air units and subs, which they'd be able to spot from a few tiles away, while weakening their direct retaliation. Last idea was to make battleships (and cruisers) able to move and shoot on the same turn, turning their indirect attack into a direct attack if they do so.
The destroyer concept sounds like the gunboats in DoR with additional vision, ammo and the abillity to attack land and air units. I am not sure if you recalled it being a unit. I didn't really see it make a reappearance in the video, yet is very important to naval combat making cruisers (or destroyers in DoR) also quite important.
Hm... The Destroyer being an all-purpose vehicle costing 8000, I think we can afford to reduce its vision to 3+3. Why the +3? Well, it's conditional vision. These extra vision range only works on sea. Just because it can do everything doesn't mean it should have a bigger vision than the dedicated sea scout while costing less.
Battleships have those giant towers in the center of their hull for a reason. That's the crows nest that they use to look far out into the ocean and spot enemies before they can be spotted (this is before the invention of the radar). After the advent of radar the bigger ship has the stronger radar so usually has better vision as well ... sooo ...
I think one of the best ways that strategy games have made naval forces important is by allowing land units to embark, rather than having to build a separate transport ship for them. If you could temporarily turn your ground troops into defenseless transport ships temporarily by moving out from a captured seaport, that right there would provide all the incentive players need to take the fight to the water. Cheap anti-ship vessels would have a purpose for being deployed and the resulting counter play would give naval combat a reason for existing.
I actually generally agree with most of your suggestions, except this is my one counter perposal. Cruisers are a ranged anti Air at like 2-6 range. However, they are also equipped with a 0-2 range sonar to detect submerged submarines. However, they are actually rather poor at fighting them. The anti sub role would be filled by the destroyer, who hard counters submarines, but must wait for them to reveal themselves by attacking or wait for them to be detected by Cruisers. Submarines would do less damage to destroyers on a first strike. This would cement the Cruisers role as a general support craft, keep destroyers relevant as a screen ship while not being overpowerd, and all while not nerfing air and subs too much.
They should be renamed to destroyers and have their price drop I feel. His proposed unit is a frigate. I think they could add a proper cruiser which would be about the price that the cruiser is now but have more defense and attack but not be able to fire against submerged subs. They could give it the unique ability to either move and shoot directly or not move and shoot indirectly with a range of 3.
I agree with everything you have said, except the lander price since 6000 is just too low. What I believe to be the problem with naval units is their overspecialization, so I think giving each of them more tools is the answer. Battleships should get their anti-air capabilities from super famicom wars back. The cruiser is interesting since it behaves more like a frigate, we could maybe change its name and make a proper cruiser. Having a naval unit capable of engaging in direct combat with ground units, which could be the case with these new destroyer you have proposed, or we could let the cruiser attack infantry with it's anti-air and vehicles with it's missiles. Also all ships should have a lot of vision, barring the lander, perhaps.
I'm not so sure though because the lander is a transport. It doesn't have any value by itself and usually losing a transport means losing more than 6000. The lander should be the tool of choice for transport over water and not the transport helicopter. I actually disagree that battleships should get AA fire. I think they should mainly get more armor. The main issue they have is that escorting them doesn't do much as once a helicopter has attacked a battleship it already earned itself in so escorting them doesn't stop it from being a losing proposition. Helicopter suicide attacks on battleships should not be cost effective. I disagree that ships should have a lot of vision. Scouting was a massive part of naval warfare in the early 20th century so advance wars should reflect that. Removing scouting also just lessens the dept of the combat system. Also you have the ships wrong. The 'cruiser' is not a frigate at all, it's a destroyer. The destroyer is a ship meant to escort larger warships by taking out the things the bigger warships are afraid of. Mainly subs and planes. But I think the current 'cruiser' should be renamed to destroyer and a proper cruiser be added. It should cost 18k but be mostly like a medium tank and an artillery rolled into one. That it can move and shoot directly or not move and shoot indirectly with a range of 2.
@@MrMarinus18 Well, my reasoning for the landers was that they can transport any given pair of land units, which could mean a great differenve in value once it is carrying anything bigger than infantry. Altough considering its very specific way of transport as a downside I would rate it at 8k. And regarding the cruiser naming, I chose to compare it to a frigate since, as far as I'm aware, there's a lot of overlap between them and destroyers, with the latter being generally bigger and, thus, better armed. The cruiser doesn't really feel well armed or big to me. On top of that i believe that destroyers are normally used as air defense for their given surface group, while frigates have more limited air defenses and are usually focused on anti-submarine roles, which fits what we see in the game. I also really like your idea for a proper cruiser, mainly because combining direct combat with indirect capabilities sounds like something ships, and only ships, should be able to have. I would also like one such ship to be able to attack land like the landers in the original could.
@@antiradiationsnowy1536 The thing with landers though is that they are far more limited in their utility than APC's and transport copters. Frigates and destroyers are more so roles. Frigates are ships for patrol and escort of commercial ships. Destroyers are usually part of large battlegroups. Frigates are more so vessels meant to operate on their own or in small groups for light combat. Destroyers are part of fleets to protect aircraft carriers. Destroyers are anti-sub far more than frigates. Frigates are for fighting boats and other surface ships. They are not large enough to carry all the specialized equipment destroyers have. Splitting the escort duties of battleships among 2 ships just makes naval warfare far too cumbersome to be strategic. You should have the destroyer be able to defend the battleship. The frigate is more so an early game ship or one when you are mainly focused on land. A cheap surface ship to harass landers and give a mild punishment to those that get complacent in their naval superiority. A cruiser though is a large ship. I think they would kind of be inbetween the battleship which is strictly indirect and needs protection and a frigate which is cheap enough to be expendable. I actually think the battleship shouldn't have any AA defenses, they should have enough armor to take a few air strikes. However they have to rely on their escorts for protection. I think the cruiser should get AA defenses though but only against helicopters, not planes and the frigate should be the same. Bombers should still be a potent threat.
I've been playing Super Famicom Wars a bit lately. If you were to make the naval units like they were back then, they'd honestly be a lot better. Cruisers wouldn't be that good, but they serve really well as anti-Sub and naval scouting. You could keep their ability to fire on planes. Subs being permanently hidden during Fog of War and absolutely crippling battleships would be their strength. Obviously, you should keep their ability to hide even outside of Fog of War. Battleships need the biggest improvement out of all due to their cost, and giving them the ability to fire on everything except Subs would be the best option. As well as their ability to fire in melee with machineguns to attack shoreline infantry.
I like your Destroyer idea and sounds better what I was thinking. Was thinking about introducing new units and reducing the costs of the existing ones; Missile sub (eats double the fuel normal subs do regardless of submerged or not, attacks like battleships but when ordered to attack they automatically surface), Flak boat (dedicated anti-air ship, cant attack other ships, same vision as anti-air) and Gully (cheap to deploy but only functions as an anti-ship unit that is weaker than subs(
Having a Destroyer unit would make the Cruiser be viably use a lot as well. They'll be essentially the "medium tank" of the naval unit that can counter 3-4 Destroyer units before being shot down. In fact, we kinda already see that in Days of Ruin with the Gunship unit being weak against the Cruiser, but can actually take down the Cruiser if you overwhelmed it with a lot a Gunship units.
So its like gunboats are light tanks, destroyer are mediums, cruiser are AA and BB are APCs. Doing it like that would make it much more sense and fun and would at least make naval more viably fun
It is kind of awkward that so many get the ship names wrong. What he is proposing is not a destroyer, it's a frigate. Also the 'cruiser' in the game is actually a destroyer. It not only functions like one but it also looks like one so.
I would like a genuine cruiser be added. One with decent armor that can combat destroyers and landers and the like but not deal much damage to battleships. Maybe it can either move and attack directly or not move and attack indirectly with a range of up to 3.
The destroyer having 6 vision is too much considering subs only has 5, maybe it should have four instead. Also it should probably have a weapon triangle type of relationship with subs and cruisers. Cruisers beat subs, subs beats destroyers and destroyers beat cruisers. Yeah I'm pretty much taking a page out of advance wars story for that weapon triangle idea (also not sure if that's the name of the hack someone correct me if I'm wrong)
Great ideas as always Mango. In my eyes at least, an issue with water combat is the lack of different terrain types: on land you have mountains, forests, all sorts of interesting stuff, whereas water only has reefs (and shoals, if you add them). I'd love to see some new types of water terrain added, maybe something like choppy seas to reduce defense and movement or a hidden cove that always hugs the land but can conceal a naval unit like a forest. That and more could add a lot more strategic depth to naval combat, which could supplement your proposed changes really nicely.
I like how Red Alert 3 tried making naval units more relevant by incorporating more water on maps and making many, many units amphibious. Age of Empires 3 tried also to make naval units good by making every boat a transport and some of them can even build (but not upgrade) units just like a building.
Another new Unit or two. The Corvette. Corvette - Cost: 6000 Funds Purpose: Scout/Anti-Submarine Move: 6 Vision: 4 Fuel: 70/70 Weapons - Depth Charges: 5/5 [Deals a Base of 70-80% to Submarines, maybe more] Machine Guns: -/- [For firing back at BCopters ineffectually, similar to Tanks, as well as engaging Infantry on Shores] Capabilities - Can scout Submarines at a Range of up to 3, allowing them to much more easily counter Subs. Afterthoughts: Whilst its generally known that Destroyers were the ones to mostly carry Depth Charges, if the Destroyer were to be put in the game as Mangs suggests, then we'd want to represent that Anti-Submarine capability of the Destroyer in another unit. We don't want Destroyers being ubiquitous, so... ----------------------------------------------------- Missile Submarine - Cost: 18000-21000 Funds Purpose: Direct & Indirect Attacks Move: 6 Vision: 5 Fuel: 99/99 Weapons - Rockets: 9/9 [Deals heavy damage to Ground and Naval units, can be fired whilst submerged. Range of 3-8. CANNOT be resupplied unless at a Port.] Torpedos: 4/4 [Anti-Ship Weapon, comparable to normal Sub Torps. Can be resupplied] Capabilities - Long-range stealth support with their missiles, but limited self-defense capabilities and light armor, making them easy to destroy with other Subs, Corvettes, and Cruisers. In fact, they'd probably get 1-shot by most Full HP Cruisers and Subs, with Corvettes having a coin toss to see if they sink it. Afterthoughts: These are meant to be expensive, late-game power units. Akin to Neotanks, they have something that outdoes every other version of itself. Mostly, the ability to submerge, and yet still fire their ranged attacks. Though, I specifically made it so they can only resupply their missiles at a Port. Both to represent the fact that those missiles are heavy as shit, and to help balance the ability to turn many units to dust whilst completely invisible, and having amazing range.
Technically speaking, the modern Destroyer is actually exactly what you describe (a multirole missile boat) and is the mainstay of navies since the 90's. Battleships have faded out of usage as missiles have become more deadly than artillery. Frigates do the duty of the current advance wars Cruiser (air and sub interdiction); and Cruisers act as general purpose mini-battleships and flagships when there is no Carrier to be a flagship (because the Carrier is now the centre of a naval group where it would have once been the Battleship). A vast majority of naval units have AA guns, but they are actually tailored to shoot down incoming missiles rather than the planes themselves, since most air-units are also indirect, high flying, and stealthed these days.
I like your ideas. One thing I would like to see is an extra water terrain with a high defense rating. Like an atoll or Sheltered harbor, basically a piece of real estate that protects better than a reef but without the vision benefit. Mountains vs. woods. It would help with protection from air units as well.
This is great, I especially like the all purpose destroyer and the lower funds needed for naval units in general. Edit: One thing I would change about the destroyer is the visual range, I feel it's far too much for a general purpose unit, which analogues a tank and I feel like other naval units would fit the scout role better. I understand that historically ships are pricier, but they also tend to be bulkier and bigger in real life, essentially having the fortiitude and size of several tanks, planes or what have you, but in AW they hold a low damage threshold in comparison (obviously for balancing reasons) while yet costing as if they have the same advantages they would in real life.
I say nothing should be changed at all. Simply because it was that way for a reason. Landers cost 12000 due to the ability to carry 2 of any ground unit unlike APCs and T-Copters which only carry infantry and mechs. Increasing movement range would also not be necessary because the rest of the transport units have 6 as well. Cruisers logically could not easily shoot at planes because of the high altitude and Bombers could strike before the counter-attack and take minimal damage. However Copter units fly a lot lower and are weaker making them more susceptible to anti-air of ground or sea. Again another reason cruisers cost 18000 is because of them also being a transport unit keeping copters safe from CO powers, like any other transport, and refueling them. Submarines also don't need change because of the usefulness them. They are anti-ship and work well against B-Ships. Their low fuel is a limit to keep them from hiding for a long time. B-Ships don't need anti-airs because if adding them would cause more chaos and confusion. B-Ships can't and shouldn't fire on the same turn because it is an indirect unit and it allows subs to attack the enemy before damage is caused. Anti-air defenses would be direct breaking the rules of advance wars. Adding new units would be necessary for AW4 and the game series to bring it back after the Dual-Strike.
