Naval unit's 2 range, especially compared with land unit's 4 range, is definitely too short.

As OP said, the primary concern is navy vs. land combat. Due to the nature of tactical battle map, most of the naval units participated in a land war will be play a supporting role - provide supporting fires, bomb city defenses, shell enemies, etc.

With only 2 range, it is hard to imagine a navy can effectively do all these bombing and shelling. If a navy is supporting a landing campaign, then they can only cover 2 tiles from the coast to support the landing army, while the enemy can safely stay at 4 tiles away and murder all the landing troops. In addition, with their 4 ranges, the ranged land units can hit a navy in a place that navy cannot reach, which is not only unrealistic but also unfair for the naval play.

Humankind's territory system also means that one can control and developing a coastal territory without actually building too much stuff on the coast. Most of the cultures will only have a couple of Harbors and Markets on the coast. As a result, a 2 ranged navy is very much not a threat even if a culture have some costal territory, since the majority of the quarters on that territory can be inland. However, a 4 ranged navy can hit a lot more stuff inland, actually support an amphibious war, therefore increased their effectiveness and combat significance quite a lot. 

I would suggest raise the range of Early Modern generic naval units to 4-5 tiles. This way, they can fulfill their crucial supporting role, while not being as long range as a Mortar (8 tiles). (The guns of IRL Age of Sail ships were usually a bit weaker than the most powerful land-based artillery pieces, due to the limitation of wooden ship structure. Nobody want their ship dismantling itself during a salvo.)

In case of naval units before Early Modern Era, I actually think give Cog a 2 range won't be a bad idea. Medieval Cogs were usually fought with archers on board, and Archers as a land unit already has a 3 range. The 1 range difference can be understand as the ineffectiveness created by ship motions.

Seems to me that this is not an oversight, but an intentional design to make it such that Naval units can not bombard land units on coastal tiles without Land units having any recourse (other than running away). Whether you agree with this design choice is another question. 

Jelmore wrote:

Seems to me that this is not an oversight, but an intentional design to make it such that Naval units can not bombard land units on coastal tiles without Land units having any recourse (other than running away). Whether you agree with this design choice is another question. 

Navy is supposedd to bombard land units. The fact that they don't is a bug, not a design choice.

I think you may have misunderstood what I was trying to say. I said bombard without recourse, not not bombard period.

I agree that same era Naval Bombardment should be equal to, if not more than, the Mortar Artillery capability in power and Range. And Contemporary Artillery ships should be able to just use Tactical Ballistic Missiles and get rid of a in-battle range limit--assuming Human Kind doesn't have a unique system interaction with Ranged artillery strikes for units past the Mortar era. 

Making Naval units worse than Land Artillery units has the innate effect of making legit naval warfare potentially too expensive and useless, compared to spamming population as land based armies.

Jelmore wrote:

I think you may have misunderstood what I was trying to say. I said bombard without recourse, not not bombard period.

Matchlock rifles should definitely be able to use their superior range to bombard Naval units without recourse, though, right?

At least land units getting bombarded without recourse makes historical sense in this game that is supposedly based on history. This is an absolutely atrocious design decision and whoever made it should have their head examined.

Maybe the answer isn't increasing the range of naval units across the board, but using naval units specifically designed for artillery support? The concept of regular shore bombardment by a large array of vessel types, I suspect, is a fairly recent concept. I believe early examples utilized bombards not commonly found on those ships. I think the concern may be naval units being better at land combat than land units (though I do understand that coastal areas being, well, coastal, is a hard limit naval units' usefulness.

Roulain wrote:

Maybe the answer isn't increasing the range of naval units across the board, but using naval units specifically designed for artillery support? The concept of regular shore bombardment by a large array of vessel types, I suspect, is a fairly recent concept. I believe early examples utilized bombards not commonly found on those ships. I think the concern may be naval units being better at land combat than land units (though I do understand that coastal areas being, well, coastal, is a hard limit naval units' usefulness.

