The crises of resource shortage have prompted ocean exploitation to spring up all over the world. Some crucial frictional components of marine equipment have to be directly faced with the conjoint action of wear and corrosion. Transition metal nitrides or carbides hard coatings have been widely used to improve tribological performance in various applications. However, the poor toughness, wear and corrosion resistance of coatings cannot meet the harsher marine environment, which needs to obtain multi-functional hard coatings providing complex properties. The nanocomposite structure coatings containing nanocrystalline phase embedded in an amorphous matrix allow tailoring their properties to desired value by designing chemical composition and nanostructure. In this work, V-Al-C and V-Al-C-N coatings were deposited on silicon and high speed steel (HSS) substrates by magnetron sputtering. The crystal microstructure, chemical composition, surface morphology, cross-sectional structure, mechanical property and friction behavior of the coatings under different contact conditions (air, distilled water and artificial seawater) were studied by XRD, XPS, SEM, nano-indentation and ball-on-disc tribometer. The results showed that the V-Al-C coating displayed columnar structure with coarse grain. When the nitrogen was incorporated, the coating structure evolved into nanocomposite structure composed of nanocrystallite and amorphous carbon. The hardness increased from (14±0.48) GPa to (24.5±0.8) GPa, and the toughness was significantly improved (H/E>0.1). In air condition, the friction coefficient decreased from 0.70 to 0.42, owing to the synergy interaction between V₂O₅ and amorphous carbon during sliding. The friction coefficients of the both coatings in distilled water and artificial seawater were lower than those in air owing to the boundary lubrication forming lubricative film by absorbed water. The friction coefficient in seawater was lower than those in distilled water, resulting from the formation of Mg(OH)₂ and CaCO₃ during sliding. However, the wear rates of the both coatings in artificial seawater were larger than that in distilled water, which demonstrated a synergism between corrosion and wear in artificial water. The V-Al-C coating was all worn out under different contact conditions owing to severe abrasive wear, while the V-Al-C-N coating showed better wear resistance, with a wear rate of 3.0×10^-16 m³/(Nm) in air and 1.4×10^-15 m³/(Nm) in artificial water, respectively.