I think that adding a Scout/Patrol Boat would also be useful for Fog of War maps. If course, they would need a very large vision range (7 or 8?), though that should not include submerged subs (don't need a hard counter for them), though I can see having 1 vision range for subs (that is, either adjacent or 1 tile away) be an option.
Honestly, for carriers I would love to see similar changes to the battleship. Retaliatory aa only guns, move and shoot. But I would also refine seaplanes to make them more viable too. Specifically I would say give them canto (or whatever it was) from fire emblem. Allow the seaplanes to deploy, attack and retreat, allowing carriers to have a unique threat whilst being largely vulnerable to other navel units, especially submarines and destroyers.
4:26 Honestly, I don’t like that change at all. Not only it makes T-copters way less useful at naval maps, but it may even be game breaking sometimes. 6000 is really cheap for transporting all kinds of land units in number of two, even being able to move 2 infantry at a time instead of one is so good that higher movement won’t help T-copters to even get close to landers. So the difference of 1000 G between their prices is unfair, T-Copters would only be good at maps with big islands filled with mountains, which is a rare structure, not really fitting a good map. I do agree that landers could be cheaper, but it should be 8000 at least, like in AW Returns.
I'd say that they should take a severe toughness penalty with that price slash. Make them way squishier (which also indirectly fixes subs being a coin toss to kill them without touching the sub)
Don't use T-copters on the ocean then. Landers should be the best choice if you want to transport over the ocean over the T-copters which can go everywhere.
Tcopters aren't only good in mountainous maps. They're also good in maps with many forests and rivers. These are indeed common. They also enjoy the benefit of not taking cannon fire, so I still would use them over an APC most of the time on land. Even on watery maps, I would still deploy a tcopter if I wanted my infantry to move further in than the shore. This won't hurt tcopters that much
If you put a destroyer you should at least make Cruisers able to fight back at them. You could make destroyers able to resupply ships if you dont plan on using black boats to really add some utility9 I dont think range is a problem for Battleship, I think its damage. With only one attacks that deals rocket damage, they cant really apply insane pressure worth their cost Days of ruin made them abble to shoot while mooving to uograde their range to insane levels, but there is another way to make it more interresting if you dont want to use this very good version of battleship By making them able to attacks 2 times per turn, albeit with Artillery damage. (Ww2 battleship use arrillery guns) With this a battleship can seriously disable an army or even let you break defensive lines. They will make real deadzone that absolutly needs to be dealt with overwise you wont be able to advance in said zone.
He should rename his unit to the frigate since that's what it is. Also the "cruiser" should be renamed to destroyer. I feel the main issue with battleships is that they don't really have any other unit to fight against. Adding a frigate or a proper cruiser would give a unit that would be crushed by battleships. It's kind of like if the medium tank existed but not the standard one.
My personal thoughts on Naval units in Advance Wars 2 are... ~Lander Price decrease to 10k from 12k ~Cruiser AA guns should be 70% as strong as Anti-Air against planes Price decrease to 14k from 18k ~Submarines Price Decrease to 16k from 20k ~Battleship Defensive AA Guns 40% effective as Anti-Air Price decrease to 22k from 28k. (If a Destroyer was added) ~Destroyer Cost 12k Fuel 80 Ammo 4 Movement 6 Vision 4 Target: Ships/Subs Lander 80% Destroyer 65% Hit by 65% Submarine 55% Hit by 85% Cruiser 40% Hit by 55% Battleship 20% Hit By 95% Purpose- Scout/Naval All Rounder
I would add 4 UNITS: Battleship Light balanced around 10k-12k with rage 2-4. To get some earlier treat form the ocean for your land units. (i would name it the cruiser, and the current cruiser an destroyer) Light hovercraft 5-6K Yes, can act on SEA AND LASND. So it can stalk the coast and then only engage with land when you want to. You pay an little extra for the flexibility, so only in certain maps really viable. Main goal: hit infantry and battle copters and some scouting Hover tank 9k This can attack sea units somewhat effective, or does the some as the light hovercraft, but also with tanks. Looks an bit like your destroyer, but now hit can also get on land to deal with land units. Transport hover craft 6-7k? Why not? 1 unit only. And it can move tanks. Give the current lander 3 spaces, so now an single lander can suddenly fil an beach full with units. And yes, battle copters should do less damage against the full ships (not these hover crafts)
I know I'm late to the party, but I had some idea's. Gunboat : A cheap boat unit that's similar to an infantry on sea, but still with higher firepower. Animation wise, while most boat are a single huge unit, gunboats are way smaller but there's 5 or 4 of them. Their man weapon is a cannon attached to the top of each boat, which can attack for decent damage against most boat, and can also attack vehicles on land, however, not only can't it attack submarines, but it doesn't put a dent on battleships and other heavier ships (cruiser can also use their missiles against them). Land unit can also deal pretty high damage to it seeing as it's only a light boat and not a mastodonte. The soldier piloting the gunboat can also fire with it's rifle if you have no more ammo. They have good move, cheap cost, and nice vision, and could capture sea properties if they existed. Destroyer : Actually had the name idea BEFORE it came up in the video, but it works DIFFERENTLY so I should find a different name. Basically, it's a sea artillery, but not quite the battleship. While it's costy (around 1200), it has 1 to 3 range, but can also MOVE AND ATTACK at the same turn. They can also counterattack unlike other indirect. The thing is, it actually has a pretty low/medium firepower, and a pretty good defense, making them more as unit to take pot shots and generally staying alive. It's pretty weak against air units, seeing as it can't counter B copters and get oneshot by bombers. Another quirk, is that it can deploy sea mines against subs, tho you shouldn't expect them to do a better job than a cruiser.
While DoR did allow naval units to move across bridges, sadly the part about beaches is not true. Only Landers and Gunboats can move across them still, which is a shame!
Thinking about this some more, for a naval unit overhaul, I’d say add the following based on historical (now mostly obsolete) cheaper naval units.
Torpedo Boat 5000: Naval mech/infantry with 8 move that can move on rivers BUT has double cost on ocean tiles (so effectively 4 for ocean) and it has a low fuel capacity. Has moderate power against ships, and an MG it can use against ground units adjacent to shore (or against infantry in rivers) but it’s weak against shore units. Escort 8000: Naval Tank with 5 move. Strong against Torpedo Boats, Black Boats, surfaced submarines, and OK (light tankish) against shore targets and submerged submarines, but weak against proper warships (From Destroyer Escort, smaller destroyers used to protect shipping). Corvette 9000: Naval anti-tank (DoR) with 5 move that can attack directly for move+attack or counter attack, but can also fire indirectly if it stays still. Weak against torpedo boats, but strong against escorts and most land vehicles while doing fair damage against cruisers/carriers and low damage against battleships. Monitor 10000: A stronger version (long range, higher damage) of artillery with 4 move. Land units in its range take heavy damage (except infantry, who take only moderate damage), as do any naval units who get within range, but its very fragile, can easily be overwhelmed by cheaper Torpedos, and faster ships can easily get within its minimum range (Monitor is a ship that has ONE big gun, without significant armor/speed) Escort Carrier 20000: A 5 move transport unit that can carry two Dusters or helicopters, and comes with a Duster (who can now fire on naval units for 15-20% damage) preloaded (so it’s actually 7000). Deals moderate damage against air units if it can hit/survive, but prefers to stay back due to weak defense and no non-anti-air firepower of its own. The additional options for shore bombardment makes naval combat less cut off from the rest of the game. The new naval units have only 2-3 vision, encouraging centering forces on at least one of the more expensive ships (Cruiser, Submarine, or one of the carriers with its airpower) in fog of war, while their low move encourages using the old ships outside it. Black Boat returns and can move on rivers, but is otherwise identical. Landers, Cruisers, Subs, Battleships, and Carriers return with their DoR fixes (though carrier could get back its missiles from DS)
The baseline AW1&2&DS naval units: General note: Naval units are expensive but powerful. They are much more resistant to land units than an equivalent land unit. Their cost means they won't be fielded often (especially on small maps), but a single battleship is more than capable of turning an entire game upside down. So naturally naval units have more offense and defense than their land counterparts which is shown in their costs. A few fandom/modded COs or Colin could make naval units cheaper, though. Cruiser should be able to hit land/naval/subs with its directfire missiles. It will do about as much damage as a Md Tank when firing on land units and will deal 5 HP to another cruiser and around 7 HP to subs. Obviously someone like Max will do more. Subs seem fine as is but really I'd like to see subs have more fuel/lower submerged consumption. Battleships and Carriers need to be able to move and then fire. Landers should really be not as durable to *direct fire land units* aka tanks do more than 1 whole HP of damage. A Neotank should be able to one shot a lander with luck. But really I'd rather expand naval units to include Corvettes (a rough analogy to a Mech), Frigates (somewhere between a Recon and a Tank), Destroyers (Md Tank equivalent + Sub hunter), Cruiser (Hybrid Range unit that is basically Anti-Land/Naval/Air version of a Tank + Artillery), Missile Subs (Subs that can fire from a really far away but have low ammo count and is really expensive), and we'll keep (Attack)Submarines, Battleships, and Carriers unchanged from above. I'd also like to add a naval version of a city that only shows up on water for 2000funds and up the port to 2000funds as well. Corvettes and Frigates can capture them. And I'd like to make an equivalent Plains/Forests/Mountains terrain for naval units, basically making seas 1 star, reefs unchanged, and some terrain to equate to mountains, maybe an Atoll terrain.
That is a great idea. The biggest problem i think is the cruiser in the whole naval line up. It just has so many roles, anti-air, anti sub, and in Dual strike onwards I think it is a direct combat unit. If you split them up it would be easier to balance the cost too. This is the same with the new proposed destroyer since it does everything. Splitting the roles up encourages more countering units to spice up the tactics rather than spamming more cheaper all purpose units. Another thing i'd like to add is that naval combat dont have too many interesting tactics, It is not that fun to play, since there is no terrain. So it all comes down to who can do more direct combat. If we add more terrain it would be way more fun, DoR added mist on sea but it didn't do much with it. By adding more terrain we can also balance air units hard countering naval units too.
I had the idea as well to add the corvette or the patrol boat, which is also a sea light tank, it can attack anything and can transport infantry units.
I feel weird when he mentioned about how land units are OP against cruisers then knowing that the Russian cruiser Moskva was (allegedly) sunk by land-based rocket artillery fire very recently...
As a US Navy vet who worked with radar guided weapons, allow me to give my 2 cents: Transport: I agree that it should be cheaper, but I think it should give supplies, mainly because theres no naval logistics, and I dont want to add a specific logistic vessal. Would probably make them worth 8-9k. Destroyer: As Mangs said, cheap vessal that is mainly AA/Anti-Sub Cruiser: probably where I differ the most with Mangs. Better anti-surface cannon, but cant hit submerged. Acts as an AA Missile with lower range, but post move. All other changes as Mangs suggested. Also, if going off of Days of Ruin, give gunboats a machine gun.
An idea I recently came up with were Torpedo Boats. Basically they're lightly armored and have limited range, but are very mobile, hard-hitting, and cheap. They can serve anti-infantry and anti-air roles okay, but are especially effective against enemy ships. Since they're small and fast, they make tricky targets for bombers and (to an extent) subs, making them extremely resistant to their attacks. However, that's about the only advantages they have. They're vulnerable to any kind of direct fire, especially from tanks or battleships, and have to get pretty close to use their torpedoes, so they're by no means unstoppable. They'd definitely spice up naval combat, though!
