Forests: Speculation/Idea Thread

I'm sure the devs have had good discussions between themselves about forests and the role of trees on gameplay but I just want to lay this down to the PA community for people to put their ideas down on what may come from forests or what they might want to see.

Personally, I was thinking of a number of things that would be enjoyable and playable after having some ingame discussion about forests with beer4blood a couple weeks ago.

Forests could be burnable
I've heard that this will probably be introduced into the game later on as its currently low priority but it'll be cool to see arty, flame tanks, maybe uber cannon set fire to forests as either a way of traversing dense forests or as a means of damaging enemy invaders passing through jungle in your territory. It's a nice feature that'll add to the 'scorched' battleground amongst the craters...unit wrecks etc..

Should forests be traversable?
I'm not sure how everyone else feels about this as this would really impact on gameplay...However, I was thinking that either the only way for any unit to cross through a forest was to burn it down, reclaim it, whatever OR that tanks, strong and heavy units could plow through forests, knocking down trees at the cost of mobility for the rest of your army to follow, while bots will have to break formation to maze through to the other side or have to stay behind tanks and not be able to cross at all.

Hopefully we can get some discussion going on this topic even if its just speculation on which road Uber will take us on regarding forests but let me know if you think forests should be burnable but not damaging to units etc.

I want lots more interaction terrain and props.

As it stands things like the mountain and cracks look cool, but really could just as well be gray boxes we cant move through.

More importantly do trees give energy or metal?

From what I remember Uber already said they were working on the tree system where if one catches fire, the whole forrest starts to go up... no idea how far they got with that, biggest worry of course was the performance hit but stated they were definitely going to do something with trees.

If it's going to be like TA and SC then probably energy.

EDIT: I can't think of any reason why they would give you metal seeing as it doesn't exist in them naturally...

I think a small amount of damage from going through a fire would be fine. As for traversal, there is still enough space between the trees for units to get through, so I think it should just be slower for those that are less maneuverable. Trees being harvested for energy would be neat.

My big worry is that including features in the sim will slow it down too much. My other worry is that my computer can't handle a planet-wide forest fire on a tropical planet.

BTW FYI AoE attacks destroy trees ATM.

As this was available in TA, can't see why it wouldn't be here. Unlike some people, I'd prefer it if a fire didn't wipe out every tree in the same forest. That way, it's usefulness as an obstacle can be used more than once.

Maybe in the future, a tree-felling/road-making unit can be introduced. hehe.

I think there's a reasonable arguement for a couple of different "types" of trees too. So that units can be visually spotted through some foliage, but not through other types.

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/poll-environmental-effects-engaging-or-disruptive.56390/

Discussion!
You might be surprised. I certainly was. PA players want the environmental effects, yo.

Parts of this are aesthetic TA stuff which always gives me a nostalgia boner.
I'm sure we'll see burning forests.

It's always fun to set things on fire.

One other thing...

Has anyone considered other natural obstacles such as active volcanoes? (and not just on lava planets) Ones that could erupt at any moment and damage a certain area or maybe all? And how about earthquakes?

The uber cannon currently clears a small area of trees.

Yes.
https://forums.uberent.com/search/2...only]=1&c[node]=60 61 62 64 84 71 73 81 80 72

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/feature-request-random-events.55131/

Wow, I haven't noticed! That means features aren't just graphical anymore. This is actually a really big step!

I'm actually hoping that forests, if they cannot be travelled through by certain units, are not burnable, or burning them causes damage to the units inside the forest, but does not remove the forest entirely. So they still offer a barrier to mobility.


There could be other terrain features that both block mobility and are removable (i.e. grass).


Essentially it's an argument for interesting verticality. I think that's the term scathis uses?


If you just remove verticality (plow over mountain) what's the point in having the verticality in the first place? I think that games of PA will eventually be capable of going on for a few hours between a solid player and the AI. If all the forests on the planet are burned in the first 15 minutes, that doesn't really make them provide anything other than annoying verticality.

Trees in TA were two stage - normal & burnt (dead). After a fire, the trees would remain as burnt trunks, and still block movement and weapons fire (until they were destroyed/reclaimed).

**Until they were destroyed/reclaimed

Seeing as the game, at least on desert is getting better at not being entirely open fields. i feel like that there should be like forrest as in normal forest you drive through. Then you could have some huge forest, like dense redwood forest or whatever, that you cant just drive through and would have to blast at.

Reason i mention redwood forest, is because of the size of PA units, normal tree would just be a push over for them. The tree's in dense forests that blocks pathing has to be like big.

Not to mention i really like the new desert planet, i still think it should be an option to have vegetation and or tree's around the water areas, just not out in the middle of nowhere.

its not like desert is only sand, deserts have some plants. just not very many tree's