Game Development Discussion: Ships Update Proposal

[Keegoz]

Ship Changes

Ships will shift from being inefficient infra destroyers to more battlefield control units. This ties in nicely with the blockade mechanic it already has. Ships also aren't efficient at killing other ships, so I have tweaked this a little as well. Costs have been reduced to make them somewhat more in-line with other units in the game.

They will now have 4 attack options each one has different MAP costs:

• An attack to remove ground control (5 MAPs)
• An attack to remove air superiority (5 MAPs)
• An attack on infra (4 MAPs)
• A naval on naval attack that increase casualties on the enemies ships (4 MAPs)

Increase the base naval casualties by 20%.

• Bombardment: Current Infrastructure Damages, 30% Reduced Naval Casualties (From new base rate)
• Naval Skirmish: 30% Reduced Infrastructure, 30% Increased Naval Casualities (From new base rate)
• Naval Ground Defense: 30% Reduced Infrastructure, 30% Reduced Naval Casualities. Removes Ground Control.
• Naval Air Defense: 30% Reduced Infrastructure, 30% Reduced Naval Casualities. Removes Air Control.

The superiorities will only be removed if the battle is an immense triumph. An IT with any attack will still impose or break blockades. 

Ships will now have their operations cost reduced as well as to make their attacks more optimal.

“Ships requires 1.5 Gasoline and 2.5 Munitions per Ship per battle”
“Ships requires 1 Gasoline and 1.75 Munitions per Ship per battle.”

 

Some explaining behind some of the decisions:

Why increase MAP costs?

The ability to break a superiority/control is significant. For example ground to kill planes requires it, and only kills on every successive successful attack. It therefore requires 6 MAPs. I was unsure whether to make the MAP cost 6 or 5 and went with the lesser value.

I went with this because as many know, getting an IT in this game can be a little RNG and I do want people to be able to actually get use of these features without being worried about RNG ruining them. The instinctive call here will be to 'change the RNG', but I don't actually want ships to be the only focus of the next update and I want an actual new feature to be introduced next year so at a certain point I need to cut it somewhere.

How do we know if this will be balanced?

With this update I'd probably be relying on more testing on the test server. I'd probably even ask if you are unsure about the proposal to at least be willing to let us test it out and then give feedback which we can use to further tweak things.

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Update:

I am going to quickly add a different idea, and see which seems to be more popular with people. Read below:

Ship changes:
Ships lean more into their current damage schtick. When you attack with ships you can target any city & an improvement type (same as missiles are).

• Ships have a 50% chance to destroy 2 improvements on each IT attack and 1 improvement for a PV/MS attack.
• If you take the tactician policy, this would go to 100% chance.

One other note is that this update feeds into another (Military Research) which I will be also posting about in the near future. Ships need to be more relevant for that to really be balanced, so please keep that in mind.

Please note, you need to engage in discussion for me to take your opinion. I am aware that certain people like to review bomb these threads, and just saying "I don't like this" or downvoting.
 

Edited October 5, 2024 by Keegoz

[penpiko]

• What's the resistance hit on the new attacks? 
• If successful, do they remove superiorities in all wars, or only one?

[Keegoz]

5 minutes ago, penpiko said:

• What's the resistance hit on the new attacks? 
• If successful, do they remove superiorities in all wars, or only one?

• Currently I have left it the same as now, but I am open to modifying them.
• They only remove superiorities of the war you are fighting in.

[Hwan]

Statistically, free ship attacks by 2028!

[Keegoz]

Just going to post this on behalf of a discord chat so I don't forget

- Keep MAPs at 4

[Buorhann]

1 hour ago, Keegoz said:

Just going to post this on behalf of a discord chat so I don't forget

- Keep MAPs at 4

I agree on the 5 MAPs reasoning, tbh.  Test it first on the test server.

[Keegoz]

18 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

I agree on the 5 MAPs reasoning, tbh.  Test it first on the test server.

Yeah, this is probably the point that will need to be tested the most. I think 5 is a good starting spot and we can adjust up or down from there.

[Keegoz]

I'll add this idea as a counter:

Ships lean more into their current damage schtick. When you attack with ships you can target any city & an improvement type (same as missiles are).

Ships have a 50% chance to destroy 2 improvements on each IT attack and 1 improvement for a PV/MS attack. If you take the tactician policy, this would go to 100% chance.

[Stanko1987]

I actually like this idea. However, can we decrease the cost of having to build ships from 30 steel and $50,000 dollars by half? Since many do not use ships as much or build ships to the max due to being expensive to build. Other then that, it's pretty good.

[Shiho Nishizumi]

I haven't got too much of a thought on proposal A for the time being, though I'd note that giving ships this kind of ability would obviously provide larger nations yet another avenue of responding to being updeclared on, and that such needs to be kept in mind when deliberating introducing this.

