Hi, long time TA/SupCom veteran checking in. I'm psyched for the project, so of course I have to give my two cents about where I hope Planetary Annihilation goes right where FA went wrong with regards to information that your units saw and information that the player had available. One of the most annoying things about SupCom/FA was the way a game of such large scale failed to convey information to the player. If I sent an air scout over an enemy formation, I would have to be zoomed and tracking that particular scout to see the type and number of units composing that formation (which admittedly works fine in a small scale RTS games). But in a game where one is fighting over entire planets, zooming in on a single scouting instance takes away from managing planetwide warfare. What's needed is a quick way for scouts to relay relevant information to the player without the player actively zooming in on the actual dots (or rotating their planet around). At its most basic level, it could be a message on the side of the screen, "Scout Reports 40 Titans at coordinates X, Y, bearing south" with a timestamp or a counter, so you'll know how old information is. As information becomes older, newer more relevant information can supersede it. This would be a marginal change from existing RTS norms - just familiar way of presenting new info. A more advanced level would let certain types of information activate context sensitive orders. Say a scout plane spots an enemy formation along some of your units' patrol route. Instead of your patrols mindlessly wandering around and waiting to spot the enemy themselves, your patrols could take that information and automatically converge on the formation. Again, the burden of micromanagement is removed from the player. The player makes the decision that certain areas are worth scouting and defending with patrols, but the zooming and clicking is relieved. Of course this example could lead to tactical exploitation by savvy players, so there would have to be a way to interact directly with information on the screen. Displayed along with "Enemy formation at X, Y - Patrol A moving to engage" would have to be a quick way of cancelling Patrol A's engagement. So the player would need the ability to interact directly with the information provided by the units rather than with the units themselves. This information isn't just limited to scouting, if you're managing multiple battles across several continents, keeping track of enemy numbers along with your own is going to be difficult. But if a quick info bar presenting a count of your forces and the enemy's would be crucial. Sins of a Solar Empire handled this brilliantly. Can you tell what's going on at the zoomed in level? Not a chance! But that person is managing fleets on six separate planets without having to zoom in on any particular one of them. What would be important for PA, is if your information bar could be used to keep track of where your units are moving, what they are seeing, and what they are killing. Intelligent information could even automatically let your projects summon more engineers for rebuilding or repair. Reinforcements waiting in reserve could automatically know what battlezones they should be moving towards. By giving the player the power to interact with better information, it becomes easier to fight on an epic scale. SupCom introduced strategic zoom, but the aside from the "base under attack" warning, it failed to give the player any way to see and interact with the game world other than looking at the map and clicking on it. And that is why most match-making/ranked games of SupCom occurred on maps where the scale of the game wasn't that much different than a generic RTS.
I guess you have some points there (in that wall of text ) I don't know if the messaging system you propose would work very well, but yeah it would be quite useful to be able to scout, while not following your scout with your zoomed in camera. I think PA is going to use some kind of icon system like supcom when zoomed out? well rather than a message, the icons could stay there after being scouted, with a blue outline or something so you know they could have moved by the time you scout them again. when you scout the area again and the units are gone, the icons would disappear as well. the "balance of power" bar could be interesting, though I am unsure if it is really needed.
Sorry to mention ZK again but it's what I know! In that game, if you scout a base and see static buildings, when your scout leaves the scene those buildings will remain on the map as ghost images within the fog of war. Message alerts such as that proposed in the OP are sent for very high threat buildings such as nuke silos and that generally works fine (too many messages would be a problem though). This doesn't work for mobile units. Maybe it could be configured so that a text/audible alert is given if your scout sees a high threat group such as a large army or very large unit, maybe with some kind of 'radar ping' on the minimap.
