Revision 1

Naval combat is one of the major design goals of D.O.R.F.. A development post from December 23, 2025, titled Fun On The Water, laid out the plan: water should be a battlefield in its own right, not just an obstacle for land armies. Ships are also meant to support ground forces through amphibious landings, coastal bombardment and air defense zones. The game was unreleased as of September 2026, and everything on this page is the developers' stated plan.

Design Philosophy

The post argued that naval combat in many older RTS games worked badly because of engine limits. Units could only occupy a single tile for collision and pathfinding, which kept warship sprites small. Separate weapons could not be tied to separate turrets, turrets had to rotate a full 360 degrees, and in some engines units reached top speed instantly. In the developers' view this led to swarms of small, fragile boats with one weapon each.

According to the developers, the game's engine has been reworked to remove those limits. Units are not restricted in which weapons they carry or which turret each weapon is mounted on, turrets can have a limited arc of traverse, and some ships may carry dozens of different weapons. Units can also have large collision boxes, so warships can be closer to realistic scale.

That shapes the whole design. Naval units are meant to be extremely powerful and extremely expensive, closer to endgame super units than to ordinary units, and a player will only ever field a few of them. The post described ships as floating fortresses of armor and weapons that should not be lost in an instant when a player looks away. Deploying a ship should change the course of a battle, and losing one should feel like an event in itself.

The Destroyer

The Destroyer is the only warship the developers have described in detail. It is the vessel in the thumbnail of the naval video that accompanied the December 2025 post, and it is mainly a ship-to-ship and air defense vessel. The post did not say which faction builds it.

No statistics, costs or health values have been published. The developers have said current unit values are placeholders. Other named units are listed on the Units page.

Planned Ship Roles

To avoid a thin naval roster, each faction is planned to have enough ships that naval-only maps stay interesting and do not come down to one or two units used over and over. The December 2025 post listed these roles for every side, along with variants and combinations of them:

• Light patrol craft

• Anti-air vessels

• Ship-to-ship combat vessels

• Shoreline bombardment ships

• Submarines

• Logistics vessels

Salvage Ships

In December 2025 the developers said salvage ships are planned, most likely as multi-role utility vessels. Their example was a salvage ship that also serves as a transport and a minesweeper.

Crews

Ships follow the same crew rules as other vehicles. Vehicles are always built with their full crew, crew affects how a vehicle performs, and few weapons can kill the crew inside a vehicle. Veterancy belongs to the crew rather than to the vehicle itself.

Faction Differences at Sea

The Warband Tribes are the exception to the even split. In August 2023 the developers said every side gets air and sea units, but the Warband would have a very small air force built around reconnaissance and deception. Their sea units were planned to be more numerous than their aircraft, but not a match for the destroyers and cruisers of the other two factions. In April 2026 the developers repeated that the Warband might get a token air scout and transport but no meaningful air force, and would rely on guerrilla tactics instead.

As of September 2026 no faction-specific ship lists had been published for the Union of Imperial States or The Collective.

Movement and Transport Routes

Ships use the same movement system as other units. The December 2025 post said units had just gained acceleration, deceleration and movement that is not bound to the map grid, too recently to appear in the accompanying video. A physics-based movement overhaul was then shown in January 2026.

The post also described an automated transport route system that had already been implemented:

1. Designate a transport route across a body of water, from one shore to the other.

2. Attach an amphibious transport to that route.

3. Any units ordered to cross the water, which they could not otherwise cross, automatically find the route and use it.

Other unit orders and behaviors are covered in Combat and Unit Control.

Naval Logistics

Water is also planned to be part of the supply game described in Resources and Logistics:

• Reinforcements brought in from off the map will need water transports in some situations.

• Special naval cargo units will carry supplies and resources between bases when needed.

• Ships will need an ammunition supply chain so they do not run out of rounds for their heavy guns. As of April 2026 the ammunition system was still planned rather than implemented.

• Special capturable water structures are planned, such as offshore oil rigs.

Water Simulation

The same post introduced partially simulated water, with dynamic water levels and reservoirs that drain when the ground around them is destroyed. The developers plan to adapt the flow simulation already written for pipeline structures. See Terrain and Environment for how water fits into the terraforming features.