When/If Atmospherics get implemented, a 'Atmospheric Density' slider would be cool.

That said, what IS the difference between a discussion and flaming?

Discussion:
1. Examination, investigation, esp. so as to allow a judgement to be made; an instance of this. Obs.
2.
a. Treatment of a subject, in speech or writing, in which the various facts, opinions, and issues relating to it are considered; the action or process of talking about something in order to reach a decision or to exchange ideas.
b. A written or spoken treatment of a subject; a conversation conducted in order to reach a decision or to exchange ideas.

Rhetoric:
1.
a. The art of using language effectively so as to persuade or influence others, esp. the exploitation of figures of speech and other compositional techniques to this end; the study of principles and rules to be followed by a speaker or writer striving for eloquence, esp. as formulated by ancient Greek and Roman writers.

Polemic:
1.
A.
Of the nature of, exhibiting, given to, or relating to dispute or controversy; contentious, disputatious, combative;
B.
A controversial argument; a strong verbal or written attack on a person, opinion, doctrine, etc.; (as a mass noun) writing or opinion of this kind.
(From the OED.)

It's subjective. Logic and dispassionate reason are paramount when compassion is not warranted.

R.....right.

SO BACK TO ATMOSPHERS.

I can see that being really cool - to be honest, I always find a big thing for me when playing games is atmosphere (hurr hurr) in terms of how it feels to play the game, driven by aesthetics, color scheme, music etc, perhaps even more so than a specific story.

I can imagine it would be pretty cool having a battle on a slightly foggier lava planet, like you're fighting through the thick noxious gas of an alien world. Wouldn't mind seeing some effects like smoking volcanoes and so on, just little things to make the worlds feel more alive - granted, these things are probably fairly low on Uber's List of Things.

Edit: Afterthought; you'd probably want an atmospheric falloff slider as well.

I'll be quite honest - I can't really say I want/need this feature. I actually thought that TA's extra map tilesets looked pretty rubbish, and for the most part they added stuff that I didn't care about. I found gas plants annoying, I found the 'mist' maps dull (because TA's air was a bit dull just on its own) and I actually thought the hovercraft threw off the naval-land balance.

Indeed in general, I like elegant simplicity. This was why I didn't get on with Blackops in FAF. Most of the ideas for craaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy biomes/units/game mechanics I've seen on these forums usually violate the principle that most artistic creations are better when things are taken away, not when they are added in. I can appreciate that people want more toys to put in their sandbox, but I prefer the strategy game that lies under the shiny toys.

Also I like the current biome art. More CSG and system editor power would be a lovely addition, but it can wait.

Fair enough. Here's why I disagree:

I'm not arguing that PA should look exactly like TA. Nor (as others have said in this thread) do I think that TA looks better.

Also PA has many things going for it when it comes to this type of map which TA didn't. Air is at a comparable standard (albeit in a different style), but there are also Teleporters, Unit Cannons and an entire Orbital layer.

In general, I'd say we all like elegant simplicity. Of course it depends where you fall on the spectrum of what you consider 'crazy' and what you consider 'simple'. Personally I don't think clouds are a crazy idea - lots of planets have atmosphere.

It's all very well touting the Minimalist principle that 'less is more', but eventually you're going to end up sacrificing common sense, character and (quite literally) atmosphere.

I agree this can wait. The title of this thread is hardly a demand for action.

All the planets should just be barren wastelands with no features. It's more elegant that way honestly.

I've been gaming for 25 years but I never get tired of the same old temperate climate in my science fictions games. I think its best if all planets look like direct clones of earth. The more lifeless the better. Why would I want to see something cool no one has done before visually? My brain gets about all the stimulus it can handle from the current PA biomes, anymore and I just don't know if I could cope.

Hopefully, we never get clouds, smoke from volcanic vents, or marshfog. I dont play games for Immersion or realism. I've actually been playing games in greyscale lately so they aren't so distracting. If atmosphereic features were ever added I would probably have to move on to a new game less stimulating like pong.

Not really a post that moves the discussion along, that. But let's break this down.

Do you want an effect, or a gameplay feature? On the one hand you talk about plumes of smoke that drift from volcanoes, which sounds like a nice visual effect, yet on the other hand you also talk about mist and fog that obscures planet surfaces and makes it somehow impassable. I really don't think I've grasped exactly what it is you want added to the game, so in the interests of clarity, can you explain it in a bit more detail?

