@Hydro:
Ok, using the above I was able to plot out some updated upgrade paths
Here! These take into account wooden ship progressions from the earliest ships that can cross the ocean blending into the current review. MOST of the original upgrade paths are fairly intact. But there are some adjustments to help players edge certain ship lines into particular directions to keep their roles basically going similar all the way through, branching where the roles can be interpreted in differing ways leading into the more modern ships.
Note that the wooden ships are never considered 'Battleships, Cruisers, Destroyers' etc by class... I just used these blocks to help align the upgrade patterns into the more modern stuff. Still, upon evaluation, it's interesting how many of these ships do tend to conform to the more modern lines.
We do need earlier corvette units but I'll leave that for later development. As it stands now, corvettes pretty much pop into being around the steam era despite historically playing a much larger role in navies BEFORE this era, illuminating the need for the ship style in more modern navies.
I've also updated the
Movement Datasheet with this blending in of the previous wooden ship lines.
The only change to movement points themselves I propose from among the late wood ships is to lower the sloop of war to 4 mv rather than 5 since it leads into a 4 mv Ship of the Line on it's new primary upgrade path and when compared to 'sloops' it would be more weighed down with heavy weaponry and ammunition so could be justified to be a mv pt slower than its more flighty counterpart.
There's a number of things to mention here. It's been an effort to try to get a harmony between the two layers transitioning from sail to steam. The following points apply:
1) Wood ships have a little higher base mv pts at the end of their reign than the steam ships they upgrade into.
2) Now, BOTH oceans and coasts have a base mv cost of 2.
3) Wood Ships prefer staying near to the coast to get the maximum benefits navigation wise, so they have double move on all coast terrains applied to their combat class. Therefore, they move at their base rate along coasts but half their speed in the open ocean. Applies to ALL ships before Steam (although there are some promos that can help speed things up for some of them out on the open seas.)
4) Steam Ships may be slower but they are not hindered by oceans nor coast. They plod along at their base speed wherever they may be (though some can only travel on coasts as they're basically very prototypical.) Therefore, on the open ocean, the standard steamer is probably just as fast as (or in some cases faster than) the wooden ships - and we know they're patently stronger. But wooden ships tend to have added maneuverability so although they are weaker, they're not completely inert strategically against steam ships.
5) At Diesel speeds are starting to edge upwards, but we start seeing oversized ship types coming into play that don't really appreciate coastline travel - they're speed and weight makes them best when they can just go forward without concern for maneuvering much. These ship types, such as Destroyer, Cruiser, Battleship, Carrier, Submarine, prefer open ocean travel and lose their double movement on coasts.
6) The smaller Diesel ships are made specifically for coastal warfare generally and thus THEY keep the coastal double movement but in many cases simply can't compare to the full forward thrust speed of the bigger ships and thus lose the Ocean double moves.
7) Strategically, this means that fully fleshed out stacks in the Diesel and beyond eras are going to be overall slower than the ultimate potential of any one of those ships on their own in the right waters, so should slow down the mega-stack navies while allowing deep-sea and coastal specialty forces to form, introducing a host of 'interesting strategic choices' for the player.
This Diesel era coast/ocean duality is maintained until Droid Ships. Droid ships are so at home in the water anywhere and so amazingly maneuverable despite any size they go back to the benefits of steam - double moves on coasts and oceans alike.
Levitation, Troid, and Gravity Drive ships simply ignore terrain costs. We don't actually have to set this for them as they 'bFlytoMove' and that should handle it as a batch. Flat movement will also be a part of that once we can get the pathing engine to not assume a group to have flat movement if one unit in the group has it.
I do still need to look into some movement issues for those ships - it's one thing that we've made it possible for DOMAIN_LAND units to travel over water but I need to research a bit more what it will be like for DOMAIN_SEA units to travel (and fight) over land. I know actually taking a stand and defending a city or being helpful in an attack against a city should be possible as well and I think there'll be a number of recoding points to enable this properly. Also, they should lose INVISIBILITY_SUBMARINE if they are overland!
But for now, at least movement cost harmony and strategies I think has been achieved between the various stages.
I've also updated the
Tech Prereq Datasheet but changed nothing on the wood ships... they're listed just to get an idea of their highest x grid tech prereqs. Didn't even list ALL of their tech prereqs on each ship, just what I believe I found to be the highest x-grid tech among them. I needed to put these on this sheet to help me define the upgrade layers - they were found to be pretty well arranged along these lines making the defining of some naval tech layers quite easily achieved.
Although there are the above-mentioned remaining coding tasks, among some others, my NEXT step here is to work out the new Healing by Combat Class VALUES. The Combat Classes themselves are in place on the
Combat Class Datasheet (which is still awaiting some review and commentary from you btw.) So at this point I just need to assign some base healing values to the units themselves. And iSelfHeal and bNoSelfHeal values need to be considered here as well. So that's up next...
EDIT: Completed the evaluation for Naval Healing on this
Healing Datasheet. Will discuss a bit more in the Healing by Combat Class thread.
) could find a way that at first the unharmed transports are filled.
