Everytime I think the devs have reached a new low with their stupid ideas for this game, they go and outdo themselves. What the hell is this thing? Who thought this would be a fun unit to play with or look at?
Firstly what is the point of having a unit simulate “boarding” when nothing about it actually looks or feels or functions like boarding? As it stands the hulk ships just function like the galley line in how they deal damage to other ships just at a shorter range. The replaement of the bolt with the grapple hooks is purely cosmetic andjust replaces pierce damage with melee damage. Nothing about it actually looks like boarding. On top of that the fact that they use the same attack against buildings (and presumably land units) is also just fucking stupid. Who came up with this monstrosity?
There are so many better ways to implement baording ships. Firstly the whole point of baording another ship is that you can kill everyone in it and then take it over. So you should be getting a ship in return not just sinking it. They could have done this with creating a new Sailor unit, like a cheap infantry that you can make at the dock that you can garrison in your own hulk. The hulk then pulls up next to enemy ships and you lose your sailor unit un the ship but gain an enemy ship in return. This way you are gaining a ship and the enemy is losing a ship at a cheaper cost than to make a ship from scratch. Why can’t something like this be implemented rather than a ship that looks like its just shooting grappling hooks randomly over and over again?
No, Looks Ugly.
Maybe Hulk should just hold down enemy ship for 10 in-game seconds preventing movement and enemy should lose HP at same rate as a galley strike. After 10 sec, they should have an attack delay of 2 sec, which should let any ship escape. This makes Hulks a meat shield which can be used by galley line against fire ships especailly since fire ships are going to double up as Demolition ships lite.
Based on what I’ve seen (official screenshots and Ornlu’s video testing them), I think it looks really silly. The grappling hooks fly out at the target ship and then suddenly disappear. If I hadn’t read that this is supposed to “simulate boarding” I don’t think I would understand the intention.
Also, at a glance the Feudal Age version at least looks too similar to the galley to me, and the iron cladding on the front is anachronistic by about 300 years or so.
Short range and melee damage – seems more similar to fire ships than galleys to me.
I appreciate the imagination here but I think this would be annoyingly fiddly in practice, and surely too micro-intensive to function as a reliable counter to… whatever hulks are supposed to counter… fire ships?
Yes, so it’s the ideal time to give feedback on them while they’re still in development! Much more chance of things being changed now than after release.
Yea the damage type is different but the “hooks” are for all intents and purposes projectiles but with different animation. That’s what I meant. Whether you think of it as similar to the fireship line or the Galley line is beside the point. The point is they introduce this whole new ship that is supposed to shake up the water play by introducing a “new mechanism” but it really doesn’t feel like a new mechanism at all. Its just another ship that shoots stuff at other ships and somehow looks even sillier than all the other ships in the game. What is this adding to the gameplay exactly?
The hulk approaches the enemy ship and launches his grappling hook at it—which becomes visibly attached to the enemy ship. A loading bar similar to that of a trebuchet opens above the Hulk, showing the boarding process. Both ships become immobile and vulnerable; the ship attacked by the hulk cannot react until the process is completed or interrupted, and this process can be interrupted by any attack the hulk takes (from other enemy ships).
At the end of the boarding process, the player decides whether to delete or convert the ship using a button in the UI.
The animation still looks kinda clunky but it’s functionally completely different to a Galley since they only have an extremely short range.
In Chronicles we have Triremes doing a ramming animation but that wouldn’t make too much sense for Medieval Naval warfare, though that was also a thing.
Ramming was a common tactics and boarding too. Melee ships in Chronicles represents that. Also Chronicles literally made water simpler than ever and fixed all the issue. Why they are just making overly complicated. Just copy pasting Chronicles would still be welcomed by community. Docks atleast moved techs to somewhere else to free up space. Also made multiple unit lines as 1 tech. I think it should be the standard for Docks as ship are expensive and very situational to use.
Addition of Hulk feels complicating things. I dont trust the FE devs at all after 3K. How hard it was simply giving Dromons to Meso civs. Far far better than Cannon Galleons.
I get this may be an unpopular opinion, but I actually do generally like the design/implementation of the Hulk. Sure it’ll probably need some tweaks, but in general I like it; the new flavor with the attack is a lot better than “Arrow ship just like the other arrow ship, but these are magically better against fire ships) while not making it too gimmicky like arguably the Demo was, while not overcomplicating water. because lets face it, while getting some more flavor on water is great, water in this game is never going to become equal to land in gameplay, its an extra side thing, so give it some more flavor while still keeping it at least decently simple, which I think the Hulk does fine with.
I’m holding on to faith that Meso cannon galleons is simply a placeholder until the presumed Americas DLC where they give them a…i’m not going to say more authentic, but a less out of place siege ship.
The look of the unit is a bit weird and will take time to get used to, but I generally like the unit, I feel like a melee ship was definitely needed as the demos didn’t really make an actual triangle with the galleys and fires, so I’m really happy about an actual third point for that relationship
I feel like the hooks are a good enough abstraction of boarding without making it too complicated, I feel like it’s more accurate than just porting over the ancient ramming ships, also it makes sense that they benefit from melee upgrades, since the hypothetical boarding crew use melee weapons
Look, there’s no way to make the water combat in AoE2 realistic, we’d have to rework the system completely and even then we don’t really know that much about medieval navigation, but imo this is a good balance between simplicity, balance and historical plausability, comparing this to the Three Kingdoms is insane, this new unit is well within the design philosophy of AoE2, let’s not fall into hating anything new just because it’s new
Imo meso dromons make even less sense than meso cannons, at least you can argue that the canons, there were never catapult ships in the Americas, much less Roman ones, the fact that it’s not gunpowder doesn’t mean it’s more “accurate”, granted these civs do have mangonels in their siege workshops, but that’s kinda also a product of the symetrical design of the game, I find it ironic that you guys overlook this lol. Anyway, I do think the cannon galleons are a temporary balance measure and the next DLC will add a unique ship for them
Cant we just copy paste Chronicles? Instead of re-inventing another water triangle? Even current is more odd in practice. Just steal idea instead of doing that. 11