It seems that at least according to Humankind Wiki there is a unit trait called "Bombard" which allows the following: "Can bombard districts and battlefields from out of battle". It is possible that we won't see proper naval vs land battles (prob historically accurate but disappointing from gameplay perspective) but more like naval support of land battles/amphibious landing from ranged naval units outside of battlefield. 

By the way does anyone know the full line-up of Naval units in the game? esp wth regards to the last two eras

AndreyP wrote:

Roulain wrote:

Maybe the answer isn't increasing the range of naval units across the board, but using naval units specifically designed for artillery support? The concept of regular shore bombardment by a large array of vessel types, I suspect, is a fairly recent concept. I believe early examples utilized bombards not commonly found on those ships. I think the concern may be naval units being better at land combat than land units (though I do understand that coastal areas being, well, coastal, is a hard limit naval units' usefulness.

It seems that at least according to Humankind Wiki there is a unit trait called "Bombard" which allows the following: "Can bombard districts and battlefields from out of battle". It is possible that we won't see proper naval vs land battles (prob historically accurate but disappointing from gameplay perspective) but more like naval support of land battles/amphibious landing from ranged naval units outside of battlefield. 

By the way does anyone know the full line-up of Naval units in the game? esp wth regards to the last two eras

Privateer -> Torpedo Boat [U-boot] -> submarine

man o war -> ironclad-> dreadnought

was there some steam frigate coming up from frigate too or am I mixing things up?

aircraft carrier and later on cruiser

with transport ship

probably no destroyer is a notable thing

something like that from top of my head based on the holy blurred tech tree

About the ships shooting land I think coastal bombardment should keep be very coastal until later eras (end of industrial) when naval support should be way more prominent

MasterPaw wrote:

Privateer -> Torpedo Boat [U-boot] -> submarine

man o war -> ironclad-> dreadnought

was there some steam frigate coming up from frigate too or am I mixing things up?

aircraft carrier and later on cruiser

with transport ship

probably no destroyer is a notable thing

something like that from top of my head based on the holy blurred tech tree

About the ships shooting land I think coastal bombardment should keep be very coastal until later eras (end of industrial) when naval support should be way more prominent

Thanks! Looking at your comment and blurred picture it appears than indeed in the industrial era we will have Ironclad and Steam Frigate with presumably Ironclad being the main range/bombard type of ship. Also there is a supporting topedo boat (which has range of 4!) and I am not sure how these three will balance each other as well as land bombardment.

So it seems the line up is following:

Transport vessels (replacing land units, also act as short-ranged naval unit): Transportation Galley (Classical) -> Caravel (Early Modern) -> Landing Craft (Contemporary)

Naval main: Pentekonter (Ancient, melee) -> Quadrireme (Classical, melee) -> Cog (Medieval, melee) -> Carrack (Early Modern, ranged) -> Steam Frigate (Industrial, ranged) -> Missile Cruiser (Contemporary, ranged)

Naval raider: Privateer (Early modern, melee) -> Torpedo boat (Industrial, ranged) -> Nuclear Submarine (Contemporary, ranged)

Naval bombard: Man'O'War (Early modern, ranged) -> Ironclad (Industrial, ranged) -> Battleship (Contemporary, ranged)

Naval carrier: Aircraft Carrier (Contemporary, allowing to  presumably have some melee/anti-air strength alongside ability to store fighters/bombers)

This line up looks not bad especially when it's just base game without any DLCs however it immediately raises several questions:

1. If I remember correctly from OpenDec, your troops can't board any ships including Pentekonter (if anyone remember please confirm). So until classical era your units can't sail/conquer islands and your ships aren't really useful.

2. There is no Medieval or Industrial transport vessel. And while in case of medieval you can still see your troops using galleys (although they will be quite vulnerable) I can't see industrial era units performing landing in Gallipoli using caravels. Some form of steam troopship or barges would make a lot more sense and fill the gap nicely.

