[suggestion] 3 Level Fog of War?

Just playing around with the alpha, and something totally hit me:

I can't really tell WHERE my scout's BEEN. The one thing I guess I really got used to from SC2 is that there's 3 levels of FoW: Unexplored, explored, and unit sight. I always found it useful when scouting an 8 player map, you could tell where you had been, and these maps are huge in comparison.


^(just an example)

This is how it was in pretty much every early RTS since Empire Earth.
Seconded.

I playing with PA lighting for few days and for now I think that PA need some fresh ideas for FoW not like games was done before. This really innovative game and it's a good reason to try find something new. Old-fashion FoW probably was good for flat maps, but I think it's already was bad in SupCom. Game actually lose lot of entertainment because of FoW actually isn't worked well.

E.g everybody already have 3 tier radars and see most of map as icons, but when some awesome battle happen you only see 50 real units and 300 icons. I love strategy, but that's stupied when you need to watch replay to see how cool some battle was. When I play Total War I always feel how big battle are, but in SupCom I usually forced to play with icons.

And when we talk about globe-based map old-fashion FoW working even badly: it's kills cool lighting effects, it's kills some artillery effects, it's kill's scale of battle (in supcom we got icons, there at moment we don't even see full map). And this FoW will be completely broken if this game will have asteroids or orbital units for example.

My personal view: enabling that FoW by default on start of alpha is big mistake. There is no way to improve it, it's completely broken for PA and need to be done from scratch. Like traditional mini map.

what I really would like for something like scouting information, is the age of that information.
Knowing where a scout went in only part oft it, but seeing how current it is might be even more important.
You could have a color gradient showing the age of the information.
This could be done as part of the fog of war (might be too much there) or as an additional information overlay which can be enabled and disabled.

Not having any information about an area is just as useful as having old information about an area. That is; they're both bad.

So as asgo pointed out; the age of the information you have is important. If the information isn't current (as in, you don't have units there right now), then it gets less and less reliable as time goes on.

If you can't show the age of your intel, then don't show a difference between no-intel and old-intel. They are the same

This sums up my opinion well. I don't think the traditional FOW mechanics are ideal for PA and we have a lot of aesthetic potential with lights at night.

This is a good point, it would be nice if there was a simple graphical way to display the recency of scouting. For example, in a traditional FOW this could be conveyed by more recently explored areas being brighter, less recently explored areas being darker and LOS being the brightest.

OP: Once we have persistent scouting your concerns will likely be abated. You can also use the chronocam to see where, when and how your scout died. Which reminds me, we should consider discussing persistent unit scouting in the same way structures are scouted - I think it'd be helpful in identifying an enemy ACU's last whereabouts.

I do think though we need a conversation about how FOW should work though.

Well that's a problem with the T3 Radar, not the FOW mechanic.

I think that sort of stuff can be better solved with toggleable overlays. I hate how overly dark the map is in SC2 until you've explored most of it. I'd much rather press a button to see my units' traffic density and extract how much i've scouted through that.

But we talking about game with some asteroids and multiple planets, and probably even some orbital devices.

How do you explain FoW if you got two asteroids under control, which give you clear view of both sides of planet? How old-fashion FoW should work if you have few spy high-altitude aircraft's which have really wide view because planets are round? With round planets there is no way to hide your super-secret army in corner of map.

And I'm talking about that not because I love realism, but because outdated FoW conception is limiting gameplay. And I totally sure there will be lot of people who won't agree with me, like other people who created tons of "we need mini map" topics before.

It works exactly like you expect it would. I don't see how playing on a sphere changes things. I don't see how having multiple planets/moons/etc changes things.

It's fair of you to ask what exactly is wrong with the current FOW. I would say there's two flaws:

• 
  1) The current FOW doesn't do a great job at conveying information we already have. Chronocam puts much more information at our disposal and it isn't accessible in a quick manner. For example the recency of scouting, what we saw when scouting, and exactly where projectiles came from are all available to players via chronocam but obfuscated by needing to scrub for that information. These things could be much more accessible with tweaks to FOW e.g. grayscale for explored terrain indicating scout recency, persistent structure and unit ghosts after scouting, and unit reveal ghosts when firing outside of LOS.
  
  2) The LOS=Light mechanic doesn't translate well on the planetary scale. It has a poor aesthetic and undermines day-night contrast while also eliminating the potential of robot city lights on darksides. Adding a recency-grayscale to explored terrain will only exacerbate that issue.

So traditional FOW may not be ideal and possible alternatives should be looked at.

What? No!

Old intel with no knowledge at all of how old it is is effectively useless. But in most scenarios, you have some idea of how old it is even if such information is not displayed ("when was the last time I sent a scout plane over there... oh, only a few minutes ago"). Because of that, it can still be quite useful. Having visual indications of where an enemy's base was last time you scouted is an useful visual aid, it's much more tangible than simply having to remember both the location and the age of the information, and the display can be useful too when deciding where to build forward artillery locations or plan attacks...

Back to the main topic, I do agree fog of war needs to be dealt with properly. It was badly coded in SupCom (with large units appearing out of nowhere as their centre of mass suddenly enters the range). I'm not convinced of the value of having multiple levels of fog of war though, although tying back into what BulletMagnet said it could maybe be useful if previous explored regions became progressively darker as time went on without anything in the area scouting it. This would give a decent first indication of when something was "last visited". Maybe it's worth experimenting with that to see if it works in practice.

