Helicopters Landing On Naval Ships

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    • Helicopters Landing On Naval Ships

      In the real world all war ships down to Corvettes can carry at least one helicopter and that is heavily used for seasprite helicopters for anti submarine purposes and also general use like personel recovery. It doesnt make sense that helicopters can only land on aircraft carriers. Would dramatically increase the use of both helicopters and cruisers.

      Would love to see this in the game
      Cheers
    • I like the idea because it would make helo's more useful, especially that anti naval warfare helo. With the limited range you can't do much besides put it onto a carrier. Helo's in general have a pretty severe handicap vs jets because you can hit farther and hit faster with jets so you just get a better all around unit. Helo's can do tons of damage up close but it's just safer and more effective to invest in jets. They even take less damage during attacks in almost all cases.

      When I started playing I expected helo's to stay on target and keep attacking rather than doing the return trip between each attack. That is how I think they should operate personally. They'd be worth the risks of using them if they just stayed in combat until the units were dead.

      Then people would have to use a lot more AA fighters to counter then so we'd see a mixture of AA fighters, helo's (both types) and eventually strike instead of mostly just strike fighters. Even using AA fighters I don't see a good return on investment until lvl 4. Strike is reasaonbly good at Air until fighters hit lvl 4 then the tables turn very hard.
    • As i’ve said in the other thread where this came up: a single spot to carry helis would have hardly any effect; nevermind that there is no distinguishing between a carrierspot used by a heli and one used by other carrier able aircraft
      also: dramatically increase the use of cruisers? excuse me? cruisers really dont need a push towards more popularity, they are already pretty well used
      as for helis: gunship/atk helis are fine where they are currently
      asw helis would need more of a buff then simply being able to to hop on cruisers/corvettes
      and as i’ve said in the forum etiquette thread: „but muh realism“ is a pretty bad argument for about anything; even more so considering that realism is not the focus of con



      Tumbler wrote:

      I like the idea because it would make helo's more useful, especially that anti naval warfare helo. With the limited range you can't do much besides put it onto a carrier. Helo's in general have a pretty severe handicap vs jets because you can hit farther and hit faster with jets so you just get a better all around unit. Helo's can do tons of damage up close but it's just safer and more effective to invest in jets. They even take less damage during attacks in almost all cases.

      When I started playing I expected helo's to stay on target and keep attacking rather than doing the return trip between each attack. That is how I think they should operate personally. They'd be worth the risks of using them if they just stayed in combat until the units were dead.

      Then people would have to use a lot more AA fighters to counter then so we'd see a mixture of AA fighters, helo's (both types) and eventually strike instead of mostly just strike fighters. Even using AA fighters I don't see a good return on investment until lvl 4. Strike is reasaonbly good at Air until fighters hit lvl 4 then the tables turn very hard.
      your assessment of helis is kinda wrong; the big advantages of helis is their ability to ignore most forms of anti air paired with having a low radar signature
      on the other hand just the presence of sams will already make the life of sf significantly harder

      range in general is not that much of a factor for aircraft outside of some large provinces; cuz in general you dont really want to attack at max range because that way lies lower damage output per hour

      in general helis are a lot more viable then people give them credit for; strike fighters are just more popular
      I am The Baseline for opinions
    • Teburu wrote:

      your assessment of helis is kinda wrong; the big advantages of helis is their ability to ignore most forms of anti air paired with having a low radar signatureon the other hand just the presence of sams will already make the life of sf significantly harder

      range in general is not that much of a factor for aircraft outside of some large provinces; cuz in general you dont really want to attack at max range because that way lies lower damage output per hour

      in general helis are a lot more viable then people give them credit for; strike fighters are just more popular
      I'm becoming more familiar with the High and Low radar significance but I don't think they matter over anything but water.

      Over land if you're attacking over enemy territory your enemy sees everything. Defending is more likely to need extreme range than the heavier stopping power of helos so the avoidance of radar doesn't seem like a useful trait for helos there either.

      Controlling land is basically getting free low scan radar. (with recon)

      If you didn't get to spot airborne units just by holding territory (or only spotted high sig) then I'd agree, that radar avoidance could be a huge advantage but for now you get a ton of free radar with recon capability just by holding land. In the ocean the limited range and pathetic damage of helo's vs surface ships (except navy warfare helo but then...who builds that?) makes them an unwise investment as well.

      Plus, in the game I'm playing now, I have a set of helo's and I just have to keep building airbases in so many places because their range is so short. A cost of using them is that you're goign to constantly have to build new airbases/airfields which cost a lot. Using jets you get only have to build those things 1/2 as much. (approx) Fighters go 750 where as a lot of the helos go 400 until you get rlly high lvl.

      Another thing that might make them more useful would be to have airfiields, built outside of cities, only able to have helo's land there. Ground forces could still fly in and out as before, just no jets. So as you got further out away from cities you'd likely only be able to use helo's as air support.