I suppose that the obvious question would be; would the IT be removed from that specific war, or across the board?

The increased casualty rate is a good thing; ships are comically bad at killing other ships as is, so it'd be good for them to at least be able to kill each other a bit better.

Proposal B; I think that it'd be overly punishing for people losing wars (let alone raiders); The targeted nature of the attacks means that you can pinpoint what you want to destroy, and it being on ships, means that you can do twice as many attacks with the same MAP's as a missile would, and not have to worry about ID interceptions. If you're running tactician (which I imagine many would swap to), then you'd be able to do stuff like reduce four cities down to one refining each in a single war, which over the course of a few rounds, it'd basically kill autarky for that nation.

Alternatively, you could go after commerce to harm that nation's cash flow and being able to keep running as the infra gets lower, let alone buy nukes/missiles (I know that daily bonus is a thing, but you need to keep in mind that not everyone has the minimum unlootable cash to safekeep it, and it doesn't move if your DC is offset).

Something about it would need to be changed (whether it be probability, or amount of improvements destroyed, or have the chance be proportional to the amount of ships used [unlikely due to coding considerations]) for it not to just strip losing nations whatever production they do get to keep while being rolled.

[SleepingNinja]

I don't really have any big input here but I support at least trying to do something different so give it a go on the test server at least. Doing something is better than more nothing sandwiches and ships have always been more or less completely useless to conventional warfare.

[Vanek26]

15 hours ago, Keegoz said:

I'll add this idea as a counter:

Ships lean more into their current damage schtick. When you attack with ships you can target any city & an improvement type (same as missiles are).

Ships have a 50% chance to destroy 2 improvements on each IT attack and 1 improvement for a PV/MS attack. If you take the tactician policy, this would go to 100% chance.

I like this idea. One thing I've noted this war is the winning side has lost far more improvements because the losing side was using missiles and nukes, which had been buffed to kill more improvements. 

[Totally Hatebi]

20 hours ago, Keegoz said:

Ship Changes

Ships will shift from being inefficient infra destroyers to more battlefield control units. This ties in nicely with the blockade mechanic it already has. Ships also aren't efficient at killing other ships, so I have tweaked this a little as well. Costs have been reduced to make them somewhat more in-line with other units in the game.

They will now have 4 attack options each one has different MAP costs:

• An attack to remove ground control (5 MAPs)
• An attack to remove air superiority (5 MAPs)
• An attack on infra (4 MAPs)
• A naval on naval attack that increase casualties on the enemies ships (4 MAPs)

Increase the base naval casualties by 20%.

• Bombardment: Current Infrastructure Damages, 30% Reduced Naval Casualties (From new base rate)
• Naval Skirmish: 30% Reduced Infrastructure, 30% Increased Naval Casualities (From new base rate)
• Naval Ground Defense: 30% Reduced Infrastructure, 30% Reduced Naval Casualities. Removes Ground Control.
• Naval Air Defense: 30% Reduced Infrastructure, 30% Reduced Naval Casualities. Removes Air Control.

The superiorities will only be removed if the battle is an immense triumph. An IT with any attack will still impose or break blockades. 

Ships will now have their operations cost reduced as well as to make their attacks more optimal.

“Ships requires 1.5 Gasoline and 2.5 Munitions per Ship per battle”
“Ships requires 1 Gasoline and 1.75 Munitions per Ship per battle.”

 

Some explaining behind some of the decisions:

Why increase MAP costs?

The ability to break a superiority/control is significant. For example ground to kill planes requires it, and only kills on every successive successful attack. It therefore requires 6 MAPs. I was unsure whether to make the MAP cost 6 or 5 and went with the lesser value.

I went with this because as many know, getting an IT in this game can be a little RNG and I do want people to be able to actually get use of these features without being worried about RNG ruining them. The instinctive call here will be to 'change the RNG', but I don't actually want ships to be the only focus of the next update and I want an actual new feature to be introduced next year so at a certain point I need to cut it somewhere.

How do we know if this will be balanced?

With this update I'd probably be relying on more testing on the test server. I'd probably even ask if you are unsure about the proposal to at least be willing to let us test it out and then give feedback which we can use to further tweak things.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update:

I am going to quickly add a different idea, and see which seems to be more popular with people. Read below:

Ship changes:
Ships lean more into their current damage schtick. When you attack with ships you can target any city & an improvement type (same as missiles are).

• Ships have a 50% chance to destroy 2 improvements on each IT attack and 1 improvement for a PV/MS attack.
• If you take the tactician policy, this would go to 100% chance.