First of all: Sry for my english. I am a german potatoe.^^ First I would like to give my two cents about Mangs ideas. Secondly I would introduce my personal Ideas. My Two Cents: ["1: Allow Naval Units to cross Shoals/Bridges"]: I personally would allow Naval Units to cross Shoals but not bridges since they are way to big. Submarines however could be able to "cross" bridges while being underwater(submerged) but while being underwater they should not be allowed to cross Shoals. They are tricky but rewarding by reaching more places and could be used more for flanking. ["2: Reduce most ships Deployment cost"]: I would like to disagree. Being expensive is not the main Problem in my opinion. Its more like that they should be able to just do more. These are giant floating Weapon Plattforms and should be treated like one. I got some ideas I would put in the "Personal Ideas"-Section. ["3: Allow ships to counter Air Units better"]: I am definitly with you on this one. More about in the "Personal Ideas"-Section. ["4: Introduce new early game naval unit: the Destroyer"]: While I am behind this Idea, I would called it different. I imagine it more like the Recon-Unit but on water. A fast and cheap boat with a small weaponry to disturb infantry or light armored vehicles. Personal Ideas: Naval Units should be able to do more to be more viable and handy on the regular battlefield. For their high price they should be at least worth it. - All Naval Units should get less damage from all regular attacks. While more vunerable Units like the Lander or Submarine should get a lower Bonus(about 20-25% less damage) Battle-Units like the Battleship should be way tankier(about 35-40% less damage). This should help them to sustain longer(even when attacked by bombers) and to get rescued by escaping into a harbor or aided by cruisers, ect - Landers (plus the so called "Destroyer") should get an Anti-Air-Gun. This weapon however is not strong(maybe 25-35% of the Firepower a regular Cruser would have) and is only be used in Counter-Attacks. They are also even weaker against planes(Fighter, Bombers,ect). It is not to be dangerous against Air-Units but to slowly weaken them to the point they need to regroup/repair at some point. Battleships also got one but this one is a bit stronger and because of its better defense it can weaken Air-Units a bit better. They can(or should) not be used to attack Air-Units since it is more of a Defense-Mechanism. - Submarines should get a light cannon to attack Ground-Units. The gun would be comparable to the gun the so called "Destroyer" would have, has unlimited ammo(like the machinegun of tanks) and can also be used against Naval-Units but would be way weaker than Torpedos and can only be used when not underwater. Sumarines could be used a weaker but more hit&run-Unit to ambush and attack Ground-Units on Shoals. - All Naval-Units should be able to transport at least 1 Unit of Infantry. While the Lander is still the only naval Unit capable to transport Vehicles and 2 Units at the same time they should also be able to transport(but not supply) Heli-Units so you can have an additional Unit to shield Heli-Units from opponent Anti-Air. - Battleships are expensive but giants floating fortresses. While the aspect of a long range-Unit should be still the most important one it is still defenseless against any kind of attack. That is why a small Anti-Air is not enough. It should be able to counter at least a little bit. Being attacked by Air-Units? An Anti-Air-Cannon should chip a bit of Health away. Being attacked by Sub-Marines? An own Sea-Mine-Launcher should ship a bit of Health away. The Battleship should be able to defend itself at least a little bit. It still would not stand a Chance in a 1v1 against a Submarine or a Bomber or anything similar but it would not be a floating punching bag neither. It should just stand its ground long enough for getting help from arriving crusers, submarines or something. - While liking the idea of a so called "Destroyer" I would do it a bit differently. I would add a cheap and weak scouting-Gunboat with high speed, an Auto-Cannon that would deal good damage against weaker Ground-Units(Comparable with an Anti-Air-Tank against other Ground-Units but a little bit weaker) and barely helpful against Heli-Units(Like Small Tanks) but almost useless against regular Naval-Units (except its own kind) but additionally I would add a strong Naval-Unit with the same Setup but much more expensive and Stronger. The original Destroyer. This Unit could shred Tanks and would be the Main-Battle-Unit of the Sea. While having the disadvantige against Submarines they could handle Landers, Crusers and other Battleships with good results. While Battleships stay the best Armored Naval-Unit the Destroyer is not a pushover and can take a beating while still dealing good damage. It even got a light less strong Defense-Weaponry like the Battleship. But the downside would be its limited Range and the same Movement-Speed than the Battleship. These are my personal thoughts of the Naval-Units. They should be able to do a lot more for their price and maybe this could be the way. What do you guys think? ^^
Somethings I would love to see would be " Cruiser with Sonar " to detect Subs to protect other naval ships. A " Hovercraft " that acts like a Lander but only can transport and deploy infantry, costing a lot less. Have all Naval Ships be allowed to travel through Shoals/Bridges, however Naval Ships are not allowed to end their movement at a Bridge and only specific Naval Units may end their movement turn on Shoals.
One fun idea that i was thinking of is also going into a route like wargroove. In addition to refuel and repair, it could be possible that black boats can capture sea buildings, such as seaports. To further go into this, it would also be neat to add oil rigs to sea maps, which grant income. As shown in wargroove, this would be a buff to sea units in general.
How about a nice middle ground where Naval units can cross bridges and shoals, but can't end their turn there? That way you couldn't block an entire army with one sub.
I consider Black Boats to be essential for supporting a fleet. They provide fuel and ammo (because no APCs) and repairs (because no cities on water). Carriers would be incredible if they could construct air units, essentially useless otherwise
Personally what I would do to rebalance naval units: Landers - decrease price to 9000, and increase defense. Cruisers- increase defense, make it have a range between 1-3 spaces with the moved and attack in the same turn. Submarines- slightly reduce fuel usage and increase fuel to 99, then give it an alternate attack a cruise missile perhaps with a range of 2-5 spaces. Battleships- increase defense, increase attack, up range to 2-8 spaces and give it the ability to attack twice. Carriers- increase damage, and make the range 2-10 spaces. More naval terrarian types has well, and the the bridges being passable. These would make naval units more worth the investment without making them absolutely broken in my opinion.
Movement: I MOSTLY agree with this...however not all ships in DoR can traverse shoals just transports and gun boats...and honestly the idea of subs and battleships on shoals seems...weird. You could probably give Cruisers the ability though...or alternatively if this is codable make it so subs and battle ships CAN go on shoals but they cannot move off shoals onto other shoals nor can subs be submerged on shoals...although some alternate terrain that functionally is like bridges but is on borders so that way it also kinda works like a shoal is cool (perhaps docks...aka imagine a port except without building or healing units). Maybe even make it so transports can't unload units on bridges. Unit changes: 1. I'd do 8000 for landers instead of just 6000 as not only can it do 2 instead of one...but its also the only way to transport vehicles 2. Ah the good ol cruiser...yah your adjustments sound more or less right. I'd do 15K personally but thats just me 3. Again...I think cutting in half is a tad much...especially with how this should hopefully revitalize other units...A simple 14 or 16 K would work. 4. Wouldn't really reduce sub damage as much simply bc I don't think sub costs should be cut that much...it should be that a single sub should do a pretty penny to a battleship but not enough that if they got destroyed by a cruiser right after that it would still be cost effective since getting in at least one hit with a sub is pretty easy Destroyers: eh...I think any melee counter to cruisers needs to be considered a bit...this is comperable to a tank vs an anti-air...make the price or power different to balance...besides I kinda like the sub vs cruiser vs Battleship dynamic to some degree
I have an issue with the landers as making cheaper would rapidly transfer a whole army in lightning speeds so maybe also nerfing them to transport 1 if we will keep the 6k price.
I'll be honest rockets and artillery can't move and shoot because they have to secure the vehicle before shooting, a battlecruiser is heavy enought to laugh at that, so in my opinion instead of 7 range I would leave it at 6 and allow it to move and shoot in the same turn like in Days of Ruin. But the rest of the changes he did I like them, but cruisers should be able to hit land too.
That's BS. You can maybe apply it to a howitzer but not an SPG or an SPRL.
@@projectpitchfork860 yes they can, those vehicles still need to be stabilized before firing this is how they work even in Real Life.
you get the words of my mouth, I was thinking about the improving of naval, and it was one of the ideas I've got... Maybe, you should get a small range of movement that they can move and shot, and if you wish to move the complete distance, you cannot do that.
@@projectpitchfork860 SPGs have to sit still to aim, in contrast to tanks having stabilizers that allows for fire on the move.
I think the best I've seen so far was like, 5 sec to stop and shoot.
@@lupvirga No. An SPG drives into position and aimes and fires in a few secounds. Same for an SPRL. A howitzer first needs to be detachted from the towing vehicle and takes longer to set up.
I find it interesting that naval units in Wargroove were so powerful that if a map had water you pretty much disregard all land units and just try to fight for control of the sea.
I think going the days of ruin approach with the battleship is the better way to fix that one, because MAN a mobile indirect is some crazy stuff that can justify the cost if you use it well. I also kind of want to see the DOR carrier, though with a lower cost to build the seaplanes since its already putting in a huge investment for the boat. Of course I'm also biased because days of ruin was my first game in the series.
Aside from that, I like these changes, especially the pitch for the destroyer. May be something worth trying to jam into a romhack.
I personally feel like cruisers should be the jack off all while the destroyers are the AA/anti sub unit, like in irl.
Days of Ruin simply "ruins" the rest of the series. The improvements and tweaks were incredible and it's easily the most fun game out of all of them. Feels like it's less about magic powers and more about commanders leading their forces.
@@AlaricKerensky It's the only game of the series with a plot you can take seriously
I really like DoR carriers too, but they are so overpriced it's painful
I also love the DoR aircraft carriers. Though I would say they were a tad overpriced and too slow. I think to improve them we should have them start out with a sea plane already inside when they are build and to off-set this we should make their cost 30.000. The sea planes themselves are fine but they should perhaps cost 14k instead.
I think those tweaks are all that's needed.
This whole discussion, is the reason why I made my custom CO entry. I made some heavy calculations and came to the conclusion that the fairer price change to all naval units was close to -30%. This is: Battleships costing 19,600g; Submarines 14,000g; Cruisers 12,600g; Landers 8,400; This made it possible for them to be more viable against Air Units. I also agree with increasing the defense and offense of Cruisers to Air Units. Finally giving Cruisers the ability to temporarily attack on land, and Battleships to attack on Air, made both units quite more useful. Upon playtesting my CO against air specialists and S tier COs, I came to the conclusion that indeed, just a simple price reduction to them made them viable against the rest of the units of the game. Of course haters will always repeat the mantra that 'Naval Units suck and you should invariably hate them'
Which is ridiculous. I love naval units and I'll buy this game if naval units become relevant. I do agree adding another ship or two would be nice.
theres a naval unit thats anti air. super effective directly from spawn. set up your next movement to be right before you spawn a new one
@@ColdEmperor The gunboat from Days of Ruins is cool, can transport 1 infantry/mech and has a 1 ammo shot with similar power of a tank. They trade great with other naval units and you can always return them to a provisional port for reloads on the front
7 move and costs 6K
It works as a good way to roll out infantry accross water and works as disposable damage once you no longer need it.
Vision is 2 but it still works for scouting thanks to the movement
@@rompevuevitos222It is essentially a mech unit on water , and i love that.
I think naval units should be able to pass through bridges but not stop on them, similar to how you can pass through your own units.
Yeah same with enemy air units and such
@@LunarSage69and it also works the other way. A tank won’t be stopped by a battle copter in the air and a sub won’t be stopped by one guy sitting on a bridge.
@@SuperDestroyerFox
Since the units are entire squadrons and the tiles can be whole cities or forests, a friendly unit being unable to walk through an enemy unit is a simple matter of "if they did, they would enter combat".
In that sense, attacking the tile in front of you would be the only possible command for the purpose of "passing through" those units.
@@Dexuz but how would infantry which can’t even attack a sub stop it from crossing a bridge. Or what about indirects
@@SuperDestroyerFox
Mostly in the sense of that tile being an area in which the two armies wouldn't want their units to be so close to each other, even if they cannot directly attack.
Since some tiles can be entire cities, there really isn't anything physical preventing an ally tank from passing through an enemy tank, but it makes sense that they wouldn't from a strategic perspective, as it would be the equivalent of dribbling a ball past 4 guys with them just standing there.
Historically, and also currently, destroyers are extremely effective at hunting submarines. I think that since you want the submarine to be priced at 10000, and the destroyer to be 8000, having the destroyer do base 80% damage to surfaced submarines and 100% base damage to submerged submarines, is fair.
I think he'd rather rename that ship to something the missile boat from days of ruin before making the counter cheaper and more versatile than the submarine.
The "cruiser" should be renamed to a destroyer since that's what it is.
Also what he is describing is a frigate.
While that may be historically accurate, the Submarine is already a very specific unit, and giving it yet another counter would be silly.
@@MrMarinus18 frigate is a weird term. It describes very different ships depending on time period and country, so it's very hard to lock down what a frigate is or should be, especially in the sense of a video game where the units are mostly fictitious anyway.
I would lean into the elements. Make the cruiser, destroyer, and frigate be similar ships with slightly different naval specialities. Frigate is generic allrounder, the sea tank. While cruiser can fight naval unit and land units, they specialise in fighting air units. Destroyers can fight very well, but mainly specialise against subs, either being able to detect them stealthed in a certain range or have a power to force them to surface with a depth charge power. The depth charge power could be blind and cost ammo or fuel to use, meaning destroyers players would need to predict where subs are to get them to surface. A well predicted depth charge can spell doom for a sub, while poor prediction can spell doom for the destroyer.
Subs could be improved if while submerged, they could pass under enemy naval units while moving(though attacking reveals them), but automatically surface if going onto sholes. They would need to spend a action to resubmerge in open waters.
Adding more stuff to advanced wars naval roster would help. For cheap less durable naval unit options, the torpedo boat could serve as naval infantry/mech equivalent. Lower ammo for its anti sub and naval weapons and very easily destroyed, but quick on the water and can punch hard into naval units if they get the first strike(with their torpedos). Resupplying ammo and fuel at sea would be the unarmed tug boat, the weaker cousin to the black boat(since it cannot repair). With a suitable roster, and the changes mangs suggested, naval battles could be a very viable front with lots of moving parts. Tugs flitting about the map trying to supply key groups and resupply each others, while ships duke it out at sea, cruisers sweeping in to knock off air units, while destroyers hunt for the elusive subs that are harassing the tugs and landers, frigates clash and the battleship bombards the enemy from afar. Meanwhile torpedo boats are pulling hit and run attacks against naval units where they can.