      An alternative to adjusting how ground control shows contacts, what if airfield 1 was cheap, if not free, and could only be used for helo's. So territory you control, you can build an airfield and only helo's could land/go there. Level 2 would be the normal cost of everything now and the same functionality. So you could take a helo force with you into enemy territory and you wouldn't be paying an arm and a leg for extra range for your helo's but you'd still have to wait for it to be built as before.
    • TLDR: I continue to notice that most posts in this this thread are still short on why the game needs a different Corvette and long on why the Corvette needs an ego-boost.

      I believe the best way to advocate for changing a unit's abilities or adding a unit is to first show a good understanding of the rock-paper-scissor (or rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock) sorts of interplay among the existing units at their various tech levels and to then point out that a hole/gap exists in those interactions.

      Many computer-based games train players to automatically assume that all actors in games get "stronger" as the game progresses, and to assume that you are most successful when your mighty avatar has accumulated lots of special plus-ups and new abilities, and then goes on to face and destroy the boss bad guy. CoN has (and I assume always will) a flavor of this and that helps it appeal to lots of customers. But ...

      There is more to a successful strategy game than accumulating tech levels. The interactions among the chess pieces is crucial.

      To advocate for a change, I recommend clearly identifying a hole in the existing unit-selection (holes that have a meaning in one of those rock-paper-scissors relationships, not holes like, "CoN doesn't have chow halls and everyone knows that real armies travel on their stomachs."); and then describe why your proposal is the right way to fill that hole.

      Step 1 is the hardest - It's spending the time to puzzle out the existing relationships among the current units, and finding a way to concisely describe those relationships to your audience. That description needs to be one that doesn't need a lot of flowery justification arguments. What it tells readers should be obviously true.

      KFG
      PS: Describing those relationships clearly might mean drawing a picture or two. A picture can be worth 1000 words.
    • I think the biggest issue in CoN right now is the effectiveness of melee units, specifically armor. In pubs, melee is not that great, but there are so many units who’s main purpose revolves around melee combat. It only gets worse in alliance games.

      There are four players: Ground melee, Artillery, Air and navy

      I think air is well balanced, although it could use some changes
      Ground melee is only really useful against people who are either fundamentally unprepared to defend against it, or simply don’t know how to deal with it
      Artillery is practically the king of ground combat, and for many experienced players it is the only way ground combat should be done. You deal damage to the enemy without taking damage yourself
      Navy is mostly balanced. I think cruisers are too versatile, and corvettes are not useful enough.

      I really couldn’t tell you how to fix armor. The problem boils down to the fundamental mechanics of the game. If you nerf artillery hard enough to dethrone it, the game may become a boring experience of “stronger unit wins” with little strategy involved. Buffing armor with more numbers in speed, HP, damage won’t fix it either
      Yee Haw
    • Colonel Waffles wrote:

      I think the biggest issue in CoN right now is the effectiveness of melee units, specifically armor. In pubs, melee is not that great, but there are so many units who’s main purpose revolves around melee combat. It only gets worse in alliance games.

      There are four players: Ground melee, Artillery, Air and navy

      I think air is well balanced, although it could use some changes
      Ground melee is only really useful against people who are either fundamentally unprepared to defend against it, or simply don’t know how to deal with it
      Artillery is practically the king of ground combat, and for many experienced players it is the only way ground combat should be done. You deal damage to the enemy without taking damage yourself
      Navy is mostly balanced. I think cruisers are too versatile, and corvettes are not useful enough.

      I really couldn’t tell you how to fix armor. The problem boils down to the fundamental mechanics of the game. If you nerf artillery hard enough to dethrone it, the game may become a boring experience of “stronger unit wins” with little strategy involved. Buffing armor with more numbers in speed, HP, damage won’t fix it either
      the fix is in theory actually pretty simple; currently ground units only can deal with ground units; which means they might as well fight a mirror match of some sort
      you’d need to implement more mechanics so that they are more specialized in their job so matchups between groundunits are more onesided (have melee that hardcounters other melee)
      eg. tankdestroyers getting a free first attack cuz ambush where they dont take dmg or something
      nerfing artillery to the ground would accommplish nothing but have them replaced by aircraft completely
      I am The Baseline for opinions
    • Colonel Waffles wrote:

      I think the biggest issue in CoN right now is the effectiveness of melee units, specifically armor. In pubs, melee is not that great, but there are so many units who’s main purpose revolves around melee combat. It only gets worse in alliance games.

      There are four players: Ground melee, Artillery, Air and navy

      I think air is well balanced, although it could use some changes
      Ground melee is only really useful against people who are either fundamentally unprepared to defend against it, or simply don’t know how to deal with it
      Artillery is practically the king of ground combat, and for many experienced players it is the only way ground combat should be done. You deal damage to the enemy without taking damage yourself
      Navy is mostly balanced. I think cruisers are too versatile, and corvettes are not useful enough.

      I really couldn’t tell you how to fix armor. The problem boils down to the fundamental mechanics of the game. If you nerf artillery hard enough to dethrone it, the game may become a boring experience of “stronger unit wins” with little strategy involved. Buffing armor with more numbers in speed, HP, damage won’t fix it either
      I don't see anything here yet about why the game needs a different Corvette.

      In the same way that the universe's gods of gaming don't require chess queens to be less versatile or chess pawns to be more versatile, they don't require cruisers to be less versatile, or corvettes to be more versatile.

      You aren't (yet) describing why CoN is suffering or unbalanced, other than implying the "weak sauce" argument that the Corvette exists in the software, so the sunk cost it represents might be able to help the game, if we can accurately define a hole in the game that needs to be filled by a small Naval unit built using supplies and electronics instead of components and electronics.

      What are CoN's unit-vs-unit (and unit-vs-cost, and range-vs-speed, and ...) relationships (what are the internally-consistent patterns that unify everything into a consistent "whole") and where is one or more of those patterns broken (if any one or more is actually broken)?

      Out intuition, especially when coupled with experience, can often point in the right direction; but changing something as complex as CoN needs to be guided by more than just intuition.
    • KFGauss wrote:

      TLDR: I continue to notice that most posts in this this thread are still short on why the game needs a different Corvette and long on why the Corvette needs an ego-boost.

      I believe the best way to advocate for changing a unit's abilities or adding a unit is to first show a good understanding of the rock-paper-scissor (or rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock) sorts of interplay among the existing units at their various tech levels and to then point out that a hole/gap exists in those interactions.

      Many computer-based games train players to automatically assume that all actors in games get "stronger" as the game progresses, and to assume that you are most successful when your mighty avatar has accumulated lots of special plus-ups and new abilities, and then goes on to face and destroy the boss bad guy. CoN has (and I assume always will) a flavor of this and that helps it appeal to lots of customers. But ...

      There is more to a successful strategy game than accumulating tech levels. The interactions among the chess pieces is crucial.

      To advocate for a change, I recommend clearly identifying a hole in the existing unit-selection (holes that have a meaning in one of those rock-paper-scissors relationships, not holes like, "CoN doesn't have chow halls and everyone knows that real armies travel on their stomachs."); and then describe why your proposal is the right way to fill that hole.

      Step 1 is the hardest - It's spending the time to puzzle out the existing relationships among the current units, and finding a way to concisely describe those relationships to your audience. That description needs to be one that doesn't need a lot of flowery justification arguments. What it tells readers should be obviously true.

      KFG
      PS: Describing those relationships clearly might mean drawing a picture or two. A picture can be worth 1000 words.
      I think there is a need for the corvette to actually be able to do what it is created to do: be a shallow water defensive ship for protecting homeland cities. I don’t see it as an hard conventional counter to proper professional navies or as a weapon for projecting power but rather as a hit-n-run-n-hide vessel playing a guerilla warfare type of game. I envision the corvette to be able to be the unit that intercepts transports, hides in bays and rivers undetected as enemy ships bombard costal cities, slips up to regular fleets to fire before speeding away, just being a irritating and elusive flea on the dog’s back.


      It just needs a few upgraded upgrades. :thumbsup:

      Right now one has to properly invest components into a navy, components that could be better spent on aircraft or something else. It would be nice to have those corvettes purchased at the beginning of the game to still be have some capability at the role for which they were purchased (with upgrades) besides catching fish or becoming fish food.
      I am Aeneas, duty-bound and known above high air of heaven by my fame, carrying with me in my ships our gods of hearth and home, saved from the foe. I look for Italy to be my fatherland, and my descent is from all-highest Jove.
    • Aeneas of Troy wrote:

      KFGauss wrote:

      TLDR: I continue to notice that most posts in this this thread are still short on why the game needs a different Corvette and long on why the Corvette needs an ego-boost.

      I believe the best way to advocate for changing a unit's abilities or adding a unit is to first show a good understanding of the rock-paper-scissor (or rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock) sorts of interplay among the existing units at their various tech levels and to then point out that a hole/gap exists in those interactions.

      Many computer-based games train players to automatically assume that all actors in games get "stronger" as the game progresses, and to assume that you are most successful when your mighty avatar has accumulated lots of special plus-ups and new abilities, and then goes on to face and destroy the boss bad guy. CoN has (and I assume always will) a flavor of this and that helps it appeal to lots of customers. But ...

      There is more to a successful strategy game than accumulating tech levels. The interactions among the chess pieces is crucial.

