Procedural Terrain Height

I have been deliberately bottling up my thoughts for when gameplay design becomes a real focus, since right now the design process seems focused on the tech and basic functionality. But there is one thing noticeably missing from the current crop of planets; terrain height.

There are differences in height, such as cutouts and plateaus, as well as for seas and lava oceans. But the playable land area is largely flat biome textures, with features like mountains or canyons placed on an otherwise flat surface.

Alright, technically the planets are round. But their land is a very smooth surface which is quite different from TA maps, which were often covered with all kinds of rolling hills and steep inclines. And those elevation differences have huge impacts on movement, vision, and firing. Units moving uphill slow down, giving defenders on the high ground an advantage. Hills could even be impassable for some units (i.e. wheeled vehicles). A rolling hill could be used to hide units, even though they could move over the hill (unlike a cliff/plateau). Ballistic weapons arc over hills where direct fire weapons do not. And so on and so forth.

Height variation's effect on vision and projectiles has serious tactical implications. Fighting in craggy mountain terrain could be completely different from fighting in a plains, even completely ignoring the actual mountain. Local height advantages and the ability to hide units behind hills would also add depth to regions of a planet without any defined CSG features. PA might even do more with terrain than TA did, such as causing higher elevation to increase a unit's effective vision or attack range using weapons affected by gravity. And having more height variation over the planet's surface will also mean the sea level and lava level sliders will create more varied worlds, since there would be more different land heights to apply them across.

Terrain is more than just plateaus and mountains and such. Height variation should be pretty much everywhere on the planet's surface, with hills, gullies, plains, and so on giving some height differences on the entire land surface. Significant height variation plays a huge tactical role, especially for physics-simulated games like TA and PA. And PA is in an especially amazing position to procedurally generate height variation on planets. You could even have different height variation characteristics for different biomes. Such as large flat grassy plains, rolling dunes in deserts, or craggy steep inclines on mountain biomes.

There are height variations, but because of the low projectile arc of most units, players usually generate planets with a height variation of zero. If units got a higher projectile arc, it would be more worthwhile to have them, but aside from that they're just an annoyance.

I disagree. If all units had a higher projectile arc, they would be less affected by terrain and it would be less significant. Although I agree larger planets that more closely approximate a flat (as in not round) surface would make terrain behave more normally like it does on Earth.

Still, you're basically saying things like hills are annoying because they reduce your weapons' effective range. That is essentially the entire point. They interfere with your vision and weapons; but they do the same to the enemy.

Some weapons, especially artillery, should lob in a high arc and ignore terrain. This is a feature of those weapons created by the fact that terrain is limiting for most units.

I have played on a island map with the height variations set to 100, it makes for some interesting terrain that I personally really like, as it generates almost volcanic mountain ranges.

Well, once unit balance comes in they might make for some interesting situations. But considering that nothing leads right now, artillery is really only that good for dealing with bases and lonely Commanders.

It would be pretty annoying to zoom into every confrontation to make sure you know what the ground elevation is.

Precision artillery should be a rare and expensive beast, or else just very short range, like a mortar unit or mortar carrier.

Artillery should not need to lead its shots to be useful, or even be able to reliably hit a single target standing still. Artillery bombardment is quite different from shooting to kill, mainly because you should want to shell large groups of units because you're pretty much guaranteed to hit something.

But artillery isn't really the subject of terrain variation since its main advantage is that it largely ignores terrain. Direct-fire weapons are what would really be made much less effective by having significant terrain height variation.

Cresting a hill, for example, greatly reduces your effective range as you close to range on the hill because the hill is blocking your shots. But standing on top of the hill, you can see your full distance in all directions.

in my understanding PA won't be like that. I hope this stays in the past with FA

if units were made smaller, proper terrain elevation could be implemented. at the moment, we essentially have flat maps with a few "objects" scattered about that can only be used as barriers.

you can up the chances of that happening by casting you vote here : https://forums.uberent.com/threads/scale-megathread.48650/

done

There is absolutely no functional difference between upscaling planets and downscaling units by the same factor. But I definitely agree that the units and structures are way, way, way too large compared to the planet, and either the units need to shrink or planets need to get huge.

Scale is created by a size contrast. If everything is big, you have very little scale. A large-scale war means small units compared to a large map, not huge units on a small map.

In the same vein, the scale of a terrain feature is created by comparison to small units. A large army of tiny units struggling across a giant desert, or standing next to a huge mountain creates a sense of scale.

If all units have high projectile arcs then what is the purpose of terrain? I don't think anyone wants terrain if units lack the smarts to not fire into it.

The planets can be easily made to be not flat spheres, this one in particular is very bloby.

The problem is presenting this to the player who has a top down view.

some variance in height there, but offers absolutely no difference to gameplay at all. it might as well be flat.

an old TA map, you can see plateaus in the corners, as well as moutains that can be climbed by some units, some hills and crater type features. none of which can be achieved on a PA map. (yet)

I beg to differ, such hilly areas present the simulation with the possibility with giving units like artillery or laser towers the possibility to fire over much greater ranges, and not to mention that units like tanks and bots will have a significantly harder time shooting up such terrain making them excellent defensive positions.

You can't simply ignore that kind of potential because they are, in your opinion, a slight variance.

The current set of props that the PA maps already do have are easily capable of this.

i assume the planet editor will be much more fully featured in beta and beyond that will allow us to do this kind of thing.

Indeed, the plateaus that you can see in the desert biomes are capable of having stuff built on them, so technically the function for having units move on props like the mountain pieces should be possible, but currently the moment map I don't believe will let them try.