I don't know how easy this would be to implement (or even whether it's something that interesting), but is it possible for there to be terrain damage where heavy weapons fire and explosions can cause permanent terrain damage (on a smaller scale, since it sounds like there will most likely already be whole planets blowing up). Would kind of be similar to Worms games in this regard (although probably to a smaller extent).
There is only one studio that actually managed to implement this in highest quality. KD-LAB, Russian Game Development Studio. They are creators of such games as Vangers and Perimeter: Geometry of War.
This has already been confirmed. It was also in SupCom and FA. It wasn't very visible there but there was a mod which added it for most explosive weapons.
I recall it being mentioned that terrain deformation was going to be a thing, how and to what extent it will be implimented I'm not sure.
I doubt it will be present for all explosive weapons / artillery as it tends to make the terrain inaccessible which can break path finding. At least not on more then a visual level. Nukes and alike game enders however might actually change the terrain, "shifting" mass from the crater to the border, leaving a nice, plain surface at the center of the explosion. Maybe even consider it an appropriate form of terraforming? :twisted:
I suppose it depends on how much deformation results from various weapon types. Both Company of Heroes and Dawn of War had deformable terrain on a small scale and units gained cover from being in the craters, so I don't think terrain deformation breaking path-finding would be a particularly onerous or insurmountable task. In saying this I don't know if such a cover mechanic would add much to PA. Both of the examples I gave were more focused on managing small groups of squads, compared with PA which is focused on massive war on multiple fronts. Managing units into cratered terrain to gain cover might bring too much micro. On the other hand I would love to see forests on jungle worlds burn and destroyed by the clashing of armies and other examples of the destruction war brings. At the end of a battle I would like to see crater poked, burnt and smoking areas of planets sitting as testament to the battles that took place on them.
Realistically, shells and bombs don't actually do much damage to the terrain, and when you put it in a videogame, it ends up looking retarded because of low-resolution heightmaps, or putting a 3d model of a crater on top of a surface and it looks crap because it clips through existing terrain, or add a flat crater decal and it looks crap because it overlaps with the other 40 decals already there, and then you reach a decal limit and some of them start disappearing. I'm sure there's a way of doing it right though. Cosmetic destruction of a landscape would be a satisfying way of showing an area is hotly contested. The destruction of forests and cities is easy, but for the ground itself, maybe having a "damaged" layer underneath the "pristine" layer of the undamaged terrain, which gets peeled away with unit tracks, explosions etc.
You raise a good point, having decals or 3d models overlapping etc would look like crap (and does in more than one existing case). Your idea is an interesting solution, but I think it risks being as jarring as the alternative. The damaged layer would have to be able to shift depending on what caused it to become exposed, it couldn't just be a static damage layer because craters would have to appear where the impact occurred. That and I could see the same issue occurring where explosions overlap. Unless I have the wrong idea of what you mean by a damage layer? the way I'm interpreting your idea is like having two versions of the terrain with the damage version being revealed in chunks where sufficiently damaging impacts/explosions would be expected to cause terrain deformation, correct me if I'm wrong!
You're right. The classic approach would have been to temporarily draw tracks and craters onto the terrain to simulate damage. Comham suggested to use an alternate texture instead which is revealed at spots where the ground has been damaged. Positive: The damage can be far more detailed and persistent then with the classic approach, you have everything at hand you could have used for regular terrain. Where the damaged terrain is shown and where not, would be determined by a low resolution mask, that mask is the only thing which actually changes. Negative: You can't show nice craters or alike with this technique. While it adds more "atmosphere" to the game, it's also quite inflexible and probably the whole area will end up in eroded state, finally reducing it to just some type of wear instead of real damage to the terrain.
I don't need terrain deformation(it's nice, but not necessary). I'd be happy with the superficial terrain damage we got in TA, meaning burning down trees/forests, destructible rocks, harvestable(energy/metal) terrain, that kind of thing.
Zero K has destructible terrain. Also terraforming. So a nuke might make a crater right down to the water table, and you can also terraform ramps, spires, walls etc. using constructors. Terraformed walls can be chipped away by big guns like berthas. Generally I approve, although terraforming can be abused to trap big units in pits and block factory entrances (it's hard to do but OP when it happens).