      To advocate for a change, I recommend clearly identifying a hole in the existing unit-selection (holes that have a meaning in one of those rock-paper-scissors relationships, not holes like, "CoN doesn't have chow halls and everyone knows that real armies travel on their stomachs."); and then describe why your proposal is the right way to fill that hole.

      Step 1 is the hardest - It's spending the time to puzzle out the existing relationships among the current units, and finding a way to concisely describe those relationships to your audience. That description needs to be one that doesn't need a lot of flowery justification arguments. What it tells readers should be obviously true.

      KFG
      PS: Describing those relationships clearly might mean drawing a picture or two. A picture can be worth 1000 words.
      I think there is a need for the corvette to actually be able to do what it is created to do: be a shallow water defensive ship for protecting homeland cities. I don’t see it as an hard conventional counter to proper professional navies or as a weapon for projecting power but rather as a hit-n-run-n-hide vessel playing a guerilla warfare type of game. I envision the corvette to be able to be the unit that intercepts transports, hides in bays and rivers undetected as enemy ships bombard costal cities, slips up to regular fleets to fire before speeding away, just being a irritating and elusive flea on the dog’s back.

      It just needs a few upgraded upgrades. :thumbsup:

      Right now one has to properly invest components into a navy, components that could be better spent on aircraft or something else. It would be nice to have those corvettes purchased at the beginning of the game to still be have some capability at the role for which they were purchased (with upgrades) besides catching fish or becoming fish food.
      give it low naval signature and there you go
      I am The Baseline for opinions
    • In real life, ships sometimes have spots for landing 1 or 2 helicopters.

      So, that could be good idea.

      Same time helicopters would be more useful, what is good for the balance and diversity in game (in competition with planes).

      As frigates are strong enough ships in CoN, I would advice to add 1 heli spot for some later destroyer and cruiser ships and maybe second spot for later/last versions of those, in the tech tree. For corvette it could be also nice boost, but I guess only 1 spot is more realistic, not 2.

      Frigate to make it less strong against other ship types, I would recommend NOT to add a heli spot.
    • A Helicopter unit in CoN represents a whole squadron, not a single aircraft. Frigates and destroyers can only carry 1 (or 2 at a pinch) aircraft.

      I think (hope) that the introduction of deployable mini.-units from existing units could have the potential to allow for individual helicopters to launch from ships as an extension of the 'deployables' system - but they'd have to be a lot weaker than the standard helicopter units in terms of combat - perhaps just useful for recon.
    • WalterChang wrote:

      A Helicopter unit in CoN represents a whole squadron, not a single aircraft. Frigates and destroyers can only carry 1 (or 2 at a pinch) aircraft.

      I think (hope) that the introduction of deployable mini.-units from existing units could have the potential to allow for individual helicopters to launch from ships as an extension of the 'deployables' system - but they'd have to be a lot weaker than the standard helicopter units in terms of combat - perhaps just useful for recon.
      Unless of course the frigate in-game actually represents a small task force of frigates irl :D
      I am Aeneas, duty-bound and known above high air of heaven by my fame, carrying with me in my ships our gods of hearth and home, saved from the foe. I look for Italy to be my fatherland, and my descent is from all-highest Jove.
    • WalterChang wrote:

      A Helicopter unit in CoN represents a whole squadron, not a single aircraft. Frigates and destroyers can only carry 1 (or 2 at a pinch) aircraft.

      I think (hope) that the introduction of deployable mini.-units from existing units could have the potential to allow for individual helicopters to launch from ships as an extension of the 'deployables' system - but they'd have to be a lot weaker than the standard helicopter units in terms of combat - perhaps just useful for recon.
      And ships only come in one-size?
      Yee Haw
    • Aeneas of Troy wrote:

      WalterChang wrote:

      A Helicopter unit in CoN represents a whole squadron, not a single aircraft. Frigates and destroyers can only carry 1 (or 2 at a pinch) aircraft.

      I think (hope) that the introduction of deployable mini.-units from existing units could have the potential to allow for individual helicopters to launch from ships as an extension of the 'deployables' system - but they'd have to be a lot weaker than the standard helicopter units in terms of combat - perhaps just useful for recon.
      Unless of course the frigate in-game actually represents a small task force of frigates irl :D
      Ship units in CoN represent one ship each. More than 3 in a stack is a Task Force.


      Colonel Waffles wrote:


      And ships only come in one-size?

      What do you mean? Ship class designations (Frigate, Destroyer, etc) are according to hull displacement (ie. size)?
    • Of course CoN ships only represent one real life ship, and CoN planes only represent one real life plane.

      That's why a combinations of Air Forces with a few strike fighters, and a few ASF; a few Navy ships; and some artillery tubes; are conquering the entire world in my current game. :rolleyes:

      Folks - Doesn't trying to tie CoN to the real world seem like just a bit of a fool's errand?

      Aren't there more useful ways to discuss and weigh the merits of a suggestion?