They mentioned multiple continents. So unless the boundary is made of acid or bottomless pits like Outland, I hope it will have water.
Yes to water, and yes to lore-friendly handling of it. Some units should be able to swim, some of which would also need a 'breath' meter if they went under. Others, like Marines, Terminators etc, should just be able to walk along the bottom. Also Chimeras, they are described multiple times as underwater vehicles (not to mention Land Raiders) I hate it when games just carpet bomb all factions/races with the same needs even when it makes no sense i.e. Undead needing to breath...
I'm not as familiar with the Land Raider, but I was under the impression that the Chimera could float like a BMP or M113 (yes, the shoebox was amphibious).
Since the devs had said earlier that they will sacrifice balance for lore friendliness I don't doubt that if they add water, they'd make it as lore friendly as possible.
I would say yes, if the developers can implement it properly.. meaning looking good with proper modern water visual effects, and also proper gameplay effects (swimming, walking on riverbeds, water fording vehicles, etc), without taking up too much effort. If they can't, then no. Focus on readying the game for launch looking good, then worry about implementing water in a later content update zone. Aquatic combat simply isn't critical.
Yes, the Chimera fords rivers by floating, like many real-life IFVs/APCs. Land Raiders, meanwhile, certainly cannot float, but they can drive along the bottom without much trouble. There's a canon event with the Space Wolves attacking a domed underwater Tau city with Land Raiders and Terminators moving across the seabed under an ocean: http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Battle_of_Kvariam_Alpha Still, as I said, water features are not really an important criteria for getting the game into a quality, completed state at initial release, so I personally don't put priority on it. A post-launch campaign planet that has a lot of water (rivers, lakes, or swamps) in its combat zones would be good, but not vital.
In planetside the boundary was just an invisible wall of death. So if you went too far out of bounds you died after a short while. Each continent was instanced so you couldn't walk from one to the other. I wonder how they'll do it in EC
Definitely yes! Water, when it cannot foot-crossed, adds some combat strategy to the game: for instance holding one or two bridges can turn the tide of a battle, allowing quicker reinforcements and a "safer passage" to the faction who controls them, so thumbs up for water and rivers.
Adding rivers and the like could give the game additional tactical depth, albeit I can not imagine players going swimming in them.
