Forgive me if I've missed something previously discussed. I was re watching the combat video demo just now and it occurred to me that I haven't seen much in the way of how tactical information is gathered or suppressed. In TA, for example, you could always send scouts, or turn the map on permanent vision (or just build effective radar coverage). This seems too 1 dimensional for this game though. Why not have a building that auto deploys spy satellites. The orbital stretch goal would fit this this, and also justify having some sort of orbital counter to these satellites from granting vision to your base. I.E. a player enforced fog of war. It could be as simple as a t1 building on the commander build menu. Stationary building that just pops out satellites every so often to circle the planet. I wouldn't imagine the counter would have a huge range, but enough to add a degree of tactical utility to the game. I would imagine the satellites would be largely automated in how they function, but someone with more experience with this sort of thing could probably say better.
What do you mean with player enforced Fog of War? FoW is typically the fog where stuff is greyed/darker than the rest and you can't see enemies in as in TA, Starcraft. Fog of War is where your units can't see currently. On that note. PA might not even have "Fog of War" but rather have a raycasting system where units in direct of Line of Sight can see each other. The distance at which units spot other units could be determined by signature and sensor systems. If the unit has a lot of signature it could be spotted at higher distances for example and you could apply different multipliers if the unit is behind a tree, leafs, moving or shooting for example. Select factory, toggle repeat on, make scouts and queue up waypoints? Edit: 'Leafs' not 'leaves'
This is exactly what i am referring to. A method of direct line of sight by using orbital units. Yes, the traditional scout option works. It is, however, vanilla and subject to traditional defensive units. Utilizing space for this opens up another aspect, and one we haven't seem to have heard very much about (considering its place in the stretch goals).
I like the idea of a spotting probe. It might even be a one-use missile with limited duration of flight. Launching a spotting satellite into orbit might be an alternative but it sounds expensive. Whether or not your idea is good for gameplay can't be decided in a void since the ease of access of intelligence and counterintelligence is important for gameplay.
I fully agree with that. I have no idea how it would play out since I don't really think there is a game currently on the market that can contend with the (potential) scope of PA. That said, I could see it being an interesting way to force a player to contend with another dimension, there by relieving other areas of attention. And if the game does rely on line of sight, it might be a unique solution to long range guns. Who knows. Just a thought to incorporate a stretch goal in a relatively meaningful way (to the ground game).