I never thought about adding a Destroyer! That's a great idea! However, I also really loved the cruiser in Dual Strike. I actually thought their price wasn't too bad. If I would have to choose between the Destroyer and the cruiser, I think I would choose the cruiser with a few adjustments of course.
they kinda have that unit already in DoR called gun boat, very cheap to build, but it only has 1 ammo. only if that thing has at least 4 ammo instead with a bit adjustment to reduce its fire power.
Though I think he should rename it to a frigate since that is what it is.
The game already has a destroyer which is the incorrectly named 'cruiser'. The 'cruiser' is a destroyer in every way. Destroyers were lightly armored ships made mainly to fight against air units and subs. Cruisers in reality were more so budget battleships that were meant to fight other ships of similar or smaller size.
If they are going to add a frigate maybe adding a proper cruiser would be good as well. It would dominate most naval units and maybe have the unique ability to shoot directly after moving and shoot indirectly if standing still. It would dominate frigates and destroyers but be vulnerable to subs and crushed by battleships and bombers.
@@MrMarinus18 In super famicom wars, where the cruiser original comes from, it was called an 'escort frigate' in the Japanese. That name of course, doesn't have enough room to fit on the english localization of advance wars.
@@jashloseher578 I do wonder why they didn't name it the destroyer though.
@@MrMarinus18 Perhaps the extra letters were considered too many by the localization team.
The battleship fix will actually make the battleship deployable. Yet I have to disagree on the submarine's fixed price because it is too low, on practice this will cause an all naval combat that will mostly end up on a stalemate due to the waters being uncrossable now.
so basically DOR/DC gunboat wars
@@caellanmurphy4751 Yes but with more ammo capacity
I doubt people are just going to spam naval units to keep control of the seas like that. The most important combat happens on land, spamming subs just to keep control of the seas sounds like a terrible idea.
It's like saying people would spam fighters to keep control of the skies(which are more valuable than the sea). But no one actually does that because you're better off spending on ground units
@@rompevuevitos222 you're missing a very valuable piece of information there, doc. Fighters cost 20k, Subs with this hypothetical fix would cost 10k, half as much. Also, for air units you have access to anti air, which is just as good as the fighter at warding off helicopters if not better since it's cheaper and thus more cost effective. The only time a Fighter for it's insane pricetag would be considered necessary is if a bomber enters the fray which decimates anti air, and even then Fighrers are cheaper than Bombers so they're still a cost effective response. There is however no cheaper way to counter a sub, cruisers are 4k more expensive in this patch which would make them cost ineffective at hunting subs which is the only thing they have going for them currently. Thus subs would have free reign over the ocean as long as they have a minimal amount of anti-cruiser support.
I like the destroyer idea.
However, giving it 6 vision would be too much, as the submarine was already intended to be the scouting unit at sea, which also gives the submarine 1 more use other than just countering ships.
Giving the destroyer 3, much like the standard tank, would be fine though.
Honestly, should be the other way round. Subs have, historically, not been as aware of their surroundings as a surface warship is. If the destroyer was to be added, making it the recon of the seas would be the way to go, and adjusting the submarine so that it is less able to see, maybe 4 tiles.
Strong disagree. Subs almost never are used in a picket role, meanwhile DDs have been used in a picket role VERY often, be it AA picket, standard vision picket or radar picket.
It's a shame that the advance wars devs decide to make them so expensive
A total sea battle would be interesting
I'd honestly like battle ships to have a "Salvo" ability, that works similar to missile silos, specializing them into the ground support unit battleships were. It could be a low-damage ability with a reduced firing range that costs 2 ammo, instead of the standard 1 per shot, but you'd gain the ability to do a set amount of damage, and reduce enemy movement speeds by one, making their advance slower while under the 'suppression' effect of the salvo. However, there are problems with it:
- using it with movement impairing COs, such as Olaf, would be dumb
- It would get very expensive, very quickly as you'd need to retreat to resupply in AW1+2
- COs that resupply would also quickly become super powerful (keeping up the salvos)
Just with these 3 reasons, I can see why it wouldn't work, but i'd still like to see the battleship take on a more ground supporting role, other than offering the occasional salvos of damage
Top quality edits my man! This is also a topic I wish was addressed in the reboot camp (at least changes in cost)
Reducing Lander cost by that much initially seemed like overkill, but in the greater context of the other changes, I think it's a worthwhile consideration. I'm more in favor of reducing it to 8k, but playtesting would determine if that's worthwhile. I would add the ability to resupply.
Battleships are the most expensive unit in AW2, and as we see with all expensive units, expense should mean high-risk domination. Neotanks hit like trucks but aren't as durable, Megatanks are hella durable but easy enough to cheese, etc. Battleships don't share this design philosophy, probably because when you're given them in the campaign, it's always in missions where you can take full advantage of them. More range is overkill, and would make Grit a logical choice for naval missions, and I also don't agree with lowering the cost. Instead, I would take the Megatank or Piperunner approach: Make them hard to kill and require a specific playstyle to counter them. I like the light-AA guns approach, and would go so far as to say that a full HP Bomber should only do 50%, meaning it can't two-turn kill it due to counter-fire. DoR's addition of firing after moving feels like a logical decision, and would increase their threat level. This wouldn't be too strong of a change, because...
Subs being lowered in cost and increased in strength makes them effectively the Md. Tanks of the sea. You wouldn't deploy too many of them unless your opponent is going hard into naval warfare. One or two is sufficient to be a threat, but if your opponent drops a BShip, suddenly you're going to really need them, since...
Destroyers! I love the idea of a naval Tank. Not terrifying, but threatening enough to merit a response. This unit alone makes a substantially reduced Lander cost worth it.
BBoats are a phenomenal unit, my favorite from AWDS. They should cost the same as Landers, as they trade off the ability to transport any unit for the ability to repair units. Which is a frighteningly powerful ability, particularly in the context of horrifyingly durable BShips.
And let's throw in Carriers while we're at it. They're way too expensive, but their ability to annihilate air units from a distance is terrifying. That alone basically makes them worth 30k, but they should also be able to make seaplanes. And fire after moving.
Oh and I don't like Cruisers. At all. Never have. They're an utterly useless unit. They need to be as terrifying as AA and they need to take little damage from land units apart from Rockets. I like your suggestions.
i don't like the idea of the battleship having counter-attack, it's an indirect and you should not be able to deploy it without support, if you're attack by a bomber, you need a cruiser or a fighter, but since cruiser also deal with submarine, crusier are bad because battleship are bad, but with a major buff on battleship, with the extra range and the extra defense, cruiser are already better, they just need another small buff
One additional tweak: Supply Boats as a new unit, separate from Landers, but using them as a base for their stats. They can resupply naval units in the same vein as how APCs do for land units, but cannot transport them. Additionally, submarines have to be on the surface in order to restock from a Supply Boat.
Supply boats would be cracked
I was thinking about utilizing the "material" mechanic from days of ruin. My idea was to give naval units a self heal, that would consume their 1 material. The amount healed would depend on the ship type. For example subs could heal 2. cruiser 3 and battleships 4
I'd add another ship to that line up, a small corvette with the ability to transport 1 infantry unit and capture ports by itself, but with only mines for combat, which can only attack submarines, and not as well as a destroyer. An alternative for landing units when the opponent has subs out, the ability to capture without having new sea buildings... it would be the mech of the sea
I absolutely approve of the Destroyer Unit, I find Naval Combat interesting and a bit fun but the steep prices are always such a turn off. A way to attack ground units with a Naval Unit who are adjacent to the sea would make Naval Combat much more fun.
I think Day of ruin did it quite well with battleships and carriers in term of usefulness and fire power, those things are very frightening...except for the price tags of course. So, if there is any changes, just take Day of Ruin and reduce the price tags for those 2.
As for the cruisers, the changes you propose is quite nice, but I would add one more thing that they should also replenish gas, ammo and 2hp per turn for copter units.
Cruisers were also better in DOR. Copters and subs would hardly dent it and would 1 hit every air unit. The only units that would hit it hard were bombers, rockets, and battleships. They also cost 2000 less.
battleship on that was op. move then attack. Too broken to add
@@ajabacan1886 I think DoR battleships were broken for naval combat but kinda sucked against land units still simply bc 5 units isn't really enough imo
@@ajabacan1886 reducing their damage on cruiser is always an option to keep thing more balanced. In day of ruin, battleship has -1 range, so rocket can actually retaliate.
@@TheBikeOnTheMoon battleship can dmg the indirects like rocket first. rockets cant move then attack on days of ruin
The Destroyer should act like a anti-tank from days of ruin, except with the stats you propose. The AT in DoR was a bit over tuned but a more expensive, weaker, all purpose sea version with a range of 1-3 that can be used to fill the gaps of the other specialized ones sounds like a good way to change things up.
Late to the party, but here's a thought:
Battleships were brimming with guns, lots of them short-range. I would keep their "main" attack the same or buff the damage and NOT give them attack-and-move, but I would give them a weak-to-mid strength all--purpose normal attack. Make it slower too.
So you have a slow lumbering behemoth. If you can set it up, it's massive main guns can devastate the shoreline or other ships, but it can still survive and retaliate in a close-quarter scrap.
Edit: Look at the picture of it! It even has secondary guns on the sides!
I think letting boats move on shoals and bridges would allow for some pretty nice map designs. There are some league maps on AWBW that have ports near the "ocean", and little shoal lakes, allowing for black boat shenanigans. You could possibly allow rivers too, and make them reduce movement speed.
Another idea I've had is increasing ocean tiles to 1 defense, and reefs to 2 or 3 defense. These changes, and letting boats move on to certain 0 def tiles, would allow you to have tactics similar to land units, and possibly breath some life into naval combat.
Personally, I think the big problems with naval combat are:
1) Their price. This is pretty easy to fix, just reduce the cost. This is by far the easiest to fix.
2) Their lack of interaction with ground units. Advance Wars revolves around the ground, but boats hardly interact with them. Air units all revolves around ground units: t-copters transport infantry, b-copters harass, bombers kill everything and dusters/fighters protect serve as super anti-air to protect ground units.
Naval units have little effect on ground units, with the battleship and lander being the only exceptions. To fix this, I believe cruisers should have a variation of the anti-air's vulcan cannon, one-shotting infantry capturing near the ocean and dealing decent damage to other ground units. The destroyer is a good idea (implemented perfectly in Advance Wars Story, a great AW Romhack btw) as it can deal good damage to ground units and counter vs cruisers, and giving it a sub weakness would also promote submarines as a useful counter unit. Additionally, giving boats better terrain movement (1 move over shoals/bridges and 2 move over rivers) would allow them to get up close with ground units better.
If anybody sees any flaws with my ideas, just reply them below, but I believe these changes would make naval combat significantly more enjoyable. Also, in Flak's powers his naval units should be able to move over land to explain how he got his battleships where he did.
Since TLDRs are pretty common for the youth of today, I'll add one here. Reduce the price of naval units and make them interact more with ground units.
Honestly, giving Flak and the other meme tier CO’s memey powers like ships having 1 tile of land movement would at least make them unique and open up a niche for them.
Fairly Interesting stuff you bring up here, love these kind of videos. It's much fun to think about such Ideas. Actually would balance naval quite similiar to what you have explained. Here is my take:
*Lander:*
- Exactly the same. Reduce the cost to 6000
- Maybe add the ability to use remaining move costs after loading and unloading units to spice it up.
*Submarine:*
- Reduce costs to 10000
- Let them dive/undive and fire at the same turn to make them more versatile.
- Can only be detected by naval units. (Air units can share a tile with them)
*Cruiser:*
- Reduce costs to 12000, set movement to 5 (I think it is already, but whatever)
- Copters can start and land on Cruisers like on carriers in Days of Ruin instead of being loaded/unloaded.
- Main weapon (I assume now it is the missiles) can also attack Land units, doing about 50% dmg against light vehicles, Infantry and 10 - 20% dmg against heavy vehicles.
- missiles also do less damage against submarines 50% instead of (from my memory) 85% dmg
- Else the cruiser should be changed to be pretty much the same as in Days of Ruin. Wich inlcudes higher resistance against attacks, dealing more damage to air units, and being able to attack other naval units and so on.
*Battleship:*
- Reduce costs to 20000, set movement to 4
- add light howitzer with 4 ammo , 1 - 3 range that deal about 50% to Infantry and light vehicles, but only about 10 - 20% dmg against heavy vehicles, copters and naval units.
