I'm not sure if this has been already discussed, but I was just thinking about the ramifications of say, having a (bunch of) nuke(s) strike a relatively small planet. Let's assume the planet has some water on it. The dust kicked up could cause a brief (or long term, depending on what is more balanced) nuclear winter, where parts of the oceans, or all of them, were frozen by the sudden drop in temperature. The frozen water could then crossed by land units, but some time later the ice will melt back into water. Naval units could be slowed or unable to move in said conditions. The dust could also limit unit sight a little bit, but radar would still be functional. Plants and trees could also die off as a result of lack of sunlight. Any who. I though that it might be a cool feature that would add some unique gameplay, but it has potential to be annoying if your entire navy was unable to move because someone wanted to freeze them in place. :|
Would definitely be a pretty cool idea to have planet's temperate adjusted by nukes and asteroids and whatnot. Though considering the size of the planets compared to the size of nukes and asteroids, I think planets would be heated rather than cooled. It's counter-intuitive to imagine a nuke blast that scorches a significant area of a planet cools it instead of heats it.
Actually, the sun puts a lot more energy onto the surface of a planet than a nuke. The nuke's heat dissipates quickly, whereas the blocking of the sun by dust etc will eventually change the climate (albeit not quickly) It does beg the question of whether a true system for Fog of War would be interesting - namely, if you have a massive battle in a particular area, the surrounding terrain gets blasted and blackened, and huge clouds of dust and particulate get thrown in the air, reducing visibility and eventually even unit operations become difficult.
The "fog of war" is metaphorical, referring to the uncertainty and lack of information about enemy deployments, movements, and plans. Not literally fog or airborne dust. Complex environmental simulation and environmental modification is unlikely to be very interesting in practice. Even if it is wildly exaggerated to have more of an effect, converting a perfectly good ocean into a flat, featureless area of land does not seem like much of an improvement.
I beg to differ. Recall Seton's Gulch, and how land units, for the most part, only engaged in the center land bridge. If a similar landscape were to appear on a planet in PA, then a frozen ocean could allow you to flank your enemies. IMHO, I think that would be pretty interesting.
I can't be the only one who thought Seton's Clutch was a fundamentally boring map. It plays practically the same way every single game. It was popular because scrubs really like the idea of only defending from one direction, and bad players will always want very distorted games, far from challenging, varied, interesting, tense, tight gameplay. Bad players like predictable, and they like feeling safe, and both those things are very bad for gameplay's shelf life. They also like very easy economy a la Speed Metal or TA metal maps, which are also rather boring because both players can build an unlimited amount of anything for no reason. So what you're saying is that there is only one attack path on Seton's Clutch, and that freezing the ocean would allow for a second attack path? You know what else would allow for more tactical options- having more than one isthmus of land to begin with. A map like Two Continents from TA would be very ill-served by freezing the ocean, as now the entire map is land; just some of it is green tileset, some of it is white tileset.
That being said, a water freezing unit that could create short term ice flows for other units to cross would be awesome
Frozen water means you have land layers on top, and a submersible layer underneath. Who knows how that might work?
Planets are randomly generated, so more than likely a land bridge between two continents will appear in PA, in which case, I would appreciate an ice bridge. I've never actually played Starcraft, but I would compare this mechanic to the destructible rocks in that game.
I find the idea of nuclear winter quite interesting. It's not the idea of nuclear winter itself, but rather the ability of a planet to change it's "type". We have desert, ice, magma as well as other planet types. What nuclear winter implies, is that with enough nukes, a planet can become an "ice planet". This may also mean that if it is bombarded by enough asteroids, and planet can become a "magma" planet. Perhaps this can be implemented by assigning each planet a "Stability" value. As it gets bombarded by asteroids or various sizes, this value will decrease with relation to the size of the asteroid. Perhaps below a certain value (35% for example), if stability becomes too low, the planet turns into a magma planet. I terms of ice, it is important to note that asteroids can also plunge a planet into an ice age. Thus if a planet is not ice, bombarding it to say, below 65% stability will trigger an ice age, and below 35% will turn it into a boiling mess of magma.
I do like the idea of biomes changing as a planet suffers increasing levels of catastrophe. It would be amazing to see what kind of damage climate change can do. What happens when a grassland turns to desert, or a desert floods with new rains? Probably nothing that matters for these robots. It would look quite stunning to watch a planet basically go insane as it gets brutally abused by war.
I'd also love to see an asteroid impact that hits a magma pocket and causes a violent eruption. .. we're probably way outside the scope of the game at this point though