I'd love to READ about some FoW alternatives, but I just don't see anything else working as well. Chrono cam is really useful in finding out what happend to your scout, but if you can't see some sort of travel path that just ends, you might as well just keep your eyes on your scouts manually.

The pathway "fade back to black" idea is really good. It would give you some idea of how far to go back on the cam.

As for the "you can see the planet from an asteroid" theory, do you think you would be able to see a moon base, occupants and all, in real life without some serious telescopes?

Idk man I think what you are saying is that supcom FOW is not ideal. In supcom, everything that was explored, but not seen would appear as a dark area just with icons on it.

What I think is best is actual traditional FOW like in , say Rise of Nations, but with changes to make it appealing in PA.

Aka:
Regular day/night influenced look and nothing on it for unexplored territory
Regular day/night influenced look and something on it for formerly scouted territory
Regular day/night influenced look and the real things on it for formerly scouted territory

AND HERE'S THE TWIST:

Since everything is robots and we are in the future and all: How about we make structures and units that were formerly scouted/radared but aren't anymore appear as greenish holographs? The radar has scanned them before and sent the information to the commander, therefore the units could be virtually reproduced once the radar went down.
It's realistic!

And it does not look bad. If you just had somewhat darker versions of the actual buildings like in supcom and your fighters fly over it, they would suddenly disappear if they had been moved or destroyed in the meantime. That would look like poop. Not so with holographs.

What do you think?

I noticed this from the first time i played. haha

I assumed it was going to changed or be built upon. I watched a preview video and the guy didn't even realise that his scouts weren't revealing stuff. He also didn't realise that icons wouldn't be left revealed after his scout plane went over them. I believe it's still like that.

At the moment scouting is constantly useful and needed even after t2 radar. I think the game certainly encourages scouting and setting up multiple bases really doesn't take someone that long. I really like where it's heading at the moment!

I think playing on a planet takes some getting used too though. It's funny as well that when you change your view of your base you start to see easier ways to attack it. :mrgreen:

For a start, you need to define whether the moon has line of sight to the planet surface. Then you need to define whether intel units on the moon can distinguish light sources from the planet below.

The approximation of realism given by FoW is fine, but you do need to determine how much of an approximation you want; we can see actual cities from space by the light output, "realistically" moon units would be able to see your base lights from space too and work out where the built-up areas are on an entire hemisphere of the planet. Sight and radar are limited on a planet surface by the curvature of that same surface. The same cannot be said of planet <-> moon sight and radar; there is literally nothing but some atmosphere and a few hydrogen ions/atoms between the two.

This would of course turn a moon or orbiting asteroid base into an amazing intel gatherer (and conversely give your planet base amazing intel on a moon base), so you then need to determine whether it needs any arbitrary limits imposed (hence approximation of realism), and those limits would need to take all intel methods into account (costs, ranges etc.) in order to ensure things can be considered balanced between your ground intel, any orbiting intel, and any moon intel.

Which could be quite a significant change from default FoW implementations.

Whether the "best" solution would be to completely ignore those differences and just implement FoW on a per-celestial-body level (moons and planets are completely unaware of each other), or to implement pure LoS raytracing (no arbitrary sight limits for any unit), or some middle ground, remains to be seen.

I say keep the classic FOW that we have had in TA and SupCom 1 and 2. Meaning you have several settings on how FOW worked, but if you look back at those games, what was the most common FOW settings that people used???

As far as seeing battles that you don't have LOS on:

- In one of the life streams, developers have already stated that satellites are a very real possibility, but if I recall correctly they had yet to make up their minds abut them.

- orbiting planets should not automatically reveal an area. This should be a special unit like a telescope.

- Icons are still fine when zoomed really way out, but I like the idea of being able to zoom in and seeing a holographic representation of units that have been identified. +1 to the poster that suggested this.

it isn't ideal, what makes that system even worse on PA is how weird it looks on planets.

That's what I'm saying.

I'd say intel satellites are almost a definite. Neutrino has commented that they are still mulling over how to implement the orbital "layer" (and orbital mechanics in particular), however I'm pretty sure he's very keen to have artificial satellites, particularly intel satellites, in the game.

Whether they just get implemented as a very high LoS unit, or as something else, remains to be seen.

Also, from a visible area / LoS perspective, an orbital intel satellite and an orbiting moon differ only in size and distance from the planet (the orbiting moon is an "orbital satellite" by definition). Physically, there are no more restrictions on what you can pick up from a satellite vs what you can pick up from a moon installation facing towards a planet; they both use distance from the surface to gain a wider range / overcome the issues surface curvature engenders (radar goes through atmosphere fine, but cannot go through rock very well).

The only differences would be ones created for gameplay reasons. If Uber intend to implement basic (familiar) circular LoS for all units and maintain intel seperation between celestial bodies then that is their decision, and I'll happily play the game anyway. However as a few people have mentioned, it is also possible to use the alpha to experiment with a few different options to see how they play out (raytraced LoS, vision betwen celestial bodies); if Uber wish to spend their time and development resource trying a few of these out to see how they work, I will be a happy bunny indeed :mrgreen: