Day/Night System idea.

Im not sure if any RTS games had this, but science popped into my head today. Most planets rotate around a sun, so maybe during certain parts of the game, the planets would shade bases and units, so units would have to 'rely' on a lighting system of their own?

Cause I had the idea of the Commander with Shoulder mounted headlights that pop out when night time settled in =p

I think it's be really cool if this effected things like solar power generators. It'd give weak times to bases and thus would encourage more dynamic gameplay instead of turtling.

Here's an older thread with discussion on the same topic.

Warcraft 3 has this. I think it would be a great idea to have this. It adds tons of immersion.

The cutscenes in TA had it. Especially the Core Ending.

Headlights on all the units, as they blasted a stray Peewee =p

The Earth 2150 series of games had day/night and it worked out pretty cool. But every unit and structure had headlights and the day/night would actually affect gameplay.

If they are looking towards using solar power plants, I'd say nah let's not worry about day/night. Otherwise, I'm all for it.

I guess it would all come down to balance in terms of things like solar power generation, but I dont see that they would be insurmountable and I would love to see night/day cycles. I like the idea of buildings and select units like the commander and engineers having lights on them at night. I could see every individual unit having a night light being an issue however (from a system requirements perspective) if 100s of units were clashing at night.

At least I will assume that planets will have a dark side.

As to special effects, could be cool if dark environments get displayed to the player virtually, with tanks and cliffs being outlined with colored lines showing you the basic outline of objects.

Unit fire could also light up the terrain with fires and muzzle flashes showing the actual terrain and units.

Ya know, bringing back an old discussion contributes ideas from the past and somewhat prevents the unproductive repetition of the same discussion. I wasn't making any call outs, I was informing.

But I don't think that matters to you. You just posted that filthy (unoriginal, overused) meme out of raw butthurt of your thread being labeled useless.

I'm thinking buildable spotlights instead of being on hundreds of units, that way you could still light up an area but it's not going to massacare most peoples computers. It would also be cool to see if for solar power arrays, make them cheap and effective so that they work well in the day but at night you need a more expensive power unit if you want your defenses to work. Last it would just be plain cool to watch my units light up the night with a full scale battle and asteroid impacts should look intereresting.

I cant think of a single military land or air vehicle in the last 50 years that didn't have lights.

But anyway, lets run with this. Since this is super-practical-ultra-realism universe all the lights will probably use up power comparable to that of your shield generator and building units etc. so lets say every light you have consumes power while it is on. Then to counter this we will make it so that every light needs to be turned on manually to prevent sucking your power dry instantly. This will result in a level of strategic depth that players will find compelling.

These spotlights might also be considered overpowered so i suggest that we create a new resources just for them: lightbulbs! (or magnesium if you want something cooler). You will need to build lightbulb shops, or their T2 variant lightbulb factory or their T3 variant BulbWorks. Naturally, you cannot build spotlights on planets where you don't have any bulb factories as there is no way for the lightbulbs to get there. You will need to set up a micro economy of bulb factories on each planet or build special transports, called bulbmobiles, to ferry them to the planet they are needed.

But wait there's more! Because units have no lights and spotlights dont turn on automatically and unit in the dark is automatically considered stealthy, it just makes sense! You can then set up templates to periodically turn on sets of spotlights to check for enemies or you can get an assist AI to do that for you. Think of the gameplay possibilities! Think of the strategic depth!

No... Just..... no.

I think by the time they are able to mass produce advanced robots... Lightbulbs are extinct and have something else thats even better.

Like night vision.

It would be strange if big giant robots that destroyed countless civilisation over thousands of galaxys but can't see in the dark

I think its time to replace the batteries on your sarcasm detector.

No, I have a better idea! Implement command points, so you can call a flare bombing to lighten a particular zone! But the subtlety is that each flare counts as a unit against the population cap! And the only way to make it disappear is to destroy the flare, even once its light ran out! Think of the possibility, if you shoot at enemy flares, you raise their population cap back! So you have to be careful with your artillery strikes! So you have to choose, shoot flares early or wait for them to burn! TACTICAL DEPTH !!!

Or they could have night vision, but where's the fun with that?

PS : what zordon said

You guys have taken my idea, and butchered it. Thanks alot. :evil:

Oh yeah, that. It would be a cool effect and reasonably easy to implement (lighting anyway, not sure about the half dark planet). It would also help to reinforce that the planet is rotating, if it in-fact rotates.

Yeah, because dynamic lighting is easy to do on a massive scale without it looking bad or melting your PC.