In Total Annihilation, land units had a certain depth tolerace they could traverse in water with phohibited movement. This allowed shallow enough streams and pools to be trivially crossed, and made water a more interactive hazard in ground combat. It also made for memorable images of kbots wading through, and tank turrets popping above the water line. It was one of those things which gave to the game's texture. In Supreme Commander, not so much attention seemed to be put in the implementation of water, which was relegated to impassable terrain for all land units unless they had an 'amphibious' flag. Even though early concept images like this teased us. Although, I remember trawling the map making forum once and found a thread asking about the possibility of shallow, passable water on a map. Where it was calculated that land units did in fact have a depth tolerance. But it was so neligible that it might as well not have been there. I'm curious to know what the stance is on shallow, traversable water.
I like the idea BUT it needs to be really easy to see how deep water is. If you start on a new random world and you see water below the fog of war you instantly need to know if your tanks will be able to pass through it or not.
Just keep it simple right? Either you can see the ground at the bottom (and can therefore traverse it with ground units), or you can't.
It's pretty clear where on this image land units can walk and where they cannot. I'd say this is a pretty good solution for readability.
I was imaging the possibility of arbitrary water-depth on the map and the tanks have some value of how deep they can go. If you limit the whole thing to 2 or 3 levels it would be easy, yes. But then it would not have that much of an impact. You would have landonly, a-bit-ampibious and ampibious tanks. So you would only add another level to the system of FA. Having a max-depth value for each unit would make it possible to assign different capabilities to the units without fixed levels. That migt be too complex, though.
Yeah, probably a bit too complex. Not only is it one more unit stat, but it's also a map "stat". You'd have to know that kbot x can enter water 3.3 unit deep, then make sure that the water you're going to enter is no more than 3.3 units deep. The first part isn't so bad, but the second would be nearly impossible without some overlay.
no every units would be able to pass "shallow water", so you would have land and amphibious, while amphibious units can go anywhere in or on water, while land units can cross water only on shallow riverbeds. Those would be visually recognizable and would work pretty much like bridges^^. Or maybe all units simply should be amphibious.
I love this idea! Would be very cool to have tanks move slower in water adding a good additional strategic aspect to the game.
Sup Com supports shallow water movement (actually, arbitrary max depth), but not on a per-unit basis, only a per-pathfinding group basis (making it only possible with gamedata mods, not in-game mods).
Given the importance to planetary types, I can't imagine the devs would neglect this. I mean the planets are whole, so there is a bottom floor and all. It would seem weird to just prevent units from going into the water unless they are amphibious. I don't think there needs to be more than two water depth with gameplay consequences though (shallow/deep). Just like in TA. The amphibious unit would be able to go in deep water, while all others would be able to move on shallow depths like lakes, rivers and beaches (the units are pretty tall after all, and yes I know some lakes and rivers are very deep, but no need to nitpick too much on this ) . It's easy, logical, and I'm sure not hard to implement.
Cola_Colin, I'm curious to know how you feel about the function proposed here. Although, Total Annihilation's map visuals lended itself to better clarity over terrain grades than Supreme Commander's.
Such functions definitely could be helpful, although I didnt have any problems with this on most SupCom-Ranked-Maps. Probably because I knew them all by heart. Showing an overlay that displays where I can place a building I want to place would be nice, I don't see the need for a specific key for it. Just show the overlay when the player selects to build something. In regards to units that have all different maximum-water-depth-levels it might also be a solution, even though I can imagine that it might be annoying to switch the view constantly. Those special views look ugly after all, there is just no way to deny it.
Absolutely true. In SupCom, you have to move the camera and turn around your spot before to build your Point of Defense to see if it won't fire on floor. Not this problem in TA. I don't know what "Bigtime" means, I hope PA will be like TA