Secondly, my point, though brief and not as clear as it could have been, was directed at an aspect of your idea that it seemed like it could use some more fleshing out. How does your idea of an 'atmospheric density' slider add to the experiences of other players? How do you see it interacting with the game's existing features in a way that both (i) brings a new dimension to existing gameplay features and (ii) enhances players' interaction with the game's core concepts?

I ask these questions because much of your argument is based on how much you liked a comparable set of features in TA; my response was based on the fact that I responded to those features very differently. TA was deep and interesting as a game without those features; adding them made it, to my mind, neither more deep nor more interesting.

This bit is more interesting. The simple answer is: because all the units look like they are made to fight on earth-like planets. The entire game has gone with a 'looks like Earth' feel, and it doesn't feel particularly lifeless to me. But saying that you want some wilder, less earth-like environments is a bit of a double-edge sword: PA as a game just doesn't deal with the sorts of ideas that combat in non-earth-like environments would involve, mostly to keep the game simple enough to play (blame WYSIWYG if you like). TA's implementation of the crazy alien stuff felt lame because it couldn't make the alien stuff actually crazy enough to be interesting, but instead it made it just crazy enough to remind you that it was distracting you from what was good about the game.

Your response was fine, I just thought it was very unique in that, most people like to add as much realism to games a possible. Most people enjoy some eye candy in their games as well. Do games have to have all the bells and whistles to be good? Certainly not, but I'd argue games that have solid gameplay AND look great are that much more enjoyable. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say they hate good graphics.

For me, smoke, mist, fog, particle effects, hell even physics are all part of how the universe works (at least our known universe) and the more of that we have, the more realism we add to the game. The more realism, the more immersive and engrossing the game becomes.

Fog and mist could add a layer of gameplay mechanics. You could have low valleys with fog where you could effectively hide units (stealth) or in a game like Company of Heroes 2 you can actually drop smoke bombs that obscure units and provide cover to flank the enemy.

Imagine if TA only shipped with the desert titleset. I definitely would have gotten bored with it fast. Even now, some of the nostalgia with TA was finishing a set of campaign missions to land on a completely new world. I would argue that added a lot, surprised you don't feel that way. I also didn't find the alien worlds distracting. I thought they were interesting and immersive. They pulled me in and made me feel like I was actually in a scifi world, exploring the galaxy. It makes sense after all that not all planets in the entire universe would have earth like qualities. Venus for example, in our own solar system has sulfuric acid rain. So the acid pool planet in TA made sense.

I'll agree my satire was a bit sheepish, your reply just surprised me, sorry I couldn't help it.

Ehhh I don't really believe in 'realism' in games. Games are, pretty much by definition, not real, and often go out of their way to be not realistic. What people usually mean when they ask for realism in a game is, in fact, a more thorough exploration of the central set of principles/ideas/metaphors that they believe the game expresses. We know that World War 2 did happen, and we know many details about the conflict - therefore we often ask for WW2 games to better reflect these details in some way. If you put a tank in a WW2 game, people might legitimately ask for you to give it historically correct armour weights, thicknesses and angles of slope.

In PA, of course, nobody gives a tuppenny damn about what the thickness of the Bolo/Ant's armour is, or even whether or not it's made of magical anti-bullet candy. We don't care, because we know that's not what the game is about. It makes little sense to question this gaping hole in the fabric of reason, because it's a part of the fictional premise of the game. We suspend disbelief and ignore the fact that, if realism were a universal constant, we should legitimately be able to ask this question.

Likewise, when you ask for smoke to hide units, I don't really care about whether a 'real' PA unit could be hidden in this way. Instead, I ask questions like: is this game about hiding units? What would being able to hide units in that way bring to the game? How would it mesh with the existing intel and scouting mechanics currently in the game (especially when you think of how bloody awkward it's been to make mines useful/a thing, for the same reasons)? Can it be rationalised within the fictional/narrative framework that we use to suspend our disbelief about the rest of this game (so does it make sense for an army of robots to be blinded by fog in the same way a WW2 infantryman might be)?

You may well have good answers to these questions. But I'd like to hear them before I'm convinced to say 'yeah, let's add this' - as a gameplay mechanic, anyhow.

You're making some nice arguments. I'm going to attempt to provide a response to your questions.

An Atmospheric Density slider, as opposed to a set of constant atmospheric effects, would grant greater control in the System Editor to create varied planets and environments. This is in line with the current level of customisation present in the editor.