Can also be used after moving with the ship in the same turn and fires back if being attack in direct combat
- add a light AA-gun similar in strenght and funtion of the carrier in Day of Ruin
- The remaining main Heavy cannon has ammo reduced to 3 from 6, with the range adjusted to 4-6 instead of 2-6, can only fire stationary and deals devastating damage to all Sea and Land units (about 80% base damage vs heavy vehicles, naval units, and 100% vs Infantry, light vehicles and copters)
- you can use the heavy, light and anti-air after each other in a single turn
*Destroyer:* (Rocket- /Gunboat?) Really like the idea of destroyers, AW1-3 really lacking on that part.
- A light ship that costs 6000, has a movement of 6 and does decent damage against naval and land units, and is also able to attack and detect Submarines better than other ships.
- Main weapon are missiles similar to cruisers with the same usage above
- Every cruiser is able to set up 1 seamine that traps every enemy ship but destroyers. Needs to be shoot at in order to be destroyed.
- The destroyer is able to detect submarines and seamines at 1-2 range and isn't trapped by submerged submarines (can act after it is stoppped by one and is able to fire and use remaining movement points)
- Takes more damage from all sources as opposed to other ships (similiar to the Days of Ruin gunboat)
- no secondary weapon
- able to move on shoals
They don’t need to add a new unit like the destroyer, they just need to rework the cruiser to give it some of those ideal features you were talking about like attacking ground troops by the shore
I recall some old advance wars forums cooked up a Hovercraft unit that would work like a tank, except having Tires-tier speed on land and Thread-tier speed on water, and a Zeppelin that worked as an airborne indirect unit and honestly I really wish both of those would exist. Maybe add a Marine (as in the soldier, not naval stuff) infantry unit that captures just like in Wargroove but gets a defense debuff on land.
It would be cool to have a supply ship, something that can refuel and rearm ships at sea, and possibly helicopters as well. You could even just make the APC amphibious.
Another option, you could give the submarine one infantry transport slot.
Instead of a destroyer as the cheap early game naval unit how about a PT boat. That fits more with the ocean going tank idea, it's got a machine gun for hitting infantry or copters but it also has torpedoes to use against naval vessels and it's fast. It could be capable of operating in the shallows or rivers.
Nice one with the PT boat
I actually think the black boat serves all those purposes very well.
I don't think you should give the submarine an infantry transport slot. It actually reduces the value of winning naval battles and that's the opposite of what we're trying to achieve here. Landers should be vulnerable and visible so that you need naval superiority to take islands.
An awkward thing is that there already is a destroyer in the game which is the cruiser. The cruiser is a destroyer in function. What Mangs is describing is a frigate.
I actually was thinking about gjving all ships long range attacks without no move restriction, only for battleships to have such restriction, but, you know, battleships shoot far and can stay in lakes. Cruisers can even long range against air units.
I know it is not a balance per se, but it changes the warfare for me.
I've never played any Advance Wars games, and probably never will, but these are some of my favorite videos on this channel. I guess I just like Mangs Does Game Design.
...should we tell him about Gunboats from Days of Ruin? They are an interesting naval units that work well with the new sea terrain and temp. harbours that the rigs build. Early game naval unit with paper thin defenses, they pack a punch but have low ammo (Just one attack), they're all purpose and rather fast, but they need the vision from subs and the Anti Air capabilities of Cruisers. Probably the best unit to round out the naval roster.
I forgot to bring them up, but I don't think they do anything to revitalize naval combat. They can only shoot once, so they’re not useful for prolonged harassment. They don’t serve the same role as a tank or a recon on land. They also only have 2 vision.
@@Mangs1337 I disagree their role is to transport infantry in the early game for quicker contestation of property and they do it very well with higher move and lower cost than lander ,The one ammo only isnt a problem with temp harbour and still does decent damage to lander also their move help spot sub a lot
@@Mangs1337 they may have 2 vision, but vision also works differently in DoR, so they do actually spot a lot of things, especially when you have 4 or 5 of them
Gunboat would be a great addition to the game, cheap naval unit that could contest the sea in early stages while transporting troops and have BBs support for continued harrasment.
His idea of a Destroyer Unit is basically what they tried to do with the Gunboat. However, the gunboat's design more of an infantry transport, while the Destroyer is more of a fast ship escort and scout. Personally, I'd give the Destroyer at least some damage vs Submerged Subs, since their namesake's role in naval combat was to deal with close range aggressors.
The price and lack of an early game unit really is quite a problem with it. Good video :D
The Destroyer sounds like it might be too powerful. Based on your description it seems like it does good damage to anything in its theater, meaning it can deal with all other naval units as well as air units, with the added bonus of being able to fire on ground units if it can get next to them. I get that it isn't good on defense, but when you can build 3 of them for the price of a battleship, that would seem to push battleships out of being useful again. Destroyers have better vision and movement than subs while costing less, so subs don't seem like a good counter either. And Destroyers can easily race inside the minimum range of battleships to start chipping them down. I definitely don't mind the idea of another naval unit to make things interesting, but I'm a bit wary based on this description. Would be cool to see it developed, tested, and iterated on.
I find it interesting that DoR does several of the things you mention, since I find its naval combat dynamic and satisfying, leaving AW2 navy primitive in comparison.
Prices weren't reduced as much as you suggest, but average -10% to Battleship, Cruiser, and Lander. Cruisers got so many buffs that I estimate they DOUBLED in power; I don't even try fighting on the water without them. At base, they one-shot every air unit, bombers take them down to 50% HP, and B-Copters barely scratch them. They still can't attack land units, but are such effective guard dogs for ships that can that investing in the navy actually feels worth it.
Gunboat fills the ship-to-ship function of the Destroyer you suggest almost exactly. Though they have only 1 ammo, they have most cost effective ship-to-ship attack. They cannot attack land, but function as capture-transports by loading infantry and mechs. Due to how DoR handles Fog of War, gunboats' mobility makes them decent scouts.
Noticed you took the image for the additional naval unit you suggested from the game Battle Nations. I used to play that game years ago, so it put a smile on face to see that image again.
Oh I love the idea of the destroyer! Early game naval combat sounds like a really fun shakeup!
I like your destroyer idea, but I think it would be a bit too overtuned, especially for a cheap early-game unit. If you lowered its movement to 5 and its vision to 4, it would be a lot more reasonnable.
Considering how weak its supposed to be the movement and vision is fine.
@@ColdEmperor I disagree. 7 move on a naval unit is insane, because the only terrain that can slow it down are reefs. Recons have more movement, but because they have tires, they get significant movement penalties from plains, forests, etc. 6 vision is also too much, because destroyers, which are meant to be all-purpose, would have more vision than dedicated scouting units like recons or missiles (lol).
Mangs also wants to give them good combat capabilities. Sure, they get destroyed by bombers and battleships, but those 2 are late game units and its going to take a few days before they show up. Because of this, they really shouldn't be better scouts than recons while also being decent combat units for only 8k.
@@kiwi_inc2843 because destroyers were made as patrol units in navies and pickets
@@localmilkman3917 Fair enough. I don't know anything about naval combat, so I just went with the "all-purpose" description Mangs gave in that video.
@@kiwi_inc2843 i still agree destroyers should have arround 4 to 5 tbh its too much but it is made for picket duty
My opinion of change of naval units:
Battlecruiser :it is a expensive hq command ship and are full of supplies, my change are have infinite ammo and fuel, no reason that huge ship with almost unlimited cargo get out of fuel on a battle.
Cruiser:Same(maybe more defense against air units as you sugested) but now can refuel other naval units like submarines and lander.
Submarine:Same ,but when are under water have always a defensive bonus , this bonus will stack with another bonus like terrain or drake bonus.
Lander:same cost, but units on landers now have amphibious attacks, so he can attack when get drop by lander, if they dont destroy the unit,they come back safety to the lander.
The production of this video was top notch mangs. Great work
i definitely agree with your ideas and changes, naval units are limited as they are, and not being able to engage with some units altogether such as land units, severely affects there usability and viability, air units are effective against all unit types, whereas naval are barely competent at naval, incompetent at air combat, and situational in land combat
I remember playing this as a kid and loving advanced wars although I always favored bombers heavy. Didn't realize so many people were still so into it. Great to see I did always think navy was underwhelming of the 3
Something unique I would probably suggest as something to flesh out naval combat would be adding ships that historically existed for very specific roles. For example:
the monitor: a heavily armed, heavily armoured, very slow class of coastal ships that could bombard anyone that got too close to the shore and could even go up rivers if required. In practice it'd be like a riverine or coastal defence artillery that is tough but would be forced to stay close to land lest its fuel run out or it takes damage
The fleet oiler: essentially an APC at sea. Slow, but can resupply units at sea, allowing them to operate further from home. This has historically been important for submarines, and modern carrier groups use similar supply ships
Torpedo boats: small, fragile, but can pack a big if limited punch. Just dangerous enough to make someone cautious about going too near coasts where they could be hiding. Dark Conflict missile boats are probably the closest comparison
Minelayers: ships that are weak and can't shoot, but can drop a mine that acts like a submerged sub that just explodes is landed on. Useful for area denial
The big guns of the fleet would have to be buffed to counter these smaller specific ships, but for their price it should be justifiable
Gz Runso for getting in :D
This was a fun video to watch, I clicked on it almost instantly and watched it all.
I hope you do more of these kinds of videos with like, your structured thoughts and musings, could also work with games like Fire Emblem too but yeah, it was enjoyable.
Could also do different concepts, but in a similar style like this video. Doesn't have to be a "series" or anything, just like, hearing your thoughts and ideas on stuff like this is interesting. "How X could've been (or could be) improved" or "Why Y is my favorite villain" or "Z gameplay mechanic really needs fixing" and so on
I've thought about this in the past and have been a huge WW2, Cold War and modern warfare navy enthusiast.
Cruisers in AW are actually more like Destroyers in modern navies - ocean going escort ships that carry ASW (anti-sub) weapons and have a light gun that can fire upon airborne & surface targets. The US Navy Spruance class or Russian Navy Udaloy class comes to mind, along with their ability to carry Helicopters as well. In this regard, they should be VASTLY cheaper to deploy and have stats similar to Anti-airs as you said to give them this particular patrol role, I'm suggesting maybe 10000~13000 range given their dedicated role in game.
Submarines in AW are attack/hunter killer subs, mainly designed to target other naval vessels and use submerging as a stealth tactic. Their cost however for this role is WAY too high - they should be closer to 12000~15000, but one ability I would use to justify their cost is the have the ability to fire stand-off anti-surface missiles against non-naval targets, likely with 2~3 range like an Artillery unit on land. This is a reference to how modern attack submarine like the US Navy Virginia-class can fire TLAM or Tomahawk land attack missiles which are fired from their torpedo tubes or from VLS bays, which can be guided against land targets. Its limited range will have tactical use and make them a greater threat to use Cruisers/Destroyers/Frigates to hunt and take them out.
Battleships are capital ships of the world and now largely irrelevant to modern battlefields...given that no navy in the world deploys them anymore, with the US Navy Iowa-class being last used during the Gulf War in the 90s and Iraq in early 2000s. Their guns are awesome but they're so vulnerable to every type of modern weapon from bombers to off-shore rocket fire (just like in AW) it makes sense they cost so much but can do so little in retaliation in direct combat. Giving them AA guns to return fire against Battle copters would be nice touch but honestly not really required. I think DoR with its "move and shoot" concept gives the battleship enough reason to justify their high cost but incredibly dangerous reason to have them destroyed ASAP.
The Destroyer is a nice concept, but I think that role as you suggest should be given to the term "Frigate". These are even smaller vessels that are a mainstay in modern navies as the front line ships that are flexible to engage any type of target from air, surface or underwater and act as "shields" for the more expensive destroyers, cruisers and of course, aircraft carriers. They fit PERFECTLY as your concept as "sea tanks" in the early game and their role is perfect for sea battle contesting while allowing stronger ships like cruisers, subs and battleships to still have role in late game naval battle. The 8000 cost is very reasonable.
Lastly, I think the biggest issue with naval units in AW is that air units like Battle copters and Bombers VASTLY outmanoeuvre with their great movement range and hard counter all ship types, on top of being CHEAPER to deploy than ships. In AW:DS they tried to counter this with the carrier, but in practice it was more of a glorified sea-going Missile that gave naval air deterrence. What I suggest instead of a Guided Missile Destroyer (or in real life, a DDG). This would be a 15000~18000 unit that would be a hard counter to players who spam air units to counter naval fleets, which gives a Missile like 3~6 square no fly zone which can protect your fleet from Battle copter spam and bombers strikes. Missile destroyers however will be vulnerable to direct attack from any other naval unit or submarines, but they can like Frigates do return fire against surface targets with their naval guns.
Also they should add the temporary ports from days of ruin allowing more option to repair navel units
0:00 Intro
1:07 Notes
3:53 Lander
4:36 Cruiser
6:00 Submarine
7:04 Battleships
(Hard Disagree on this one, much prefer Days of Ruin Battleships)
9:06 Destroyer
10:14 Summary
10:38 End
I like all those ideas, but thing here is, I want to buff the carrier, I want it to be able to strike at land, by launching aircraft, that deal great damage against infantry, and light armored vehicles, do decent damage against medium armored vehicles, do low damage against heavily armored vehicles.
