Introduce a new guiding principle for Naval map design: No spawn-to-spawn direct line of sight

Suggestions Gameplay
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1
[Would you like to see it introduced?]
  • Yes, for both: Coastal and Bluewater
  • Yes, but only for Bluewater spawns
  • No
0 voters
[Would you like to see an exception for the bluewater open-sea maps? (e.g. Conquest Jungle, Conquest La Manche)]
  • Yes, they should be left as they are (in both Realistic and Arcade)
  • They should be left as they are, but limited only to the Realistic mode
  • No, they should have some form of (soft?) cover introduced
  • No, they shouldn’t be present in the game
  • I don’t have an opinion / just show me the results
0 voters

Why?

Map design in naval battles is one of the very most frequent complaints about War Thunder Naval mode - either within War Thunder bubble itself, or from people playing other™ and just peeking into WT Naval. And the specific complaint I have people having most often is spawn-to-spawn shooting, “spawn-camping”, including people who get killed moments after spawning, because someone focused them and they got no opportunity to do any action before being ammo-racked, cause you got to move for a few kilometers for the nearest hard cover (looking at you, [Domination] African Gulf).

The main audience are a new and potential players coming to the naval mode. But the existing and returning fans of the WT Naval would benefit from it as well.

What to do:

The solution I would like to propose is introducing the no spawn-to-spawn direct line of sight rule.

This means all spawns. As in: If I spawn at any friendly spawn point, I shouldn’t be able to see any enemy vessel at her spawn location.

This would require changes to most of the existing maps - moving spawn points either/or adding new islands and/or changing the height/design of the existing islands and/or expanding/moving playable area. I intentionally do not put any specific ideas on the table, as specific depend on per-map basis, and I don’t want us to get lost in the weeds (see the list of maps in Category:Maps and missions - War Thunder Wiki - too many to go through)

Obviously, I don’t expect it to be implemented with a snap of the fingers, but each new map should comply with that rule, and existing maps should be modified over time.

Edge-cases:

Important caveat: There are open-sea maps ([Conquest] Jungle, [Conquest] La Manche, [Conquest] Denmark, to a degree [Conquest] Midway) - I would leave them as they are, as this maps simulate realistic naval battles and overall IMHO they got their place in the mode. The obvious alternative for the open-sea maps would be introducing some sort of cover - I would propose here adding smoke - likely the best idea would be to put a permanent soft cover - surface-level cloud/fog on the spawn areas, or a long smoke screen (even if it means a line of smoke 10 kilometers-long). IMHO adding a hard cover would ruin the whole point of these maps, so if you don’t want to have these maps as they are (IMHO: fine) then either limiting them to Realistic or adding soft cover would be a good compromise.

Opinions?

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