Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - General Land and sea units confirmed

larian has just confirmed the existence of land and sea units.

http://www.lar.net/2012/11/08/landaho/

Interesting stuff. What I'd like to know more about is why did the introduction of sea/land suddenly solve their design problems. The blog-post was kinda vague on that part.

For example at first I assumed that land/sea and air would be separate thus providing distinct RTS parts (land/sea) and action parts (air) which would solve the problem of integrating strategy and action within the framework of air combat alone.

But since land/sea/air all happens together I'm really curious about how it all works and how it provided so many solutions, aside from the obvious like more variety, unit interaction, tech choices, etc.

In any case it's nice to have any sort of news about the game.

And I really hope they do make a MoM style game set in the Divinity universe one day.

This should be clear: sky combat was previously just a few layers of altitude + nice looking background. No big deal.

Introducing land/naval units means more strategy, as they're limited in their movements. Probably these units will deal greater damage or represent supply chains that play a vital role in combat.

Next, comparing a dragon to land/sea creatures is much more fun than to other flying things (woaw I'm a dragon look at me how fast I fly I'm superior!!!). And now you have the option to crush on ground or sea. Perhaps they'll add functionality to dive under water for a few seconds, that would be nice!

I say the ocean's the limit!

The mere fact that everything was air based put me off about this game. Now I can't wait to see some gameplay footage to see how they're gonaa pull this off.

The question on my mind is: what does this mean for base building? Previously, bases were built on rocks inexplicably floating in the air. But now that the conflict will also be taking place on the ground, will the base primarily be on the ground as well? After all, as far as I can tell from Divinity 2, Rivellon is somewhat lacking in giant floating rocks but has plenty of ground to spare.

But if bases are on the ground, will this shift combat from primarily aerial to primarily ground-based? Will the Commander's role as an attacker primarily involve strafing runs?

If base building does stay up in the air, how do ground troops make it to the ground safely? Parachute? Zeppeling?

Or will there be a split between aerial bases and ground ones?

I assume it's much easier for flying units to fly up from a ground production facility than for land units to come down from an aerial factory.

"But it did have its advantages too. Exploring all those dead ends gave us a good insight into what works and what doesn’t, and I hope we’ll be able to use that knowledge to our advantage in the very near future." signed Lar

Well well well ... I'm very happy you now can back fall asleep with a smile on your face rather than a-brain-pain-of-a-head(ache) because of too much trouble-solving ALL the time !

Dead ends ... it reminds me of a Sudoku puzzle book I readed the "hints & tricks" this book give away on the first pages ... And solving a Sudoku, the more difficult ones, you need to search sometimes many or at least a few different paths before finding the right path .. because other paths were a "dead end" ! The author of that puzzle book tells the story of Ariadne's thread !
An intresting story I can tell you that . After reading that, all became crystal clear to me how to solve the more difficult Sudoku's ... just a puzzle game with only numbers from 1 to 9, but Oooo my, it can be a brain breaker and sometimes I even though I never find the right solution !!

Success on developing Dragon Commander further on !

I like the idea of changing from all air to land, sea and air. I think that'll definitely add a lot to the game, because only having the three altitude things isn't really that interesting. All air would effectively be only on one plane, and that would get repetitive.

Adding in a ground layer also should synergize with the three altitude parts - ground units would have varying levels of range and most could only hit the lower altitude strata, a few could hit the middle altitude and one or two could hit the high-altitude air strata. Poof, instant strategic depth.

I definitely hope this means that all the base building is removed form the floating rocks and put onto the ground. I wasn't really a huge fan of that, especially the part where you have mines on the floating rocks.