Don't know where you're getting the idea that maps will be scaled larger, the maps would stay the same size they are now but everything would be say, 16x their normal size. There might be some physics issues with boats but you can always just make custom physics.
I think the only reasonable way to implement some kind of ships in this game is the amphibious APC willvette suggested in the first post. Being able to carry full squads over bodies of water would give new tactical possibilities and it would fit the source engine too. I think it could be added even before the airplanes. A new model is needed of course, but still the amount of work wouldn't be even nearly as big as with the planes. The amphibious APC could be a little slower to compensate the ability to move in water, but otherwise it would be similiar to the normal one. Maybe the amount of player slots could be smaller too. IMO large ships would just fight their own useless battle in the water and wouldn't have much to do with the overall scenario.
I once started making that model. There wasn't any interest by anyone to see it finished, so I ditched the project. Seriously, since there will be aircraft, why the hell do you need a sub-par aircraft that can only carry troops, not fly higher than a tank can drive, handle worse, and only being better than a tank by it's ability to traverse water.. Ships would only be horrible in this game. Yes they would.
made me lol I actually put push brushes into it to speed up swimming in the rivers when swimming towards the north.
The amphibious APC would fit in the current maps and other smaller maps where there's no room for aircraft. Even in larger maps with the possibility to research aircraft it could be a cheap and fast way to make ninja attacks etc. in the beginning of the round (the research could be in the first branch of the mech. engineering tree like APC spawn and the vehicle would be otherwise similiar to the normal APC, but with less armor maybe). Even as a rarely used research option, I think it would bring new aspects to the game and wouldn't need much work to do at least compared to the aircraft. But yeah, I agree that other kind of ships would be just total bullshit. The APC would be great though.
At some point boats may be added but if they are they will be more of map art and less of a vehicle. Consider the following: The largest servers we have are 64 slots, when full 32 per team. With 64 players in a server, everyone has slightly elevated ping, 150-250ish Most servers have a vehicle limit of 9+cv and they lag if more than 3 tanks start fighting in one spot. Just guessing, the current servers will not be able to handle 10 tanks + CV + 6? aircraft + 32 slots per team. Half the team on the largest servers are in vehicles. In order for boats to be considered, we need much better servers and or more code optimization On a side note, both teams have been experimenting with submersibles, but have yet to have a viable solution...
The boat issue affects nearly all RTS games: Either they are secondary and in the corners, or Primary and in the center. There is no middle ground because they are in the water! I don't see this working unless we have water maps... which would then be silly. Even historically, boats either fight their own battles or act as long range support. Pity we aren't an amphibious race of people...
The big problem with water combat is that most RTSes have nothing in the water besides ships, if they're unfortunate enough to have ships. The lack of aquatic resources and critical buildings reduces oceanic combat to a sideshow. Not to mention that in most RTSes, large ships are just too large to integrate adequately. Exceptions include RA3 and TA. Red Alert 3 made interesting use of the sea. (I played in the Beta.) Many units were amphibious or had some form of flight capacity, and most buildings could also be placed amphibiously. Resources were also available in the sea, and frequently placed there. This practically made the sea into a viable alternative to land, and valuable in hybrid strategies. Total Annihilation had some water buildings, but you couldn't fight without land until Core Contingency, which introduced a ton of water-specialized buildings and units. That said, I never played it against anything except the computer, so I have no idea what it meant for gameplay. Empires lacks any building models that could be even remotely aquatic, and infantry, while they can swim indefinitely, are not in their best form while swimming. That said, maps in Source are very flexible....
Ships wold be great if we didnt have to go through tons of accomidations to use them effectivly, BUT! What if we had some sort of amphibous upgrade for tanks?
Great idea, how did you come up with that? :D But yeah, amphibious APC would be great. I'm gonna repeat this until it is added to the game.
anyone who has played battlefield 2142 knows about titan mode. I think just have 2 giantic carriers, in an all sea (with a few small islands) map and have a naval battle. Youd have to take control of the small islands to make harbors, and then duke it out.
Hovercraft tank. Give it good missile capacity and let it slide around alot. Voila, instant amphibious vehicle/ship/whatever. And get rid of these threads already :/
This could more or less be done now using Hammer, minus having drivable boats. But you could make a map where each team is on a carrier, with water and islands in the middle. Not to sure it would be that much fun without drivable boats, though
What about dividing by say 2? Or 4? Then we're usually pretty negligible in terms of error (oh hai floating point encodings and binary systems). All engines suck if you start trying to scale by 16 or more and want to have high accuracy. It's called rounding error and significant digits. As you've pointed out, Source is no different in that regard. However, benign scaling isn't too horrid unless you're relying on uber precise values to begin with (like 1/2 of a unit in the map editor). However, values using floating point will lose absolutely no accuracy. That's the beauty of floating point notation. Eternal Silence manged to hack around this by using a different map for the large space battles that was scaled by nearly 10 times and teleporting between hangers and space. But you weren't trying to shoot infantry in the scaled map, just giant ships at that point.
but you do in empires ... also source has no terrain - and displacements utterly fail as substituion. the more you scale maps the uglier they get ... ES has what? open space ...
