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He posted about it on twitter and didn't see any mention on it here on the forums so thought i would link the blog post here

https://www.vrdesigns.net/?p=2131

Sounds great!

So, for fun, lets speculate how one would play on a water world without player-controlled navies.
I'm thinking things like how does one invade other continents and islands with no amphibious or airborne forces; now does one recon and engage diplomatically with overseas regimes, etc...

Clearly the maritime trade houses will be much more than just seaborne versions of the existing traders.

-Mark R.

Maybe they are like Dune's Guild that will carry everything including assault forces to enemy territories. The air bridge mechanic can be adapted for sea travel as well, with a point from a port to a desired place on another landmass (maybe with less tonnage restrictions but cost per weight moved).

I think it's nice that Vic is implementing mechanics needed to get rid of "all land must be connected" restriction, and personally I wasn't particularly excited about navies themselves.

The Airbridge mechanic is basically a adapatation of the the train mechanic, with start and endpoints.
I always figured the Naval Supply Lines would work the same way - define a startpoint and a endpoint. Supplies move between, with a penalty if only one Endpoint is a "harbour".

If there is no navies, that would actually make it a lot easier. He can just add more or less static point-to-point connections between any two hexes. And units can then travel along those using Strategic Movement and then build or capture a harbour on "the other side".

Keep in mind that the entirety of operation Overlord - the greatest naval landing of history - fits into 1 Hex and 1 Month. So do not expect anything that detailed in Naval Invasions.

He needs to release oceans with no naval units on April 1st.That will get em.

Early on, maybe some simple way to just transport units via lakes & oceans could suffice.
Extensive navy builds/tech could follow.
Per the AI not being ready for all this...maybe an option for just multiplayer to use this function.

I'm honestly fine with naval mechanics without warships, being able to have planets with higher percentages of water coverage and water-based logistics is much more interesting. Ships have a far greater carrying capacity than trains, and could make coastlines and rivers as strategically important ingame as they have been historically. Plus it means I can generate large planets but still limit the available land area for more secure borders, and less endturn processing.

I think the important part is going to be how deploying ground units offensively across water is going to be handled. Deploying units directly into enemy port tiles is easy enough, but if there's a mechanic for just creating a sea bridge for moving units there needs to be some counterplay. I don't want to have to deploy Atlantic walls across all my coast tiles, we don't have access to coastal gun batteries...

I like water. [:'(]

Will give another update soon on the Oceans. In the meantime i just completed a big load of fixes and posted open beta v1.10.05!

Best wishes,
Vic

ORIGINAL: Zanotirn

Maybe they are like Dune's Guild that will carry everything including assault forces to enemy territories. The air bridge mechanic can be adapted for sea travel as well, with a point from a port to a desired place on another landmass (maybe with less tonnage restrictions but cost per weight moved).

I think it's nice that Vic is implementing mechanics needed to get rid of "all land must be connected" restriction, and personally I wasn't particularly excited about navies themselves.

I desperately want this to happen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LNija_nUss

And I really like developing these systems, however honesty obliges me to say that development time and AI considerations are also a reason why I am not going (immediately) for player controlled naval units.

I really hope this means big patch on military AI before real player navies

finrodfelagund wrote: Wed May 18, 2022 11:35 pm https://www.vrdesigns.net/?p=2144

Thanks for the heads up, I missed this posted, great to see progress on the Oceans features for Shadow empire, I'm super excited.

And Vic throwing in that post he is sketching out plans for a "revolutionary new future title", not sure if we take "revolutionary" literally and think about major revolutions in history (e.g. American, Russian, French, etc)