Battleships, 2nd mode.

[Ace Rimmer]

I'm not sure if it would radically alter naval engagements. If battleships had anti-plane/anti-ship modes and were more effective at both, then I would simply put all my battleships in anti-plane mode at the start of naval fights instead of having to manually tell them to concentrate fire on fighters. Then, mid fight when the other players fighters are spent, change to anti-ship mode. It would just make my strategy less "manual". (most of the time)

If one of the modes was AA against nukes, now that would be a radical change. You could overpower another players navy and set your battleships at his coast to take out nukes (that you could get in range of) as they were fired!

I think that allowing battleships to take out nukes would make them pretty overpowered, unless you only gave them a small firing radius in this mode.

All of this is moot as I was just pointing to something that would be radical as opposed to non-radical. Nevertheless, a small firing radius they already have, and if the anti-nuke mode was that small, it would be useless.

[xander]

I am honored that you deem my idea at least acceptable. I think that I might have just experienced Nirvana.

I am not sure that "acceptable" is the right word. Perhaps it is simply that I have decided not to dismiss the idea out of hand? ;)

Also, fighters only have one mode surely? Unless you count combat and recon as separate modes...

I do. Fighters can be used to shoot down bombers, or scout. They can't really do both at once. If you launch a fighter, and use it to fight, then it doesn't have the fuel to scout. If you launch a fighter to scout, it doesn't have to fuel to do much fighting. Battleships, on the other hand, can shoot down planes, or ships, and do both fairly well without sacrificing one to do the other.

I'm not sure if it would radically alter naval engagements. If battleships had anti-plane/anti-ship modes and were more effective at both, then I would simply put all my battleships in anti-plane mode at the start of naval fights instead of having to manually tell them to concentrate fire on fighters. Then, mid fight when the other players fighters are spent, change to anti-ship mode. It would just make my strategy less "manual". (most of the time)

But that would be a fairly radical change. Right now, if there are planes in the air, I use battleships to shoot them down. If there are no planes, I can use the battleships to take out other ships. I can switch between one attack and the other without even thinking about it. No problemo. It would require a fairly large change to strategies employed to switch from one to the other, I think.

That being said, while I think that it is an intriguing idea, I don't think that, in the end, it would make that much difference or be an improvement. It saddens me, because I think that the battleship is the weakest unit in the game. The only think that they do well is protect bombers from fighters, which, while important, isn't that interesting.

xander