In terms of interaction with the game's existing features, let's focus on the extreme end of atmosphere, as this is where the game-changing effects are...

PA is already about scouting and intel. That this hasn't been built upon more (with Cloaked structures and Stealth zones) is a loss. This is a futuristic war game, intel should be important.

Therefore if we had low-lying fog which allowed us to sneak up on an opponent, that would add an extra tactical option in-line with PA's pre-existing focus on knowing where the enemy is and what to blow them up with.
There are multiple ways this could be implemented with existing game mechanics. Either Scouts could see through fog, or Radar could. Ground/Naval Scouts or Air Scouts? Reduced vision radius in fog would also be something worth considering.

At the extreme end, with higher and denser fog, the ground may become inaccessible. As I said above, this would restrict play to platforms above the clouds. The game would focus on Air, Orbital and Unit Cannons/Teleporters. This would be interesting, as we would be forced to play in different ways and adapt to the world we found ourselves on.

The biomes in PA have practically no impact on gameplay currently - not even to the extent that putting a cannon on a hill means your shell will fly further. This is illogical, and a loss of what could be a useful mechanic that rewarded tactical thinking.

Tactics are what is lacking in PA. The broad strategies for expansion are there, but currently the mechanics which enrich ground-level tactical play are not. A big part of this is where your troops are and how you expect them to behave. I'm not saying we should be relentlessly realistic, but any changes do need to be vaguely believable, and if we can find useful mechanics which add to tactical play and to immersion, we'll all be happy.

I know you don't care much for such aesthetics, but atmospherics would also fit the biomes and look amazing when lit up by explosions.

Well said, basically said everything I was going to before I got around to it.

The intelligence game mechanics of low hanging fog aside, there is the lava biome for non-pathable terrain.
From the game mechanics point of view this equivalent to non-pathable clouds, unless you really want clouds and plateaus for the aesthetics.

That said, I think there was a custom map that consisted of little small islands separated by deep (non-pathable) cracks. It turned out that air dominated all strategies on this map.
Well, this was before the unit cannon appeared in the unit roster, so new balance and unit cannon may change the outcome on those kind of maps a bit, but my guess is that air will still dominate most of the strategies on those maps, just because the air layer is far more cheaper to access than orbital or unit cannons.

Clouds will need to be added for aesthetics anyway, they might as well be fleshed out to give more control in the editor and create interesting tactical scenarios.

Air should dominate on a map like this, but land should also be viable if deployed via transport, teleporter or unit cannon. We don't expect land to dominate on a naval map. And if we're being fair, Air shouldn't dominate on planets without Air. But that's another can of worms for another thread.

Ok, cool. I actually do care about the aesthetics of the game, and I think cloud and other atmospheric effects (that don't get in the way of a player's ability to manage their units) would be a win-win for players. Where this goes in our respective priority lists of stuff we'd like to see - well, that's another discussion.

As to your point about the intel game - I entirely agree. PA obviously hangs a huge amount on scouting and intel, and I think that enriching that aspect of the game through a general upgrade of how radar gives players information, as well as fleshing out the ideas of radar stealth and radar jamming that the new T2 sub brought into play, would be a great way of adding both tactical and strategic nuance to the game. With stealth and radar jamming properly in play, I can see how fog that, say, reduces vision radius for non-scout units, would be a cool addition. Totally with you there.

As for the 'impassable clouds' idea, I think it would really depend on how interesting PA is with an air-only sort of game. With the Pelican at T1 this could now be fun; more fun if we get a multi-unit transport at some point. But you could just make an all-lava map whose only land was platforms sticking out above it and it would be effectively the same thing. You could do that right now, using a mixture of subtractive and additive brushes to create as much land/lava as you want. Have you tested such a map? Because if you have, you can tell me how well a map like that plays.

Overall, my main thought about this idea is that in order to make 'sense' next to the rest of the game, it needs PA to move in a particular direction; it would need an intel-game overhaul to make the stealth stuff work; it'd probably need a similar amount of tweaking of the system editor and terrain generator to make the atmosphere density stuff really chime. Will that happen? I don't know. It would be an interesting set of developments.

Lastly, I should point out that biomes really do have an effect on the game in PA. Not a massive/overt effect, but the random terrain generator does place CSG etc. differently according to the biome types. And in general, metal planets play differently to jungles to lava to temperate planets, with different relationships between open space, bodies of water, etc. favoured on different map types.