As does Supcom. Frankly don't want to see scouting automated any more than what's seen in SupCom, between Strat Zoom and Strat Icons its really easy to do scouting. Mike
Scouting in SupCom was about as automated as clicking on a unit and telling it to go to a point, and hoping that you were zoomed in enough while it passed overhead to count the triangles, hexagons, and diamonds that could have been any variety of units. And yes, greyed out buildings is the norm. An ideal world of scouting would involve selecting 10 scouts in my base. On the map I drawing an area that I want them to scout out. They automatically spread out to scout that area in a logical fashion. Scouting reports appear as icons/infographics in an alert bar letting you quickly evaluate what enemy units were present and what area they're in. The game has a method of sorting out which intelligence alerts are critical based on threat, distance, and timestamps. SupCom's spastic zooming in/out and trying to count dots on large maps is really only a marginal step above the RTS games of the 90's. If you look at where large scale RTS games are going (see again: Sins of a Solar Empire) the ability to manage information and automate units based on that information is a fantastic way to remove the burden of micromanaging particulars.
scouting in supcom is super easy thanks to the zoom and the symbols. You can basically scout while you order some other units around, you just need to be zoomed out enough. Also: Who would ever count every single symbol? Just guess for "more than I have" or "less than I have" and maybe equals, too. There is no point in automatic everything, or the game will get a bit boring, wouldnt it?
Personally, I would like to be able count for some time(after your scout turns around/gets shot down) like, if the icon's could remain on the map for 5 secs or so, I would be a happy man.
Just take a look at "Persistent Scouting" and " Defence Range Visualiser" feature from googlefrog thread wonderfull viewtopic.php?f=61&t=34222
we are aware of that , the problem is, that that only counts for structures, I was talking about units.
I like this idea of the scout automatically reporting new information. I think it would best fit in a stream of "gameplay updates" that is similar to chat, but in a separate stream. There are some different choices to be made for telling the user where the units were spotted. Do you print latitude and longitude since combat will take place on planets? Do you just draw a blip on the map and print a list of unit names and quantities next to it? Also, what units would you report? Would you list the most threatening units, a vague summary of what was spotted? You have to develop an algorithm that will summarize a list of units. You'd also have to decide when to aggregate the information and transfer it to a message. There could be several bugs where too many messages get sent for the same clump of units, or too few units. This is essentially a clustering problem which is pretty hard. It could also just be solved easily by creating a new viewport and having it track the scout plane, which can be duplicated multiple times. Being able to dynamically create new viewports with their own independent zoom, like a bank of security cameras, was confirmed in the PC Gamer interview. Personally I think this particular part is too much automation. I'm all for the computer automatically telling you more information automatically, but issuing orders to units should be up to the player. This idea could break down when your units are kited or sent in to combat against a stronger force that the computer can't really understand is stronger due to terrain and other circumstances. Another great example of this is the Homeworld-style unit selection summary which groups your units by type and shows their aggregate hitpoints. Displaying the enemy's strength is difficult as it can be easily misleading when there are more enemy units hiding nearby in the fog of war.
Persistent unit scouting is difficult because units can move around a lot. A naive reporter could make ghosts of the same ground of units several times if it rescouts them. Ghosts might work if the slowly fade out over a few minutes.
If the unit icons faded out over time though, it would give an approximate amount of units and time since aqquisition.
Why overcomplicate this? Whatever strategic-view, minimap or other information screen that is used to display icons of units spread over the map, it can show a "radar ping" with an audible tone based on the threat level. I've always preferred visual and audio feedback over text. And this would be similar to the kind of "ping" that would show up when two forces are fighting. IE, a red ringed "ping" for combat, "orange" for approaching forces, "yellow" for "something seen here". And definitely not detailed force information; thats taking away strategic planning away from the player and putting it into automation. As for ghosting buildings on the map, I'm of mixed opinion. It makes sense that once you've seen them, the computers could be updated with their locations and type of buildings. But on the other hand, it makes flooding with scouts far too easy to pull off, providing far too permanent information. You may as well eliminate all fog of war if you do that.
I think he's right, here. Having an audible, animated beacon appear on a map when units are spotted, with perhaps different noises (or voices) for different threat levels or unit quantities, would be the easiest way to make such a feature work. In terms of implementation, the general area where units were spotted could have have a decay time so you wouldn't be alerted again when the scout saw units in the same area. If your scout did go back to the area after the initial decay-time, the next decay time would be set higher so you wouldn't get periodic alerts when a scout flew over the enemy's base. It could also avoid alerting you when the scout can be seen by one of your viewports. These audible beacons would be sent to allies as well.
Gieger-Muller counter style ticking sound when a new enemy is spotted. It's simple, and it's not obnoxious (voices are often annoying after a while).
