POLL: Environmental Effects - Engaging or Disruptive?

It'd be cool if battlefields became a 'biome' in their own right after shelling/bombing/nuking/explosions/wrecks destroy an area.

Shame they won't allow craters to form from big weapons as that could add significantly to making battlefields into unnavigable wastelands.

So long as they aren't random events, my opinion is the more modifiers the better.

An electrostatic field on metal planets that hurts all units that stand on it while doubling the effectiveness of energy generators would be nice.
Ice caps so cold all units slow down, planets that have the water freeze over at nightfall and thaw at midday. The more extreme, the better in my eyes.
Timed, nonrandom, earthquakes and hurricanes would be awesome. So long as they build up rather predictably I wouldn't consider it an issue.

So long as they are non-random I am for them.

Even if artillery only deformed land a little bit with each shell, having a cumulative effect on the planet would be awesome - you would turn a beautiful jungle paradise into a blasted, cratered muddy wasteland.

Machines actually function more efficiently in the cold. But yeah, freezing water affecting naval, creating temporary ice bridges between areas would be awesome.

I can understand not wanting to deform on just any old blast, but bigger weapons having at least some cratering effect would be nice. I'm not sure how feasible but different terrains could have different levels of resistance so soft grassland would be deformed easily whereas metal planets would have to be nuked to get a dent.

That would be bloody awesome.

Epic is correlatative to good, but not causative. In the terms of weather and such affecting planets, its awesome! but its total **** for the competetive community. Luck based gameplay is bad for this kind of game, it may work for other types, but not RTS.

Not all do.

Frozen moving parts don't move as well. And if you manage to freeze the fuel, a lot of machines aren't going anywhere.

I like 1, 2, and 3...but not clouds and line of sight disruptions. Clouds should never get in the way, that would be really frustrating.

It would be interesting to see larger vehicles such as tanks take longer to travel through foliage and forests but run them down flat in the process. While Bots can maneuver through them without penalty, and the forest stays as is.
I know stealth has been discussed elsewhere in the past, but perhaps bots could be invisible to radar within the outer ranges of the towers detecting them when in a forest. In short, the radar has a mid-range that detects regardless, but its outer range is hindered by forest cover.

I made a suggestion in another thread that there be three different types of clouds:

• High Level Atmospheric Cloud to separate Orbital from the Ground, and make it look like this planet actually had an atmosphere.
• Mid-Level Transparent Cloud which you can see through, but is faintly wispy and around mountains/rainforests - disrupted when Air units fly through it. Would look cool without being obstructive.
• Very low-level Fog which even a Dox could stand above - would look really cool lit up by a Base's lights and the explosions of battle.

They did say it was a possibility heavily dependent on the ability of pathfinding If I remember correctly.

There is seriously no need to assume that everything that blocks your units' view has to block yours too. I am frankly tired of the "no clouds because then I can't see the surface anymore"-argument. Clouds that might obstruct the player's view can be automatically rendered highly transparently to remedy just that. All while conferring visibility modifiers to units. Not the player.
Regarding modifying the terrain: If they still use flow-fields for pathfinding they should be quite robust in dealing with that stuff. I think rendering increasingly complex CSG is more the issue here.

Asked that this be moved to General Discussion now that we've got a solid base for the discussion and votes down.

I voted tier 3 as up to there I think it makes selecting battlefields important but without the total luck basis of the top tier. The top tier i think, with the larger most destructive weather types, I think are possible to do if they are implemented in a particular manner. For example, hurricanes and extreme weather happens near the equator on tropical planets, volcano eruptions near clearly marked and defined volcanos on the planet etc.

In this way, they are not luck based or random, in that the player can see where they are likely to occur and plan accordingly. Having entirely random tornadoes or other highly destructive weather patterns without some kind of observable predictable pattern will lead to very unfair situations, that although are fun to read about and imagine, terrible to experience ingame as a player.

Teir 4 will generate frustration rather than awe or engagement.

All other tiers are fine as long as the visuals aren't too disruptive or too obtrusive. Environment can play a role, but it shouldn't dominate the game at any point; the game is about strategising, not being the MET office.

Also, if tier three isn't included in some way then I humbly submit to the Community that I believe that Uber has completely missed the point when it comes to making different planets and biomes to play on. Just being there for eyecandy is such a waste of potential.

Hopefully nothing should singlehandedly dominate gameplay at any point in the game. And meaningful environmental effects are likely providing more strategic options, not less. In my opinion any single tier has the potential to be a real addition to the game, given that it is implemented in such a way that it is intuitive, meaningful and predictable. I think even stuff like random yet local volcano eruptions can be set up that way.

I think they would be ok, if they were not random. If they were periodical and localized I think they could be fine.

On another note planets seem too flat right now. I am not talking about the "high range" in the system editor. I am talking about the features themselves. There are no drivable canyons, there are no "real" plateaus where you can build a building on, etc ... Just look at the volcano from ground view, it looks squished.

I would go full throttle for Tier 4. But I would be already very happy to have Tier 1.5 or something.

However, it would be nice if Weather and Disasters could be optional. Specially in Multiplayer.