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Naval Combat and other platforms


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There's one thing that's always bugged me about X-COM style games. We have ways to meet threats on the air, threats on the ground but not a way to meet threats via the sea. Call me crazy, maybe I've been playing a bit much Harpoon but I think that naval forces are one of the most overlooked things in these style of games. Consider this:

  • In this era, cruisers outfitted with the Aegis system and its precursors, along with aircraft carriers could intercept UFOs.
  • Carriers can serve as mobile bases of sorts, allowing insertion via helicopter or landing craft. If I'm not mistaken, a nuclear powered carrier can steam to a hotspot within a matter of hours. You could transfer personnel, weaponry and aircraft to them. They could have a small radar system and allow some variety in response.
  • Battleships (if for instance, a mission is on a coastline) could fill in for a heavy vehicle and lay down indirect fire. Of course, range would have to be limited. Could be possible to penetrate a UFO's exterior.

Opinions, fellow 'nauts?

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Naval artillery is way to overpowered and way to imprecise to be of any use for the kind of ops the Xenonauts run imo. And it'd be a major hassle and require to much micromanagement to actually have your naval forces where you need them when you need them. Earth oceans are vast and even nuclear powered naval craft are sluggish (a Nimitz class aircraft carrier at top speed is less than half as fast as a car on the highway). It takes days to reach wherever you want to go...

Radar coverage over the oceans might be nice, but interception? Why would you want do do that, the UFO would just sink. For the same reason I don't see a benefit in stationing dropships on carriers. If you shoot something down over land you most likely have a base there anyway from where you can deploy.

Even though I'm very much a fan of naval combat (I basically play the Civilization series and Empire: TW just for that) I just think the effort required is not worth the result.

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Technically it has n't been overlooked. Microprose made a sequal called TFtD that's all about the naval aspect of combating aliens... (or whatever since they came from the water).

I look at my signature and wonder what this would do for gameplay. Would it be fun?

Wouldn't you have to include the whole TFtD game aspect if you are going to include naval forces (which naval force btw, and how did they get mixed up with an international strike force organization anyway?) and blend it together somehow? So that you don't have 2 games (techtrees) running parallel to each other I mean.

Seems like alot of hassle to me.

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I would guess that cold war era navel assets would be far to easy for UFOs to attack with any kind of long range advanced missile or torpedo technology, which one assumes they would have, or develop.

Already it's a bit of a stretch to think that cold war era aircraft can match UFO 'fighters', but that's gotta be that way for the game play to work.

Otherwise I agree in principle with Gorlom about the importance of gameplay over realism. This is one of those areas where I don't see so much what the add to the over all experience is. Then again I'm not really all that interested in ships or navel combat either, so I admit my bias against them ;)

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Most of these games are based around a small and highly mobile strike team.

Carriers and associated support fleets are not generally something you would associate with these small scale operations.

It would be nice if there was ever a threat from the deep remake to have ships as mobile bases.

I would have a single small ship to act as a base though rather than actual military vessels.

Part of the problem would be the scale.

A carrier alone can have over 5000 people on board, not taking into account the support vessels.

That is a lot of people for a secret and poorly funded international organisation.

If your organisation had the funding and manpower to throw several carrier groups around they would be a major naval power in their own right.

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well i ageed that it could be nice whith navel combat and so.

but i think it woud be to much work for just having a ship, and as "pack.wolf" says if a ufo is shoot down over sea then it just disappears under the sea :(

then i woud be more than happy if the aliens attack fx. a oil rig and you have to go out ther and defend it :)

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