It does decent damage to naval units overall, but it does not kill them, does major damage to Landers, and Destroyers, decent damage against cruisers, low damage against battleships.
Reduce the 30000 Cost to 28000 instead, Since in reality, carriers can attack air, or land, or sea effectively, while also being able to carry units, and, give the carrier an extra purpose, it essentially acts like a lander that can fight back, and carry air/ground units around.
Cruisers should have atleast be able to attack everything like a destroyer, can it just act like Mostly anti air purpose, that can protect itself against naval ships, and has 3 range to attack land units?
While being essentially a better yet slower version of a destroyer.
Does that sound good?
I've given it a fair bit of thoughts and here's what I came up with. I do am a WWII and specifically sea power enjoyer, for context.
For starters :
Battleship, Cruiser and Destroyer can all shoot their main guns from point blank to range, Battleship being the strongest and longest range, Cruiser, then Destroyer. These three units can shoot at other naval units while moving in the same turn, but not against land-based units, they need to stay still for that. These naval units can retaliate to other ship-based shelling if their range allows it. They also all come equipped with secondary anti-aircraft guns, allowing effective defense against B-Copters but not Bombers and Tac Bombers. B-Copters should be particularly weak to anti-aircraft fire from naval units to the point attacking with them should not be a good monetary trade-off. Those anti-aircraft gun also retaliate first. Bombers having to pass through flak clouds to deliver their bombs, basically.
Now for specific units :
The Destroyer is a great concept but Mangs viewing it as a sea-tank doesn't sounds fun or palatable. With my change to naval main gun shelling, Mang's Destroyer now needs a better historically accurate purpose defined down below.
Destroyer : A Destroyer fitted with torpedoes, range 0 to 1. Moderate ammo but deadly. Still comes with weak shelling capabilities and weak anti-air defenses. This is your glass cannon ship-to-ship combat unit. If it can get within torpedo range it should heavily damage any other ship, rendering any retaliatory shelling a non-issue. Comes with depth charges.
Backbone of your fleet, to make any advance risky to other ships and submarines if spotted.
Cruiser : loses its main anti-air main gun for moderately good naval main guns. Shoots other cruisers or destroyers without fearing retaliation with their slight range advantage. Good anti-air defenses. Air units should not want to attack them, the tradeoff wouldn't be great since naval units shoots first against aircraft. Also comes with depth charges.
A counter to Destroyer spam while also fulfilling its original anti-air role, and submarine hunting.
Carrier : loses any offensive capabilities. Price massively reduced but should still be an investment. New role : mobile air resupply, transport and repair station. Size 3 hangar. Air units deployed from a carrier can act immediately.
Sea-APC for aircraft.
Submarines : cannot attack each others. This isn't historically accurate nor something that benefits the game's balance, so let's remove this from the game. The torpedoes now have 0 to 1 range like Destroyer do. Submarine are always considered stealthed unless they end their turn next to another unit, as usual. Very weak to naval shelling, but diving renders them immune to that, but not to depth charges. Destroying a submarine should require spotting and the effort of a few ships to depth charge it to oblivion. Diving reduces vision to 1.
The fleet disruptor/stealth scout/back-row assassin.
Conventionally , the units are designed so the hardcounter always cost less than the unit its countering like for bcopter vs AAs, and stealth vs fighters or submarine/bomber vs battleships so cruiser should be costing less than submarines when designing their prices
I especially like the idea of the Destroyer. I personally always felt that the key flaw that naval combat units faced was that no matter what option you went with, they were all invariably way too expensive for you to build up enough of them with which to properly respond to sudden enemy attacks through water terrain, so having a cheap unit that has the best traits of both mechs and scouts that can be rapidly deployed to hold back a sudden naval attack would be incredible.
One unit I would personally add is a scout ship which #1: has good vision, #2: its main "weapon" is a scan which it can use to find all hidden units within 4 range, I would also give said scan ability to recons. However in return, it recons only get one use and scout ships only have 3 (lack of water APCs) so plan carefully
I too enjoy Naval Combat and I have a couple of game recommendations you might enjoy assuming you haven't heard about them already.
The first is still being made but it's called Ultimate Admirals: Dreadnoughts. You are the commander of a nations navy and you design, deploy and command the ships through battles and full campaigns.
The second is Rule the Waves 2. It's similar to Ultimate Admirals Dreadnoughts, but with less graphics. It is complete at this time though and also features carriers and airplanes. It's also getting a sequel. and it's sorta turn based.
The final is Atlantic Fleet. it's very turned based and you can control ships from ww2 in the Atlantic the battles tend to be much smaller but you also have more control getting to manually aim the guns and torpedo and getting to even choose what ammo is loaded.
Why does Noone talk about the gunboats from Days of Ruin? Theyre one of the most versatile ships in the game. Cheap, carries infantry and can damage all other naval units except submerged subs. I think it helps balance and justify naval combat quite a bit more.
i've been working on an AW2 clone in my spare time, and I had almost the exact same thoughts. Great minds think alike I guess. The destroyer I implemented works almost exactly like you describe, except it's weak to subs and air. I also considered adding something like the naval properties from wargoove, which would give you the same income as a city and allowing destroyers to capture those + naval bases.
Another idea was to make cruisers more like missiles, giving them a shorter-ranged indirect attack against air units and subs, which they'd be able to spot from a few tiles away, while weakening their direct retaliation.
Last idea was to make battleships (and cruisers) able to move and shoot on the same turn, turning their indirect attack into a direct attack if they do so.
The destroyer concept sounds like the gunboats in DoR with additional vision, ammo and the abillity to attack land and air units.
I am not sure if you recalled it being a unit. I didn't really see it make a reappearance in the video, yet is very important to naval combat making cruisers (or destroyers in DoR) also quite important.
Honestly I REALLY like all your suggestions...! Naval combat was always my fave part of advance wars, I'd love to see the changes you suggested:D
Make all naval units into the USS Liberty.
>NO HACHI THAT'S AN ALLIED SHIP!
Hm... The Destroyer being an all-purpose vehicle costing 8000, I think we can afford to reduce its vision to 3+3. Why the +3? Well, it's conditional vision. These extra vision range only works on sea.
Just because it can do everything doesn't mean it should have a bigger vision than the dedicated sea scout while costing less.
Battleships have those giant towers in the center of their hull for a reason. That's the crows nest that they use to look far out into the ocean and spot enemies before they can be spotted (this is before the invention of the radar). After the advent of radar the bigger ship has the stronger radar so usually has better vision as well ... sooo ...
I think one of the best ways that strategy games have made naval forces important is by allowing land units to embark, rather than having to build a separate transport ship for them. If you could temporarily turn your ground troops into defenseless transport ships temporarily by moving out from a captured seaport, that right there would provide all the incentive players need to take the fight to the water. Cheap anti-ship vessels would have a purpose for being deployed and the resulting counter play would give naval combat a reason for existing.
I actually generally agree with most of your suggestions, except this is my one counter perposal.
Cruisers are a ranged anti Air at like 2-6 range. However, they are also equipped with a 0-2 range sonar to detect submerged submarines. However, they are actually rather poor at fighting them. The anti sub role would be filled by the destroyer, who hard counters submarines, but must wait for them to reveal themselves by attacking or wait for them to be detected by Cruisers. Submarines would do less damage to destroyers on a first strike.
This would cement the Cruisers role as a general support craft, keep destroyers relevant as a screen ship while not being overpowerd, and all while not nerfing air and subs too much.
They should be renamed to destroyers and have their price drop I feel.
His proposed unit is a frigate.
I think they could add a proper cruiser which would be about the price that the cruiser is now but have more defense and attack but not be able to fire against submerged subs. They could give it the unique ability to either move and shoot directly or not move and shoot indirectly with a range of 3.
I agree with everything you have said, except the lander price since 6000 is just too low. What I believe to be the problem with naval units is their overspecialization, so I think giving each of them more tools is the answer.
Battleships should get their anti-air capabilities from super famicom wars back. The cruiser is interesting since it behaves more like a frigate, we could maybe change its name and make a proper cruiser. Having a naval unit capable of engaging in direct combat with ground units, which could be the case with these new destroyer you have proposed, or we could let the cruiser attack infantry with it's anti-air and vehicles with it's missiles. Also all ships should have a lot of vision, barring the lander, perhaps.
I'm not so sure though because the lander is a transport. It doesn't have any value by itself and usually losing a transport means losing more than 6000. The lander should be the tool of choice for transport over water and not the transport helicopter.
I actually disagree that battleships should get AA fire. I think they should mainly get more armor. The main issue they have is that escorting them doesn't do much as once a helicopter has attacked a battleship it already earned itself in so escorting them doesn't stop it from being a losing proposition. Helicopter suicide attacks on battleships should not be cost effective.
I disagree that ships should have a lot of vision. Scouting was a massive part of naval warfare in the early 20th century so advance wars should reflect that. Removing scouting also just lessens the dept of the combat system.
Also you have the ships wrong. The 'cruiser' is not a frigate at all, it's a destroyer. The destroyer is a ship meant to escort larger warships by taking out the things the bigger warships are afraid of. Mainly subs and planes.
But I think the current 'cruiser' should be renamed to destroyer and a proper cruiser be added. It should cost 18k but be mostly like a medium tank and an artillery rolled into one. That it can move and shoot directly or not move and shoot indirectly with a range of 2.
@@MrMarinus18 Well, my reasoning for the landers was that they can transport any given pair of land units, which could mean a great differenve in value once it is carrying anything bigger than infantry. Altough considering its very specific way of transport as a downside I would rate it at 8k.
And regarding the cruiser naming, I chose to compare it to a frigate since, as far as I'm aware, there's a lot of overlap between them and destroyers, with the latter being generally bigger and, thus, better armed.
The cruiser doesn't really feel well armed or big to me. On top of that i believe that destroyers are normally used as air defense for their given surface group, while frigates have more limited air defenses and are usually focused on anti-submarine roles, which fits what we see in the game.
I also really like your idea for a proper cruiser, mainly because combining direct combat with indirect capabilities sounds like something ships, and only ships, should be able to have. I would also like one such ship to be able to attack land like the landers in the original could.
@@antiradiationsnowy1536 The thing with landers though is that they are far more limited in their utility than APC's and transport copters.
Frigates and destroyers are more so roles. Frigates are ships for patrol and escort of commercial ships. Destroyers are usually part of large battlegroups.
Frigates are more so vessels meant to operate on their own or in small groups for light combat. Destroyers are part of fleets to protect aircraft carriers. Destroyers are anti-sub far more than frigates. Frigates are for fighting boats and other surface ships. They are not large enough to carry all the specialized equipment destroyers have.
Splitting the escort duties of battleships among 2 ships just makes naval warfare far too cumbersome to be strategic. You should have the destroyer be able to defend the battleship.
The frigate is more so an early game ship or one when you are mainly focused on land. A cheap surface ship to harass landers and give a mild punishment to those that get complacent in their naval superiority.
A cruiser though is a large ship.
I think they would kind of be inbetween the battleship which is strictly indirect and needs protection and a frigate which is cheap enough to be expendable.
I actually think the battleship shouldn't have any AA defenses, they should have enough armor to take a few air strikes. However they have to rely on their escorts for protection.
I think the cruiser should get AA defenses though but only against helicopters, not planes and the frigate should be the same.
Bombers should still be a potent threat.
I've been playing Super Famicom Wars a bit lately. If you were to make the naval units like they were back then, they'd honestly be a lot better.
Cruisers wouldn't be that good, but they serve really well as anti-Sub and naval scouting. You could keep their ability to fire on planes.
Subs being permanently hidden during Fog of War and absolutely crippling battleships would be their strength. Obviously, you should keep their ability to hide even outside of Fog of War.
Battleships need the biggest improvement out of all due to their cost, and giving them the ability to fire on everything except Subs would be the best option. As well as their ability to fire in melee with machineguns to attack shoreline infantry.
I like your Destroyer idea and sounds better what I was thinking. Was thinking about introducing new units and reducing the costs of the existing ones; Missile sub (eats double the fuel normal subs do regardless of submerged or not, attacks like battleships but when ordered to attack they automatically surface), Flak boat (dedicated anti-air ship, cant attack other ships, same vision as anti-air) and Gully (cheap to deploy but only functions as an anti-ship unit that is weaker than subs(
Having a Destroyer unit would make the Cruiser be viably use a lot as well. They'll be essentially the "medium tank" of the naval unit that can counter 3-4 Destroyer units before being shot down. In fact, we kinda already see that in Days of Ruin with the Gunship unit being weak against the Cruiser, but can actually take down the Cruiser if you overwhelmed it with a lot a Gunship units.
So its like gunboats are light tanks, destroyer are mediums, cruiser are AA and BB are APCs.
