Idea: Night vision shorter then day vision?

I watched the livestteam yesterday (3th may) with the combats at the night side of the planet and came up with an idea. What about the vision could be shorter at night ( night side of the planet) compared to the normal vision by day. This could ad some strategic fun to night attacks vs day attacks? Just an idea. Any sugestions on other stuff that could differ night attacks from day attacks?

Snierke

.... And one more thing. Is the planet spinning? So that the day side of the planet is moving? Or is the sun position static?

Dude, no. Don't post the same thing twice. There's no need for the question to be in Backers as well as here.

Having just played a little bit of Earth 2150, I'm liking this idea. In fact, like in that game having nighttime visibility be almost the same as the range on the headlights would be nice. Making lights more than just cosmetic.

I REALLY love this idea. It gives the concept of day & night more value.

Plus it could provide some distinctiveness among units as well. Some might come equipped with night vision which helps their range during night but hurts them during day.

Even at it's simplest levels, this is a great idea.

I think this is a pretty neat idea. It would be cool if you could pull off different raid tactics in the dark.

gameplay implications of this are pretty rough for defenders on the darkside.

i cant object it out of hand though as the idea of night time raids is neat. i would say it's probably not likely though given that it isnt included in the gamebible that is the pitch video.

Whoever gets nighttime first loses.

While day/night effects sound interesting, every player is going to encounter them at different times in their development. You can try things like changing vision, enabling certain units etc., but I have serious doubts that the results will be good.

I think there's an impression going around that only defenders feel the effects of night time here....

I'm not sure where such an idea would creep in.

Historically, the effects of reduced vision make patrols more difficult and sneaking past defenses more easy.

So yeah, it kind of sucks for the defender.

You could offset that by having defenses have more powerful lights and thus longer view range.

Oh joy. Implementing a mechanic just to undo it again.

Why use it if you don't even want the effects in the first place?

It could have been spinning, but it takes 24 hours for our planet to do a full rotation, it's not something you notice easily withing 10 minutes.

Mike

Just to note, radar likely does not rely on time of day. Still a nice idea: creating interesting forms of intelligence and counter intelligence will help make things fresh.

Seemed like it was static. Even at 24h rotation the movement of shadows is quite noticable over a period of 10 minutes. In fact you can begin to see the change within about 10 seconds if you pay good attention.

And I imagine rotation will be quite a bit faster in PA. So I guess as they said they don't have the orbital mechanics implemented yet and the planet is just static in space with a fixed lightsource.

Well if the planet in PA rotated in say 20-30 minutes, then having shorter night vision, would make for some very good strategy, if you amass and army, and nightfall is in 3 minutes, you would wait for the advantage that gives you.

Slim

Day and night are two things that make this game differ in cosmetic. It should have no effect on the game play though.

Our earth uses 24 hours on a rotation yes. But every planet has its own speed. Actually the rotation speed could be anything, and even the size of the planet is not crucial for the speed. but in game I would think something between 15 and 40 minutes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotation_period

Snierke

I agree there are some balance challenge for the first player that starts with night ( if we assume night is an disadvantage). Maybe it only should affect moving units. And that Point defence and other stationary defences are not affected. Then your bases are safer at night, and the redused vision only affects battles in the open terrain between moving units ( and also are more fair since both players can choose where to send their units.

My opinion is stil that this could add some interesting position strategies. What about taking that detour with your units so your opponent gets the sun in his face. And this gives your units a better hit rate. You could compare it to an advantage you get by having your units at a higher level (at a hill).

I think the more you have to take the cirkumstances into account the funnier the game is. This is a strategic game isn't it? Then we need stuff to feed our strategic possibilities, don't we?

Snierke

They're robots. They don't need anything as primitive as a ball of fire in the sky for illumination. Even the headlights are a purely graphical conceit to make things more visible for the viewer at night (No real military unit would turn its headlights on at night while in combat; that's basically suicide). Vision circles are already handwavium magic sensors that ignore the extreme curvature of the planet, altitude, distance from the sun, spectral class of the sun, camouflage, foliage, intervening units, smoke, dust, atmosphere, water et cetera, so they're blatantly not simple optical cameras. The Day/Night cycle is far too minor a thing to be anything but cosmetic, and we don't want to arbitrarily give PA's robots the weaknesses shared by puny fleshbags.