Moar Naval Combat!, Because MOAR! Options

[Goblin]

I personally have been playing Warcraft III Naval Combat for more than a year, i love it to death and am saddened that there isn't a 4v4 comp run.

NC or Battleships as some ppl call it, is an amazing game in that it can be picked up and learned in 10 mins or less, much like Flatout 2. It doesn't require the in depth knowledge of game mechanics of DOTA, nor the reflex training and muscle memory of CS, COD4 and other FPS (First Person Shooters), a team with reasonable communication (say a private teamspeak/ventrillo server or private channel on a public teamspeak/ventrillo server), and inexperienced players, can beat a team of veterans with little difficulty.

The average match usually runs between 40 mins to 3+ hours depending on whether one team decides to go for a quick victory or not.

While unlikely that there will be prizes of any kind for an NC comp for a while, if the support for it does arise, that might change in the future.

So please, register your support for this great, fun game that anyone can pick up and learn faster than you can read this post.

Goblin

[Goblin]

ok, now for a description of the game play.

NC is played on a watter map dotted with islands. You start the game in a newbie ship, this class we'll call a tier 1, there are 5 tiers of ships which are;

Tier 1: Wreck
Tier 2: Skiff/Tartane
Tier 3: Xebec/Barque
Tier 4: Gallion/Brig
Tier 5: Man-O-War/Corvet

Wreck: No Special Abilities
5 Guns

Skiff: Energy Barrier (Bonus 10 points to Armor)
15 guns

Tartan: Spread Fire (does dmg to an enemy ship, reducing their speed to 0 for a short period and doing splash dmg to the surrounding areas)
19 Gun racks

Xebec: Invulnerability for a short period of time
30 Gun racks.

Barque: Drive Cannon (Deals dmg to the target and reduces their speed to 0 for a short period of time)
38 Gun racks.

Gallion: Shock (Shocks the area around the gallion, reducing the speed of all enemies within a small radius around it to 0)This is a short ranged attack.
45 Gun racks.

Brig: Beam (Deals dmg every second and reduces a targets speed to 0) This is a short ranged attack.
56 Gun racks

Man-O-War: Blast (Shocks the area around the Man-O-War, reducing the speed of all enemies to 0 within a medium redius around it to 0 and dealing moderate dmg)This is a medium ranged attack.
60 Gun racks.

Corvett: Bridge Shot (Deals large initial dmg to a target, then continues to deal a reduced dmg every second for a period of time.
75 Gun racks.

Now onto weapons, these are split into three categories; Siege, Medium, and Short

Siege have a large amount of main dmg with splash dmg, but have a slow flight time and a slower rate of fire than the other two weapons, therefor mid to longer ranged moving targets are harder to hit with the main dmg. these weapons are very effective against the creeps.

Medium Weapons have less dmg but are a guaranteed to hit the target no matter what and have a quick rate of fire., as the name suggests they have a medium range but still have a small flight time.

Short range weapons are devastatingly dmging, always hit, have no flight time and a medium rate of fire, but they do not extend very far, you must be very close for these weapons to be used.

Repair Squads and Emergency Repair Squads:
Repair Squads are constantly running, they will attempt to repair your ship whenever it receives dmg, these will stack, so two of the same repair squads will rep twice the hp as one, you can have as many as 6 repair squads on your ship at any one time with no penalties to their effectiveness.

Emergency repair squads are like short term dmg control squads, they will start repairing large amounts of dmg for 30 seconds when activated, but will need a cool down time after each activation before they are usable again. You cannot activate more than one repair squad at the same time and thus having two or more is pointless. Also it is important to note that activating an emergency repair squad while using a special ability on a target will cancel prematurely that special ability, and that if you are being hit by the Drive Cannon or Beam, you will not be able to use these.

Armor Plates:
Armor plates add armor to your ship, more armor reduces the enemy's weapons. Be aware this is an logarithmic scale so while a 5 point increase from 10-15 points will buff the dmg reduction by maybe 5%, a 5 point increase from 360-365 may not buff the dmg reduction by more than 0.5%. Armor plates also do not stack, having two plates will not give any advantage over having one fitted.

Mage Squads:
Mages are devastating AoE (Area of Effect) weapons, they will dmg buildings and ships alike, and are not affected by armor points, while using a mage moving or activating a emergency repair squad will cancel it out, once fired, the mage attack cannot be directed to a different area of the map.
Because of the destructive power of the mage Squads and the effects it has on overall game play, most ppl i know do not allow them to be used.

Base Layout:
There are two distinct areas of each base, outer and inner.
The other base is comprised of several anti-shipping cannons located on the islands and in the water, and three shipyards, these shipyards are where the creeps spawn from and are destructible. Once destroyed, the creeps from that shipyard will not respawn.
The inner base consists of a few towers that are much stronger than the other base defenses, a dock, and a base. The Dock has the ability to repair friendly units that come within a short range of it and is destructible. The base is the objective, destroy that to win the game.

A few final pointers:
You will get a gold injection every two minutes, this it the cumulative income of your creap's kills since the last gold injection.

Buying lots of small weapons will save gold in the short run, but selling an item, whether it be armor, rep, mage, gun or anything will only return half the gold you spent to buy it, thus when you run out of weapon racks you will have to sell a weapon to buy a bigger one, or buy a bigger ship to get more weapon racks, and in this way you will eventually spend a lot of gold.

Killing an enemy ship will give you a moderate gold injection, the larger the ship the more gold you will get from killing it.

Farming creeps for yourself will dramatically increase your wealth, but reduce the gold injections you receive every two minutes.


I hope everyone enjoys reading this, and remember there are many, many tried and test tactics, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, and even if you are an experienced uber player, you can still be beaten by a newbie with a better tactic.