Doing it like that would make it much more sense and fun and would at least make naval more viably fun
It is kind of awkward that so many get the ship names wrong. What he is proposing is not a destroyer, it's a frigate.
Also the 'cruiser' in the game is actually a destroyer. It not only functions like one but it also looks like one so.
I would like a genuine cruiser be added. One with decent armor that can combat destroyers and landers and the like but not deal much damage to battleships. Maybe it can either move and attack directly or not move and attack indirectly with a range of up to 3.
The destroyer having 6 vision is too much considering subs only has 5, maybe it should have four instead. Also it should probably have a weapon triangle type of relationship with subs and cruisers. Cruisers beat subs, subs beats destroyers and destroyers beat cruisers.
Yeah I'm pretty much taking a page out of advance wars story for that weapon triangle idea (also not sure if that's the name of the hack someone correct me if I'm wrong)
Subs would hard counter both with a first strike, subs get wrecked when attacked. (Torpedos are op)
Great ideas as always Mango.
In my eyes at least, an issue with water combat is the lack of different terrain types: on land you have mountains, forests, all sorts of interesting stuff, whereas water only has reefs (and shoals, if you add them).
I'd love to see some new types of water terrain added, maybe something like choppy seas to reduce defense and movement or a hidden cove that always hugs the land but can conceal a naval unit like a forest. That and more could add a lot more strategic depth to naval combat, which could supplement your proposed changes really nicely.
I like how Red Alert 3 tried making naval units more relevant by incorporating more water on maps and making many, many units amphibious.
Age of Empires 3 tried also to make naval units good by making every boat a transport and some of them can even build (but not upgrade) units just like a building.
Another new Unit or two. The Corvette.
Corvette -
Cost: 6000 Funds
Purpose: Scout/Anti-Submarine
Move: 6
Vision: 4
Fuel: 70/70
Weapons -
Depth Charges: 5/5 [Deals a Base of 70-80% to Submarines, maybe more]
Machine Guns: -/- [For firing back at BCopters ineffectually, similar to Tanks, as well as engaging Infantry on Shores]
Capabilities -
Can scout Submarines at a Range of up to 3, allowing them to much more easily counter Subs.
Afterthoughts: Whilst its generally known that Destroyers were the ones to mostly carry Depth Charges, if the Destroyer were to be put in the game as Mangs suggests, then we'd want to represent that Anti-Submarine capability of the Destroyer in another unit. We don't want Destroyers being ubiquitous, so...
-----------------------------------------------------
Missile Submarine -
Cost: 18000-21000 Funds
Purpose: Direct & Indirect Attacks
Move: 6
Vision: 5
Fuel: 99/99
Weapons -
Rockets: 9/9 [Deals heavy damage to Ground and Naval units, can be fired whilst submerged. Range of 3-8. CANNOT be resupplied unless at a Port.]
Torpedos: 4/4 [Anti-Ship Weapon, comparable to normal Sub Torps. Can be resupplied]
Capabilities -
Long-range stealth support with their missiles, but limited self-defense capabilities and light armor, making them easy to destroy with other Subs, Corvettes, and Cruisers. In fact, they'd probably get 1-shot by most Full HP Cruisers and Subs, with Corvettes having a coin toss to see if they sink it.
Afterthoughts: These are meant to be expensive, late-game power units. Akin to Neotanks, they have something that outdoes every other version of itself. Mostly, the ability to submerge, and yet still fire their ranged attacks. Though, I specifically made it so they can only resupply their missiles at a Port. Both to represent the fact that those missiles are heavy as shit, and to help balance the ability to turn many units to dust whilst completely invisible, and having amazing range.
Technically speaking, the modern Destroyer is actually exactly what you describe (a multirole missile boat) and is the mainstay of navies since the 90's. Battleships have faded out of usage as missiles have become more deadly than artillery. Frigates do the duty of the current advance wars Cruiser (air and sub interdiction); and Cruisers act as general purpose mini-battleships and flagships when there is no Carrier to be a flagship (because the Carrier is now the centre of a naval group where it would have once been the Battleship).
A vast majority of naval units have AA guns, but they are actually tailored to shoot down incoming missiles rather than the planes themselves, since most air-units are also indirect, high flying, and stealthed these days.
Mangs forgetting that gunboats exist, so he created his own.
I like your ideas. One thing I would like to see is an extra water terrain with a high defense rating. Like an atoll or Sheltered harbor, basically a piece of real estate that protects better than a reef but without the vision benefit. Mountains vs. woods. It would help with protection from air units as well.
Something like islands ?
This is great, I especially like the all purpose destroyer and the lower funds needed for naval units in general. Edit: One thing I would change about the destroyer is the visual range, I feel it's far too much for a general purpose unit, which analogues a tank and I feel like other naval units would fit the scout role better. I understand that historically ships are pricier, but they also tend to be bulkier and bigger in real life, essentially having the fortiitude and size of several tanks, planes or what have you, but in AW they hold a low damage threshold in comparison (obviously for balancing reasons) while yet costing as if they have the same advantages they would in real life.
Though he really should call it the frigate cause that's what it is. The existing 'cruiser' actually is a destroyer.
I say nothing should be changed at all. Simply because it was that way for a reason. Landers cost 12000 due to the ability to carry 2 of any ground unit unlike APCs and T-Copters which only carry infantry and mechs. Increasing movement range would also not be necessary because the rest of the transport units have 6 as well. Cruisers logically could not easily shoot at planes because of the high altitude and Bombers could strike before the counter-attack and take minimal damage. However Copter units fly a lot lower and are weaker making them more susceptible to anti-air of ground or sea. Again another reason cruisers cost 18000 is because of them also being a transport unit keeping copters safe from CO powers, like any other transport, and refueling them. Submarines also don't need change because of the usefulness them. They are anti-ship and work well against B-Ships. Their low fuel is a limit to keep them from hiding for a long time. B-Ships don't need anti-airs because if adding them would cause more chaos and confusion. B-Ships can't and shouldn't fire on the same turn because it is an indirect unit and it allows subs to attack the enemy before damage is caused. Anti-air defenses would be direct breaking the rules of advance wars. Adding new units would be necessary for AW4 and the game series to bring it back after the Dual-Strike.
2:18 I like to think its because the bridge has that opening thing for boats to pass by.
2:24 That I have no explanation.
I think that adding a Scout/Patrol Boat would also be useful for Fog of War maps. If course, they would need a very large vision range (7 or 8?), though that should not include submerged subs (don't need a hard counter for them), though I can see having 1 vision range for subs (that is, either adjacent or 1 tile away) be an option.
Honestly, for carriers I would love to see similar changes to the battleship. Retaliatory aa only guns, move and shoot. But I would also refine seaplanes to make them more viable too. Specifically I would say give them canto (or whatever it was) from fire emblem. Allow the seaplanes to deploy, attack and retreat, allowing carriers to have a unique threat whilst being largely vulnerable to other navel units, especially submarines and destroyers.
4:26 Honestly, I don’t like that change at all. Not only it makes T-copters way less useful at naval maps, but it may even be game breaking sometimes. 6000 is really cheap for transporting all kinds of land units in number of two, even being able to move 2 infantry at a time instead of one is so good that higher movement won’t help T-copters to even get close to landers. So the difference of 1000 G between their prices is unfair, T-Copters would only be good at maps with big islands filled with mountains, which is a rare structure, not really fitting a good map. I do agree that landers could be cheaper, but it should be 8000 at least, like in AW Returns.
I'd say that they should take a severe toughness penalty with that price slash. Make them way squishier (which also indirectly fixes subs being a coin toss to kill them without touching the sub)
Honestly, T-chopters aren't supposed to be effective out at sea without a carrier or a ship to launch from...
Don't use T-copters on the ocean then. Landers should be the best choice if you want to transport over the ocean over the T-copters which can go everywhere.
That change alone is silly, but in the context of the other changes, makes sense.
Tcopters aren't only good in mountainous maps. They're also good in maps with many forests and rivers. These are indeed common. They also enjoy the benefit of not taking cannon fire, so I still would use them over an APC most of the time on land. Even on watery maps, I would still deploy a tcopter if I wanted my infantry to move further in than the shore.
This won't hurt tcopters that much
Your suggestions for the cruiser sound like the Days of Ruin version of the cruiser, minus the ability to attack other ships.
Cool to see my man Runso making it to the eggchannel!
If you put a destroyer you should at least make Cruisers able to fight back at them. You could make destroyers able to resupply ships if you dont plan on using black boats to really add some utility9
I dont think range is a problem for Battleship, I think its damage. With only one attacks that deals rocket damage, they cant really apply insane pressure worth their cost
Days of ruin made them abble to shoot while mooving to uograde their range to insane levels, but there is another way to make it more interresting if you dont want to use this very good version of battleship
By making them able to attacks 2 times per turn, albeit with Artillery damage. (Ww2 battleship use arrillery guns)
With this a battleship can seriously disable an army or even let you break defensive lines. They will make real deadzone that absolutly needs to be dealt with overwise you wont be able to advance in said zone.
He should rename his unit to the frigate since that's what it is. Also the "cruiser" should be renamed to destroyer.
I feel the main issue with battleships is that they don't really have any other unit to fight against. Adding a frigate or a proper cruiser would give a unit that would be crushed by battleships. It's kind of like if the medium tank existed but not the standard one.
My personal thoughts on Naval units in Advance Wars 2 are...
~Lander Price decrease to 10k from 12k
~Cruiser AA guns should be 70% as strong as Anti-Air against planes
Price decrease to 14k from 18k
~Submarines Price Decrease to 16k from 20k
~Battleship Defensive AA Guns 40% effective as Anti-Air
Price decrease to 22k from 28k.
(If a Destroyer was added)
~Destroyer
Cost 12k
Fuel 80
Ammo 4
Movement 6
Vision 4
Target: Ships/Subs
Lander 80%
Destroyer 65% Hit by 65%
Submarine 55% Hit by 85%
Cruiser 40% Hit by 55%
Battleship 20% Hit By 95%
Purpose- Scout/Naval All Rounder
I would add 4 UNITS:
Battleship Light balanced around 10k-12k with rage 2-4.
To get some earlier treat form the ocean for your land units. (i would name it the cruiser, and the current cruiser an destroyer)
Light hovercraft 5-6K
Yes, can act on SEA AND LASND. So it can stalk the coast and then only engage with land when you want to. You pay an little extra for the flexibility, so only in certain maps really viable.
Main goal: hit infantry and battle copters and some scouting
Hover tank 9k
This can attack sea units somewhat effective, or does the some as the light hovercraft, but also with tanks. Looks an bit like your destroyer, but now hit can also get on land to deal with land units.
Transport hover craft 6-7k?
Why not? 1 unit only. And it can move tanks. Give the current lander 3 spaces, so now an single lander can suddenly fil an beach full with units.
And yes, battle copters should do less damage against the full ships (not these hover crafts)
I know I'm late to the party, but I had some idea's.
Gunboat : A cheap boat unit that's similar to an infantry on sea, but still with higher firepower. Animation wise, while most boat are a single huge unit, gunboats are way smaller but there's 5 or 4 of them. Their man weapon is a cannon attached to the top of each boat, which can attack for decent damage against most boat, and can also attack vehicles on land, however, not only can't it attack submarines, but it doesn't put a dent on battleships and other heavier ships (cruiser can also use their missiles against them). Land unit can also deal pretty high damage to it seeing as it's only a light boat and not a mastodonte. The soldier piloting the gunboat can also fire with it's rifle if you have no more ammo. They have good move, cheap cost, and nice vision, and could capture sea properties if they existed.
Destroyer : Actually had the name idea BEFORE it came up in the video, but it works DIFFERENTLY so I should find a different name. Basically, it's a sea artillery, but not quite the battleship. While it's costy (around 1200), it has 1 to 3 range, but can also MOVE AND ATTACK at the same turn. They can also counterattack unlike other indirect. The thing is, it actually has a pretty low/medium firepower, and a pretty good defense, making them more as unit to take pot shots and generally staying alive. It's pretty weak against air units, seeing as it can't counter B copters and get oneshot by bombers. Another quirk, is that it can deploy sea mines against subs, tho you shouldn't expect them to do a better job than a cruiser.
While DoR did allow naval units to move across bridges, sadly the part about beaches is not true. Only Landers and Gunboats can move across them still, which is a shame!
Mangs: *_proposes cheap naval unit Destroyer_*
Gunboat: "Am I a joke to you?"
Thinking about this some more, for a naval unit overhaul, I’d say add the following based on historical (now mostly obsolete) cheaper naval units.
Torpedo Boat 5000: Naval mech/infantry with 8 move that can move on rivers BUT has double cost on ocean tiles (so effectively 4 for ocean) and it has a low fuel capacity. Has moderate power against ships, and an MG it can use against ground units adjacent to shore (or against infantry in rivers) but it’s weak against shore units.
