So, options here. The bengalis already have passive ship healing, and they feel amazing on water because of it. Far more than other civs that are “naval” civilizations.
Now the real issue here is the apm required to fix up the ships. Having villagers? Non-issue. Even repairing them with resources? Non-issue. Manually queueing up each villager to hammer on each ship? When you have 20+ ships? Big issue.
The way I see it, there’s five solutions to the apm repairing ships problem. The first is putting passive healing on ships. Bengalis already have that, but putting it on all ships? Probably not. I could see it going on vikings, and maybe 1-2 other civs. Maybe unique ships only?
That leaves the other three options. The second option is a sea monk. Well not a literal sea monk, but it would be a unit that could repair ships, and would do so without being commanded by the player to do so. Maybe it could be a repair ship. Key point here is that it would not drain resources to repair ships. It just does its job. Having repair ships in ship combat would be op if it could repair faster than a single ship could deal damage though, so having a low repair rate is critical here.
The third option is a repair crane type structure. Think heals ships in its radius, and does so for free.
The fourth option is a drydock. This would be a new structure you park a ship in, and it heals the ship, but it costs wood to do so. Importantly, you can park multiple ships in drydock.
The fifth option is similiar to drydock, but just let all ships be garrisoned (and healed) in the dock.
What choice would you pick? Some of them? All of them? Or would you prefer to let your villagers keep banging away manually assigning them? As an aside, what if the drydock required having 1-5 villagers stationed inside it? Literally everything is there that a normal repair requires. The only difference is the apm cost to fix everything is reduced.
Naval play is all about aggression. If you have damaged ships and you have a numbers advantage dont send the boat away to be healed. Hold onto that overwhelming numbers potential and just push hard! Similar with troops. A knight in a castle can heal sure but you should maybe send him out to find stray villagers looking to build a TC at a new wood or goldline and cause mayhem. Dont be passive!
Also… i say this with… is it a sense of faux concern? Maybe it is but… relax and start practicing. You’re gonna find as your ELO goes up most of your suggestions will sound silly when you reflect on them
Unless its full naval water on maps is about harassing fishing so you can fish and have all the food you’re gonna need for a long time
When you speak about water in this game you open quite the discussion… First I would split the current dock to an economical and a military oriented one (like it was initially planned), this would help with the trade and rally point thing btw.
In dark age you build the economical dock where you can build fishing and transport ships (cogs added in feudal) plus research careening, dry dock, fishnets and shipwright later on.
In feudal age you can build the military dock with demo, fire and galley and then dromons/cannon galleons and unique ones.
It’s a small change that wouldn’t mess things up too much for the moment.
To reply to your question you could maybe heal warships in the military dock.
An even more immediate solution could be the possibility to toggle for villagers the ability to automatically repair ships near the coast and extend it to siege weapons and buildings too eventually, with a mechanics similar to the recent addition of splitting garrisoning units inside rams and transports.
Like with farms, the game seems to go in the direction of making automatic certain processes that you wouldn’t otherwise never or seldom put in practice and it’s fine to me cause if you never see a ship or a ram being repaired it means something doesn’t work with that idea.
Keep it as the bonus of Bengalis rather than giving it to others please.
Maybe this kind of Supply Ship would be better as a ship UU than being part of the generic tech tree.
For example having Armenians have it instead of having high attack with extra galleon projectiles to echo the historical reference that their fleet were hired for and supported the Crusaders.
A unique building? Why not give the Docks a aura?
Having ships garrisoned to undergo repairs risks being broken.
And it’s a bit similar to the fishing ship bonus of Gurjaras.
Ship repair seems to be crucial in naval battles in the early game, even in high elo game.
If they’re at your base sure but it’s probably better not to send that ship back to your island for a full heal if its currently out there harrassing fishline.
If you are pitched defensive sure you might be able to sneak a repair or 2 in but pressure and active unitry is more important for the same reason you Don’t send your low health knight to sit in a castle based on the expert games I watch or let a low health villager to rest in the TC even if he’s one spearman poke from falling over
It certainly isnt enough to need a new dumb building for it
Except that when you micro commands up for villagers, thats not fun. And even more unfun is that villagers and ship pathing sometimes make them not heal your ships. Especially when there are more than 6-10 ships involved.
Water maps are super unpopular, and villager micro of repairs is part of the problem.
Yeah, but with monk micro, monks dont have to path across units to heal them. If the monk had to path directly to a unit to be in melee range to heal them i would quit. Thats what i am getting at. Villager repairs are ok for buildings because buildings are not in formations, and they are static. They are not ok for ships that are in fleets. We need something else.
