Let there be light (and dark)

So PA is going to be something like TA but on a multi-planetary scale. #Roughly

So what do people think about the position and spin of any given planet relative to any nearby stars affecting the local light level of the current gameplay area?

Is this something that's been discussed elsewhere?

I think it would look very cool. Especially if units were able to carry their own lights with which to see.

Kind of a new take on the fog of war.

Thoughts?

day/night should be implemented of course. Its a planetary game and there should be at least one star the planets circle around, and this star obviously will emit light. but it should not affect intel ranges, its too far in the future to be depending on natural light ^^
it could affect solar power plants though.

I sort of agree and sort of disagree.

If we take SupCom as an example. If we were zoomed in enough, we'd not see the output (blips) from Radar and therefore have to depend on what was visible.

Units could be instructed to "go dark" (turn off lights) and attack during a night cycle. This would work only if the opposition player were zoomed in on the area.

If combined with Anti-Radar tech this would make for some very interesting stealth tactics.

I should note that this will make life especially difficult for me as I am colour-blind (red-Green) and low light levels would potentially make it very hard for me to spot incoming units.

Seems fun though.

There was an option to always render those symbols. It's the most underrated option of the game.

Having nighttime influence the capabilities of robot-warmachines of the far future is pretty unrealistic imho.

I think this would be a neat feature if it was added as an option, or if there was no star nearby and the planet had no natural light. Otherwise, I think it would be a potentially bad idea.

If this was implemented, then you'd also have to say that radar stations only cover a smaller part of the planet due to the curvature of its surface. The smaller the radius, the worse the effect.

lasers and explosions might look extra cool in a darkened "night" timezone, but unsure about its effect on the visibility of the units. I dont want to be hunting for my own units in the dark.

That´s also my opinion. If you are capable of constructing human like vision and recognition of targets it would also be easy to add features like IR-Vision, Future night goggles or some other kind of Sci-Fi technology which gives you nearly perfect sight in darkness. These are robots! They are just limited to technology and not like humans and other animals to their biology...

Day/night cycles are usually cosmetic, and only rarely does it affect gameplay.
I think it'd be cool if you get reduced visibility at night, sort of like Dota 2, where every hero except for Luna, Meepo and Balanar/Night Stalker have 1000 less sight range at night.

However, orbits will be required for, say, your Oversized Moon Phallus Cannon to bombard the enemy base.

Personally I would like to see a day.night cycle in the game. It allows for subtle things like building/units turning their lights on and off automatically.

Nothing that really effects game play but a nice atmospheric touch that does help immersion. With that sort of code in the game there can easily be other nice lighting effects like weird glowing plants or strange alien power things on metal worlds.