Oceania badly needs some way to encircle sea aliens

[Magirot]

As things stand currently, there is no way to eliminate amphibious aliens in the same way as land units. Amphibious sea creatures will simply retreat back into the sea, and will soon land in another spot, in the worst case the very next turn. So if you don't want to play whack-a-mole, keeping all your shore hexes under guard is the sole option. No way to be proactive in any efficient way.

Judging from discussion I've seen in different places, this is among-the-most if not the-most annoying thing in Oceania.

Solutions that I can think of:

1. An MTH stratagem that can block alien land-to-sea movement into a sea hex for a turn or two, allowing encirclement and destruction of amphibious aliens that have landed.
2. A weak naval/amphibious unit (hovercraft?) that even player regimes can build, mostly meant for blocking alien retreat routes.

As a separate suggestion (which wouldn't solve the specific problem, but would be neat in general), there also could be an MTH stratagem to organise an attack against creatures in a sea zone, using MTH's number of ships + combat skill against strength of the critters, with success killing some of them.

[fuke]

Really hope that Vic just gives us naval units that move like land units.

It's how many hex strategy games do it. It's not unrealistic, compared to land units, since there is already a suspension of disbelief with fast land units like scout buggies occupying a single hex over a long period of time (turn). It would just be more fun and the best gameplay.

[Disturbance20]

I understand full naval units is way too big of an ask right now.

However, I think a simple solution to this would be an amphibious vehicle or tank that could move a few hexes onto the water. To stop it from being a full naval unit crossing oceans, simply do not let it collect logistics over water and then it can't go far without starving of fuel/energy and can't move, eventually stuck in place and starving to death if not careful.

I think all the systems for this are already in the game, just have to add the unit and it fixes this incredibly frustrating aspect of Oceania.

[GazBot]

Not convinced about the basic premise....

You can hit them with aerial units....I have to admit its taken almost the first 50 turns but Ive now eliminated most of the sea creature units around my small continent / large island in my current pbem game....mix of land units and aerial attacks.....

[Disturbance20]

Not convinced about the basic premise....

You can hit them with aerial units....I have to admit its taken almost the first 50 turns but Ive now eliminated most of the sea creature units around my small continent / large island in my current pbem game....mix of land units and aerial attacks.....

Wasting that much ammo over and over on one sea creature left in a unit is just annoying and a waste of time. It's not fun game play. 50 turns....that's about 1/3 to 1/2 the length of a pbem game. It's just a very annoying distraction to the real strategic game play.

With the additional costs of ammo coming in the beta updates, wasting bombs on water creatures for no kills until finally getting it on the 25th try is, again, not fun or strategic in anyway.

[Magirot]

You can attack them with -50% efficiency with air units (and missiles etc), yes. Air units were the reason I said "no way to be proactive in any efficient way", since the amount of resources needed feels like it's dozens of times more than a similar mop-up with land units.

Time-wise 50 turns sounds fine, that's the time it could take with land units to clean up a large difficult jungle or so, and the "reclaiming the wilderness" part is a fun part of the game to me overall. But wasting the amounts of ammo that air units do on creatures that will just flee...

Also even ignoring the resource discrepancy, air units are more viable on some planets than others (or could be disabled by the player).