Escort 8000: Naval Tank with 5 move. Strong against Torpedo Boats, Black Boats, surfaced submarines, and OK (light tankish) against shore targets and submerged submarines, but weak against proper warships (From Destroyer Escort, smaller destroyers used to protect shipping).
Corvette 9000: Naval anti-tank (DoR) with 5 move that can attack directly for move+attack or counter attack, but can also fire indirectly if it stays still. Weak against torpedo boats, but strong against escorts and most land vehicles while doing fair damage against cruisers/carriers and low damage against battleships.
Monitor 10000: A stronger version (long range, higher damage) of artillery with 4 move. Land units in its range take heavy damage (except infantry, who take only moderate damage), as do any naval units who get within range, but its very fragile, can easily be overwhelmed by cheaper Torpedos, and faster ships can easily get within its minimum range (Monitor is a ship that has ONE big gun, without significant armor/speed)
Escort Carrier 20000: A 5 move transport unit that can carry two Dusters or helicopters, and comes with a Duster (who can now fire on naval units for 15-20% damage) preloaded (so it’s actually 7000). Deals moderate damage against air units if it can hit/survive, but prefers to stay back due to weak defense and no non-anti-air firepower of its own.
The additional options for shore bombardment makes naval combat less cut off from the rest of the game. The new naval units have only 2-3 vision, encouraging centering forces on at least one of the more expensive ships (Cruiser, Submarine, or one of the carriers with its airpower) in fog of war, while their low move encourages using the old ships outside it. Black Boat returns and can move on rivers, but is otherwise identical. Landers, Cruisers, Subs, Battleships, and Carriers return with their DoR fixes (though carrier could get back its missiles from DS)
The baseline AW1&2&DS naval units:
General note: Naval units are expensive but powerful. They are much more resistant to land units than an equivalent land unit. Their cost means they won't be fielded often (especially on small maps), but a single battleship is more than capable of turning an entire game upside down. So naturally naval units have more offense and defense than their land counterparts which is shown in their costs. A few fandom/modded COs or Colin could make naval units cheaper, though.
Cruiser should be able to hit land/naval/subs with its directfire missiles. It will do about as much damage as a Md Tank when firing on land units and will deal 5 HP to another cruiser and around 7 HP to subs. Obviously someone like Max will do more.
Subs seem fine as is but really I'd like to see subs have more fuel/lower submerged consumption.
Battleships and Carriers need to be able to move and then fire.
Landers should really be not as durable to *direct fire land units* aka tanks do more than 1 whole HP of damage. A Neotank should be able to one shot a lander with luck.
But really I'd rather expand naval units to include Corvettes (a rough analogy to a Mech), Frigates (somewhere between a Recon and a Tank), Destroyers (Md Tank equivalent + Sub hunter), Cruiser (Hybrid Range unit that is basically Anti-Land/Naval/Air version of a Tank + Artillery), Missile Subs (Subs that can fire from a really far away but have low ammo count and is really expensive), and we'll keep (Attack)Submarines, Battleships, and Carriers unchanged from above. I'd also like to add a naval version of a city that only shows up on water for 2000funds and up the port to 2000funds as well. Corvettes and Frigates can capture them. And I'd like to make an equivalent Plains/Forests/Mountains terrain for naval units, basically making seas 1 star, reefs unchanged, and some terrain to equate to mountains, maybe an Atoll terrain.
That is a great idea. The biggest problem i think is the cruiser in the whole naval line up. It just has so many roles, anti-air, anti sub, and in Dual strike onwards I think it is a direct combat unit. If you split them up it would be easier to balance the cost too. This is the same with the new proposed destroyer since it does everything. Splitting the roles up encourages more countering units to spice up the tactics rather than spamming more cheaper all purpose units.
Another thing i'd like to add is that naval combat dont have too many interesting tactics, It is not that fun to play, since there is no terrain. So it all comes down to who can do more direct combat. If we add more terrain it would be way more fun, DoR added mist on sea but it didn't do much with it. By adding more terrain we can also balance air units hard countering naval units too.
I had the idea as well to add the corvette or the patrol boat, which is also a sea light tank, it can attack anything and can transport infantry units.
I feel weird when he mentioned about how land units are OP against cruisers then knowing that the Russian cruiser Moskva was (allegedly) sunk by land-based rocket artillery fire very recently...
I think they should add Gunboats as naval Tanks and Frigates as naval Medium Tanks. Naval Infantry would also be amazing
As a US Navy vet who worked with radar guided weapons, allow me to give my 2 cents:
Transport: I agree that it should be cheaper, but I think it should give supplies, mainly because theres no naval logistics, and I dont want to add a specific logistic vessal. Would probably make them worth 8-9k.
Destroyer: As Mangs said, cheap vessal that is mainly AA/Anti-Sub
Cruiser: probably where I differ the most with Mangs. Better anti-surface cannon, but cant hit submerged. Acts as an AA Missile with lower range, but post move.
All other changes as Mangs suggested.
Also, if going off of Days of Ruin, give gunboats a machine gun.
An idea I recently came up with were Torpedo Boats. Basically they're lightly armored and have limited range, but are very mobile, hard-hitting, and cheap. They can serve anti-infantry and anti-air roles okay, but are especially effective against enemy ships. Since they're small and fast, they make tricky targets for bombers and (to an extent) subs, making them extremely resistant to their attacks. However, that's about the only advantages they have. They're vulnerable to any kind of direct fire, especially from tanks or battleships, and have to get pretty close to use their torpedoes, so they're by no means unstoppable. They'd definitely spice up naval combat, though!
First of all: Sry for my english. I am a german potatoe.^^
First I would like to give my two cents about Mangs ideas. Secondly I would introduce my personal Ideas.
My Two Cents:
["1: Allow Naval Units to cross Shoals/Bridges"]: I personally would allow Naval Units to cross Shoals but not bridges since they are way to big. Submarines however could be able to "cross" bridges while being underwater(submerged) but while being underwater they should not be allowed to cross Shoals. They are tricky but rewarding by reaching more places and could be used more for flanking. ["2: Reduce most ships Deployment cost"]: I would like to disagree. Being expensive is not the main Problem in my opinion. Its more like that they should be able to just do more. These are giant floating Weapon Plattforms and should be treated like one. I got some ideas I would put in the "Personal Ideas"-Section. ["3: Allow ships to counter Air Units better"]: I am definitly with you on this one. More about in the "Personal Ideas"-Section. ["4: Introduce new early game naval unit: the Destroyer"]: While I am behind this Idea, I would called it different. I imagine it more like the Recon-Unit but on water. A fast and cheap boat with a small weaponry to disturb infantry or light armored vehicles.
Personal Ideas:
Naval Units should be able to do more to be more viable and handy on the regular battlefield. For their high price they should be at least worth it.
- All Naval Units should get less damage from all regular attacks. While more vunerable Units like the Lander or Submarine should get a lower Bonus(about 20-25% less damage) Battle-Units like the Battleship should be way tankier(about 35-40% less damage). This should help them to sustain longer(even when attacked by bombers) and to get rescued by escaping into a harbor or aided by cruisers, ect
- Landers (plus the so called "Destroyer") should get an Anti-Air-Gun. This weapon however is not strong(maybe 25-35% of the Firepower a regular Cruser would have) and is only be used in Counter-Attacks. They are also even weaker against planes(Fighter, Bombers,ect). It is not to be dangerous against Air-Units but to slowly weaken them to the point they need to regroup/repair at some point. Battleships also got one but this one is a bit stronger and because of its better defense it can weaken Air-Units a bit better. They can(or should) not be used to attack Air-Units since it is more of a Defense-Mechanism.
- Submarines should get a light cannon to attack Ground-Units. The gun would be comparable to the gun the so called "Destroyer" would have, has unlimited ammo(like the machinegun of tanks) and can also be used against Naval-Units but would be way weaker than Torpedos and can only be used when not underwater. Sumarines could be used a weaker but more hit&run-Unit to ambush and attack Ground-Units on Shoals.
- All Naval-Units should be able to transport at least 1 Unit of Infantry. While the Lander is still the only naval Unit capable to transport Vehicles and 2 Units at the same time they should also be able to transport(but not supply) Heli-Units so you can have an additional Unit to shield Heli-Units from opponent Anti-Air.
- Battleships are expensive but giants floating fortresses. While the aspect of a long range-Unit should be still the most important one it is still defenseless against any kind of attack. That is why a small Anti-Air is not enough. It should be able to counter at least a little bit. Being attacked by Air-Units? An Anti-Air-Cannon should chip a bit of Health away. Being attacked by Sub-Marines? An own Sea-Mine-Launcher should ship a bit of Health away. The Battleship should be able to defend itself at least a little bit. It still would not stand a Chance in a 1v1 against a Submarine or a Bomber or anything similar but it would not be a floating punching bag neither. It should just stand its ground long enough for getting help from arriving crusers, submarines or something.
- While liking the idea of a so called "Destroyer" I would do it a bit differently. I would add a cheap and weak scouting-Gunboat with high speed, an Auto-Cannon that would deal good damage against weaker Ground-Units(Comparable with an Anti-Air-Tank against other Ground-Units but a little bit weaker) and barely helpful against Heli-Units(Like Small Tanks) but almost useless against regular Naval-Units (except its own kind) but additionally I would add a strong Naval-Unit with the same Setup but much more expensive and Stronger. The original Destroyer. This Unit could shred Tanks and would be the Main-Battle-Unit of the Sea. While having the disadvantige against Submarines they could handle Landers, Crusers and other Battleships with good results. While Battleships stay the best Armored Naval-Unit the Destroyer is not a pushover and can take a beating while still dealing good damage. It even got a light less strong Defense-Weaponry like the Battleship. But the downside would be its limited Range and the same Movement-Speed than the Battleship.
These are my personal thoughts of the Naval-Units. They should be able to do a lot more for their price and maybe this could be the way. What do you guys think? ^^
Somethings I would love to see would be " Cruiser with Sonar " to detect Subs to protect other naval ships. A " Hovercraft " that acts like a Lander but only can transport and deploy infantry, costing a lot less. Have all Naval Ships be allowed to travel through Shoals/Bridges, however Naval Ships are not allowed to end their movement at a Bridge and only specific Naval Units may end their movement turn on Shoals.
One fun idea that i was thinking of is also going into a route like wargroove. In addition to refuel and repair, it could be possible that black boats can capture sea buildings, such as seaports. To further go into this, it would also be neat to add oil rigs to sea maps, which grant income. As shown in wargroove, this would be a buff to sea units in general.
How about a nice middle ground where Naval units can cross bridges and shoals, but can't end their turn there? That way you couldn't block an entire army with one sub.
I consider Black Boats to be essential for supporting a fleet. They provide fuel and ammo (because no APCs) and repairs (because no cities on water). Carriers would be incredible if they could construct air units, essentially useless otherwise
Personally what I would do to rebalance naval units:
Landers - decrease price to 9000, and increase defense.
Cruisers- increase defense, make it have a range between 1-3 spaces with the moved and attack in the same turn.
Submarines- slightly reduce fuel usage and increase fuel to 99, then give it an alternate attack a cruise missile perhaps with a range of 2-5 spaces.
Battleships- increase defense, increase attack, up range to 2-8 spaces and give it the ability to attack twice.
Carriers- increase damage, and make the range 2-10 spaces.
More naval terrarian types has well, and the the bridges being passable.
These would make naval units more worth the investment without making them absolutely broken in my opinion.
Movement:
I MOSTLY agree with this...however not all ships in DoR can traverse shoals just transports and gun boats...and honestly the idea of subs and battleships on shoals seems...weird. You could probably give Cruisers the ability though...or alternatively if this is codable make it so subs and battle ships CAN go on shoals but they cannot move off shoals onto other shoals nor can subs be submerged on shoals...although some alternate terrain that functionally is like bridges but is on borders so that way it also kinda works like a shoal is cool (perhaps docks...aka imagine a port except without building or healing units). Maybe even make it so transports can't unload units on bridges.
Unit changes:
1. I'd do 8000 for landers instead of just 6000 as not only can it do 2 instead of one...but its also the only way to transport vehicles
2. Ah the good ol cruiser...yah your adjustments sound more or less right. I'd do 15K personally but thats just me
3. Again...I think cutting in half is a tad much...especially with how this should hopefully revitalize other units...A simple 14 or 16 K would work.
4. Wouldn't really reduce sub damage as much simply bc I don't think sub costs should be cut that much...it should be that a single sub should do a pretty penny to a battleship but not enough that if they got destroyed by a cruiser right after that it would still be cost effective since getting in at least one hit with a sub is pretty easy
Destroyers:
eh...I think any melee counter to cruisers needs to be considered a bit...this is comperable to a tank vs an anti-air...make the price or power different to balance...besides I kinda like the sub vs cruiser vs Battleship dynamic to some degree
I have an issue with the landers as making cheaper would rapidly transfer a whole army in lightning speeds so maybe also nerfing them to transport 1 if we will keep the 6k price.