One other note is that this update feeds into another (Military Research) which I will be also posting about in the near future. Ships need to be more relevant for that to really be balanced, so please keep that in mind.

Please note, you need to engage in discussion for me to take your opinion. I am aware that certain people like to review bomb these threads, and just saying "I don't like this" or downvoting.
 

I agree with the points made however I still believe with the expensiveness of the ships currently it won’t influence everything that much beyond 1st round or so. Maybe a dockyards project could be added to reduce the steel cost from 30 to —> 25 or 20 and increase recruitment cap for ships by 5 %. (I believe the money cost is fine but can use a slight decrease) This can also tie into other proposed military improvement projects.

Other military projects are a benifit as it can help with making buying military beyond round 1 useful and with enough you can force people to choose what projects you need giving the ability for pure raiders to have a slight advantage compared to mixed/econ project builds.

[Buorhann]

On 10/5/2024 at 4:16 AM, Shiho Nishizumi said:

I haven't got too much of a thought on proposal A for the time being, though I'd note that giving ships this kind of ability would obviously provide larger nations yet another avenue of responding to being updeclared on, and that such needs to be kept in mind when deliberating introducing this.

I suppose that the obvious question would be; would the IT be removed from that specific war, or across the board?
 

It's the specific war.  Not across the board.

[Shiho Nishizumi]

2 hours ago, Buorhann said:

It's the specific war.  Not across the board.

Fair. I've just noticed that penpiko had asked it prior.

It does bring potential concerns down a bit (especially if ships doing those missions have some sort of debuff), given that there'd be a question of whether just winging it, or having other people naval to whittle the guy down (with them using up 4 MAP's in the process).

Pending testing (and final figures) of course, but it doesn't sound like it'd be something that'd be immediately overpowered.

[Gul le Necro]

I dont like this at all.

Ship should have air defence in the first place.

Ship are already excellent to destroy infra vs someone with fewer ship.

Dont make the ship less expsensive to buy and to use : we need more ressource and money sink not less.

Very bad change imo.

[Moretti]

• Naval Ground Defense: - ships need to be able to destroy ground units.
• Naval Air Defense: again, ships are excelent AA platforms. they should be able to destroy air units.

[Corvidae]

On 10/4/2024 at 9:23 PM, Keegoz said:

They will now have 4 attack options each one has different MAP costs:

• An attack to remove ground control (5 MAPs)
• An attack to remove air superiority (5 MAPs)

Erm, for clarification is this the ship system currently on the test server preparing to go live?

 

If it is, I think the total lack of feedback here is an indication that we may need to slow the roll and actually... get feedback. At a glance these two options alone will have sweeping impact on the war system.

Rather than taking an axe to the problem, we could take a scalpel: Have ships provide bonuses or maluses to attacks/defenses so they can be battlefield control/support units.

Edited February 21 by Corvidae

[Rageproject]

I’ll give some feedback from seeing this at work in the test server and identifying potential issues/glitches. @Keegoz

- The new naval attack options are all set at 4 MAPs. The attacks are also destroying ground units and airplanes when targeting breaking those superiorities. It now makes navy attacks far stronger for the cost than is reasonable. In one navy strike, you can get a blockade + break a superiority + do heavy damage to the enemy. This has a dramatic ability for even the most average player to alter a war with 4-MAPs. I thought we weren’t allowing other units to be damaged by ship attacks and it was being set at 5 MAPS. I think it would be fair to allow some damage to occur for the excess MAP cost, but if players can do all these things (and considering we are lessening the cost of navy units + consumption by so much) such attacks should then cost 6 MAPs. Otherwise players are getting a real favorable opportunity to just invest in ships and start making navy spam raiding the preferred method.

- You can see in the screenshot of the Navy Attack which targeted my air superiority and planes it also reads different on the notification alerts and in the war timeline. The war timeline doesn’t mention it crushing my airplanes (or the air superiority loss) but the units were definitely lost and recorded in the war stats below. Here is the war link as well: https://test.politicsandwar.com/nation/war/timeline/war=165149

- The Military Research Project and Military Doctrine are nice new projects. I think MD may be priced a little too low.

- Military Research as a feature itself adds depth and strategy to wars. It is not a cheap spend by any means so it takes time to boost the levels and gives players something to work towards.

- There is a mistake I believe in the discount explanation for Naval Cost Buff. I’ll post the screenshot, but it reads “Decrease ship cost by $500 and 500 steel” when I think it’s meant to read “$500 and 0.5 steel” (because one ship only costs 30 steel).

- The new screen for military unit purchasing is a lot nicer than having to go to separate pages to make purchases. This will streamline rebuy in war for players and remove some minor annoyances with clicking. It will take getting used to slightly but it’s a more cleaner overview of your military.