[Concept Idea] Port battles

[Ketzerfreund]

Greetings,

one of the many things players miss a lot in E:TW are port battles. There is one idea that has been floating (literally! ) around in my head for some days.

How about binding a certain kind of "ship" with each port that consists of a model of port facilities, especially cannon towers, of course.
Make it have 0 movement points, so it can't be moved out of the port. Make it have 0 movement speed in battle and no bobbing with the wave movement. Make it so big that there is only one single position it can take during deployment phase, still leaving room for the ships in port, of course:

(The shaded part is the "port ship"; the black blobs are ships; sorry for the rough sketch, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to draw straight lines in Gimp. It's interface isn't exactly intuitive... )

Each cannon tower is only part of that "ship". Make the point a ship would try to steer to to board a ship unreachable. Give that "ship" so many men that the ai would never get the idea to even try boarding it. If possible, don't give that ship any "sails" (if the presence of something that's technically "sails" is required, it would look far different, of course), so that the ai also doesn't try making the thing "immobile" through chain-shots.


Thoughts?

[Titan Uranus]

Greetings,

one of the many things players miss a lot in E:TW are port battles. There is one idea that has been floating (literally! ) around in my head for some days.

How about binding a certain kind of "ship" with each port that consists of a model of port facilities, especially cannon towers, of course.
Make it have 0 movement points, so it can't be moved out of the port. Make it have 0 movement speed in battle and no bobbing with the wave movement. Make it so big that there is only one single position it can take during deployment phase, still leaving room for the ships in port, of course:

(The shaded part is the "port ship"; the black blobs are ships)

Each cannon tower is only part of that "ship". Make the point a ship would try to steer to to board a ship unreachable. Give that "ship" so many men that the ai would never get the idea to even try boarding it. If possible, don't give that ship any "sails" (if the presence of something that's technically "sails" is required, it would look far different, of course), so that the ai also doesn't try making the thing "immobile" through chain-shots.


Thoughts?

The port would still be able to slowly turn, at least as far as I know.
If sails are needed then you could have ships docked, in port.
I think It might look kinda cool to see a bunch of guys fighting over a port.
No real problems with it.

[Ketzerfreund]

The port would still be able to slowly turn, at least as far as I know.

Not if it doesn't have room to do so. You can't cross the white line.
Maybe there's even a way to alter turning rate to 0. Let's look for it.

[Steinig]

If not you could set the sail damage to 100%, should do the work.

[Onizuka0513]

Interesting idea on how to go about adding in port battles (though I'm hoping it'd be much easier to do so when the SDK comes out).

[Ketzerfreund]

I think even with the SDK it may still be pretty hard. There is nothing static placed in the sea battlefields in vanilla whatsoever, ship battles always take place on empty water without even coastlines visible from afar when the battle takes place close to the coast. That fact doesn't give me much hope for actual landscape included with ship battles being possible.

But we'll see, I guess.

[RotorFlyer]

I would like to be able to shell the ports from my ships. Not just the sea battles that we have now.
I have to wonder how my times the fleet came into range of the port and shelled the fort that was defending the port city.
That would be a great mod to the game I think.

[General_Meevious]

I'm sure you could set it to not sustain damage, but immortal cannon towers would be silly and a sinking port would be sillier.

Is anyone certain that battle maps can't simply have land and sea terrain?

[Takeda Shingen]

Why put in boats as defense?
Just put in e.g. two forts and militia units as in a city.
Of course put some boats to it if there are some in the port. Don't know of course if it would be possible to control sea and land units at the same time?!

Then if the cannon fire stops, land units(if on the boat) could land on a certain point of the port. Like reinforcements arrive on a land battle map.
Then the troops would have to conquer a certain point, maybe a fort on top of a hill or at the end of the port.

Thats how I would like to see it.

[Titan Uranus]

You could make the cannon towers sails and just have the hull(of the port) immortal, though I'm not sure that would work. To make it look better you could change chain-shot to look like round shot.

[1dominator1]

Perhaps if we manage port battles we will be able to create land battles with navy support.

[Ketzerfreund]

Takeda, the problem is that there are no combined sea- and land-battles. That port wouldn't be a landmass as such, but technically a ship. And if that "ship" is to be immobile, it has to take enough room up to the borders of the deployment area so that it will always be at the same position in every battle. Also, if there are ships in port they would show up in the port battle, too, of course. Where else?

[Takeda Shingen]

But what is with battle of Bunker Hill? There were both terrains available, even if the ships where only eyecandys. Wouldn't it be possible to make one of those eyecandys into a real vessel?

Well, I really like your idea though. If it isn't possible to merge sea and land battles, your idea seems a good chance.
Because we need portbattles!!!!

[WeardLan]

I wanted to see port battles.
I also wanted to see naval bombardment.

For GIMP BTW select the pencil tool, not the brush tool, and hold down the shift key or shift-ctrl key for straight lines.

As I understand it you're talking about creating a "ship mesh", that instead of looking like a ship, look like the side of a dock, with a cannon tower.

I can see that no sails, no movement, always anchored might prevent your port from drifting around, you *might* be able to stop it sinking by giving it massive hull strength, but then you'd have to balance the crew to ensure that it surrendered properly.

An alternative to your 'surround' is to use just two "ships" one port one starboard, though this would be more of a port entrance battle.

[shipmaster27]

You would also have to make the water dark so it doesn't show the bottom because ships tend to disappear after they sink for a while.

[JayMac]

After taking a foreign port, would it be possible for that country to send troops into that port, as almost a land bridge? It seems unrealistic that an army can land anywhere on a coast, when ports were so essential to invasions.

[Aufneer]

ports allow you to move your army as soon as your ships reach the port. if you try landing on the coast, it takes another turn before you can move your army.
stop necroposting.

[Mooncabbage]

Hehe, I've always thought it would be cool if the ships you see in amphibious invasions could actually take part in the battle, bombarding the shore Would add a whole new dimension to the gameplay. I suppose the reverse is true, land units stationed in the port taking part in the port battle

Hey I can dream can't I? ^^

[HOWLMAN]

We as players should not have to mod in things such as port battles when they should have already been in the game. Common sense dictates that this should have been an aspect of this game. Letsa face it all..this game was thrown together and they have our money. End of story.

[Mooncabbage]

We as players should not have to mod in things such as port battles when they should have already been in the game. Common sense dictates that this should have been an aspect of this game. Letsa face it all..this game was thrown together and they have our money. End of story.

Comments like these add little to the debate. Realistically if everything everyone wanted was in the game, it would never be released, let alone be profitable, and I sincerely doubt anyone would be perfectly happy anyway. I think the fact people expect so much from the game shows how much CA are pushing the boundaries.... Every new iteration of the franchise adds a great many more features and improvements on the previous games, especially in relation to what other developers are doing. And CA has consistently made an effort to make the game as mod friendly as possible with each new release, so that dedicated community members can create a game more to their own tastes.

I guess what I'm saying is, rarely do you ever see this sort of criticism about an FPS or RTS title. Anyone who can't see the advances made in each new Total War game for what they are, has a very limited understanding of the game development industry and are unlikely to contribute positively to the community anyhow.