CA,please do something for the ramming animations! Big fail!

[panzerschreck]

In the new video on naval warfare, we can see that CA has made a lot of work on naval warfare, boardings look far better for example. But they failed what was the most important feature and the most immersive:ramming.
There are no animations at all for basic ramming:no penetration into the wood of the ship, no shock,no men falling etc.
But, the critical hit is so violent that it looks more to ww2 than antiquity, it looks like an explosion,it should be tonned down or less quick,more slow like a ship that is breaking.
CA lost an occasion of having spectacular naval battles by this lack of animation,at least there should have a visual effect or something showing the shock bettween thrse big masses.

[Dominian]

I guess they know how unimportand naval warfare is to the whole package and didn't spend the resources to make big changes on this old Empire TW sea battle engine.

I do agree with you. It looks so bad that it breaks immersion. Both the ramming without any effect and the destruction by ramming with implosion of the enemy and instant death for anyone aboard is not on par with the rest of the game.

But in the end I do not really care about naval warfare.

[SamueleD]

Yes, in past games naval destruction animations weren't that bad: they looked like a slow transition from a floating ship to a sinking wreck.
But here the rammed (and destroyed) ships look like they exploded! Can't a huge gaping hole in the ship side and a rapidly sinking ship do the trick? Does the mast really have to crack in two even though it wasn't even touched?
Also, the rammed (but not destroyed) ships look like they were never hit, they don't even move or roll a bit.

I mean, c'mon, they did it mostly right in the past, why fail now?

I guess they know how unimportand naval warfare is to the whole package and didn't spend the resources to make big changes on this old Empire TW sea battle engine.

I do agree with you. It looks so bad that it breaks immersion. Both the ramming without any effect and the destruction by ramming with implosion of the enemy and instant death for anyone aboard is not on par with the rest of the game.

But in the end I do not really care about naval warfare.

I get that there are people who don't really care about it (naval warfare), but I wouldn't call it unimportant, since mixed land-naval battles are one of the most advertised features of this game.

[=Vastator=]

Every thing looked really cool, but ramming and ship speed
I agree. We have seen ONLY one type of animation for ship breaking (no matter where ramming ship hits, since the animation is the same that starts with the center part of the rammed ship exploding. This is a "bit" weird...). Overall the ramming physics looked pretty weird (no shaking, same animation for all type of rammings, low sense of ship heaviness)

[Derkon]

I'm not one to criticise as I love TW games and I very much appreciate all the hard work CA put into them.

Nonetheless, I have to agree that the ramming animations in the naval video could be better, whereas they are merely functional.

However, one ray of hope is that this video could be from an older build of the engine (those who got to play the prologue were doing so on
a version of the game that was over a month old remember).

So, for the naval combat/ramming animations there is every possibility that they may have made improvements to the mechanics of ramming by the time of release!

We live in hope!

[smoke]

In all fairness: how many ships have we seen ramming another. Two, maybe three. There might well be different animations we haven't seen yet. After all, I remember a screenshot where a ship bursted out of the side another. I think that's pretty good penetration, no?

[theDaedricPrince]

Stop complaining about the ship speed; it's perfectly fine. A huge problem with naval warfare in the past TW games was always the speed. It was always too slow, thus the battles were boring and just simply dull. Having it sped up makes it a lot more fun and playable.

And yeah..the animations need work. Is it me, or did ramming look cool a few months ago?

[SamueleD]

And yeah..the animations need work. Is it me, or did ramming look cool a few months ago?

Yep, we have seen ships going cleanly through one another when ramming, and here it's just "oops, I broke the glass ship"!

[Derkon]

"Stop complaining about the ship speed; it's perfectly fine. A huge problem with naval warfare in the past TW games was always the speed. It was always too slow, thus the battles were boring and just simply dull. Having it sped up makes it a lot more fun and playable."



I agree with this comment, think back to naval combat since it's inception!

Now, how much time did you spend with the game sped up just to get your ships within striking distance of one another?

Now, Rome will obviously be a different beast since naval combat will be conducted at a much closer range, but the increase in speed
will obviously make it a far more action packed affair.

Oh, that's just popped a good naval warfare question into my head, maybe it's been asked before but:

"Will we see the corvus (Roman boarding device) implemented in the game?"

[Captain W. Handberg]

I agree. Ramming and animations need some more work. A ship is supposed to break when another has fully passed trough it, or halfway, not crack like a biscuit at an instant!

[smoke]

Just watched the video again and Al says: "These European ships aren't quite built for ramming so the won't hit you as hard". So there. The reason why it's not going clear through.

[SamueleD]

Just watched the video again and Al says: "These European ships aren't quite built for ramming so the won't hit you as hard". So there. The reason why it's not going clear through.

We are talking about the Mediterranean ships, not the barbarian ships. Al was talking about the barbarian ships when he said that.

[smoke]

We are talking about the Mediterranean ships, not the barbarian ships. Al was talking about the barbarian ships when he said that.

Where in you post does it say mediterranean ships? Anyway, i see small triremes ramming largers ones and not doing much damage, while the bigger one destroyed the smaller one. Looking great and nothing remotely wrong with that.

[Almogaver]

Finally a sensible complaint. The ship exploding after being rammed is a bit too much and like many people have already said: a hole in the hull, the ship breaking apart and a slow sinking would look better.

[hitman_8182]

I do agree, I remember that because of you
CA teams should take a look to this thread, but we just have more 2 weeks upon releasing, do you think they have time to correct all problems hereHope so

[CatoTheYounger]

I agree overall but im still gratefull to have combined land and naval assaults. And now at least we can fight the classic naval battle Actium between Agrippa and Mark Antony. Couldn't do that before.

[Eien]

This is something i can agree about, the ramming animation leaves much to be desired.

[TotalWarker]

They wont be making any changes to animations at this stage, so to ask is to invite frustration.

I do agree that the explosions are pretty dramatic, but it was a big ship against a little one so perhaps that's the point. As has been said, I'm sure I've seen other animations in the past.

[baptistus]

They wont be making any changes to animations at this stage.

I think every body have a request, something he doesn't like, something he wants to be changed. But we will not create a topic for every single disappointement of every single player here at 15 days of the release ! lol

[Augustus Scipius]

The footage we saw just made me lose a lot of excitement. No oar destruction, no collision animations, no realistic ramming damage, and no ships sinking. Even though I absolutely loathe the word, the battles look arcadey. All shiny and action-packed, but not very tactical or realistic.

Rome II seems like a great game. In my opinion it is a shame naval combat was obviously given a lot less love than land combat.