3. Medieval era kinda miss either naval transport or another naval short-ranged vessel to fill the gameplay nicely. It's especially visible comparing to Early modern era which has incredibly nice variety of ships.

4.  While it's great to see ironclads and steam frigates in Industrial era there is a whole lot of preWW1 and WW1-early WW2 ships which had huge historical as well as military impact and they are missing from the game - pre/dreadnoughts, light/heavy cruisers, destroyers. Having at least one of them at the end of Industrial era in main Naval range would fill the gap nicely between frigates and missile cruisers (esp at the time Germans get uboats).

Feel free to add your suggestions, maybe we'll get this modded pretty quick once the game is out.

one way to allow coastal bombardment witohut making ships OP could be to either have big range with penalty dmg vs land, or have big range which is reduced on land (like 1 tile of land count as 2 of sea) but this would probably mess up scale be unfair vs artillery and confusing

RNGZero wrote:

AndreyP wrote:
1. If I remember correctly from OpenDec, your troops can't board any ships including Pentekonter (if anyone remember please confirm). So until classical era your units can't sail/conquer islands and your ships aren't really useful.

Embarking units starts in the classical era and naval vessels are unable to set-up or claim territories. The ancient era only lasts so long... so there is not many determents to putting off far flung claims. 

Well, I agree that indeed ancient era is quite short and if you really need you can go from sailing  straight to expeditions (although need half of ancient era techs for it) and still try to settle coonies as Phoenicians.

It would be just nice if ancient ship had an ability to onboard one unit and get him around before ancient era ends. 

I guess ship boarding opportunity has been removed from the game, could be quite useful at least for those early ships (used to think that class "boarding vessel" grants you that).

RNGZero wrote:

AndreyP wrote:
2. There is no Medieval or Industrial transport vessel. And while in case of medieval you can still see your troops using galleys (although they will be quite vulnerable) I can't see industrial era units performing landing in Gallipoli using caravels. Some form of steam troopship or barges would make a lot more sense and fill the gap nicely.

AndreyP wrote:
3. Medieval era kinda miss either naval transport or another naval short-ranged vessel to fill the gameplay nicely. It's especially visible comparing to Early modern era which has incredibly nice variety of ships.

 The Norse Culture have a monopoly on medieval transport vessels that can also freely cross deep water. I believe this is intended and provides a niche to a very water oriented culture in the times when knights roamed freely. The range on medieval or prior era vessels is unlikely to improve as the technology was just not there at that point. 

Fully agree with Norse having strong and deep water navigating ships (which have ranged attack according to wiki?), the main problem is that others still have to use transportation galley. WIth Cog strength at 33, Norse ship at 35, the galley with 18 strength carrying your precious knights would be dead after single attack. Some medieval transportation ship with strength of 25-26 would fill the vacuum up till Caravel (37).

RNGZero wrote:

AndreyP wrote:
4.  While it's great to see ironclads and steam frigates in Industrial era there is a whole lot of preWW1 and WW1-early WW2 ships which had huge historical as well as military impact and they are missing from the game - pre/dreadnoughts, light/heavy cruisers, destroyers. Having at least one of them at the end of Industrial era in main Naval range would fill the gap nicely between frigates and missile cruisers (esp at the time Germans get uboats).

I'm afraid only so much can be included in a game of this caliber without bogging down development. Perhaps, in a later expansion, the devs. will expand upon the naval aspect of Humankind but it is too close to release for feature creep. 

As it stands, naval units can be competitive from the ancient to medieval eras but drop off significantly in the early modern due to their humbling range. The industrial era may be that turning point naval units need to become viable, but only so much is currently known about that era.

True, you don't want to overcomplicate base game with many additional units, it's just a bit strange that steam frigates and torpedo gunboats are in the game while destroyers and armored cruisers are not.

Providing we'll be able to mod the game and add models I can see these units will be added by the community. There are number of great ww ships art which can serve as unit icons in Humankind)