Terrain stealth, cover and visibility

Something that both TA and SupCom lacked is any real effect of solid ground terrains on units, besides blocking them with mountains. (We already all know that the water mechanics were pretty cool.)

Terrain that grants various degrees of stealth or protection to units that match certain size (or other) criterias would lend the game a nice layer of tactical depth. See for instance how cover works in Dawn of War/Company of Heroes, and scale it to TA proportions .

Something that the Spring RTS engine experiments with is terrain that affects unit speed: it does tend to cause problems for pathfinding and group movement, but if you can pull it off roads and quicksand that actually affect units can really give life to a map - providing the terrain regions in question are large enough that you're still managing groups of units, not wondering why two of them are lagging behind.

I'd like to see this. Materials on alien worlds that screw with radar or nightvision, or just canyons and a rugged landscape that makes ground-based radar less effective or outright useless.

I'm not sold on this idea, but I'll add my contribution to it nonetheless.

I imagine there could be specific planet types. A dusty planet could reduce surface optical ranges, whereas a stormy planet could reduce radar range and optical abilities from off-planet. A temperate planet would have no changes. I seem to have stuck on just these, though I'm sure there could be several more.

There could be situations where your units can't see the enemy right next to you due to being on a dusty planet, but something in orbit could, and thus direct their attacks. This would make control of the different layers more important.

As long as these things didn't occur randomly, and affected everything on the planet, it'd be okay.

While terrain had no affect in TA on radar, it had a huge affect on unit vision and speed. While it's true that nothing other than mountains really hid units in TA, this was more due to the fact that mountains where the only thing actually big enough to block the view. You can't hide a tank behind another tank. You will still see it easy.

As for speed and pathfinding, each unit in TA was able to climb varying degrees of steep mountains (some being able to climb mountains that where like 80°), and all of them moved slower on the hills/mountains (depending on how steep it was) than flat ground. So this part was done completely in TA.

As for protection, it's already been said that the terrain in TA was unique due to it being so useful in blocking attacks from certain directions, and yes, even wreckage provided protection to units. Though if a unit was big enough though, it would easily be hit over the wreckage/hills (meaning size mattered, just like what you where talking about). Actually, the only difference between dragon's teeth and fortification walls in TA was how big they are, meaning they could block higher attacks.

I support the potential for "Reduced visibility" planets, but not specific areas. The idea of planets having a "visibility" variable adds another potentially interesting mechanic: Throwing megatons of strategic weapons around could fill the atmosphere with dust, so after an exchange of a lot of powerful warheads, you could reduce a lush planet to a desert with a dust-choked atmosphere. Because I like radar.

I don't think areas of rough terrain are going to really make the game that much better, and areas of visibility-restricting cover will probably take the form of forests, and the problem with forests is that they tend to get burned down, reclaimed, run over or nuked flat after a short period of time, making any effort to make them significant gameplay elements somewhat pointless.

What about the effect of trees and blocking line of sight, example would be world in conflict where infantry could hide in the trees until they attack. Obviously with big mechs and tanks there isn't much to hide unless they are smaller mech units that can avoid trampling trees and hide in forests. Make a great sneak attack mechanic, and radar would be obscured with trees. Finally the counter could be trampling, reclaiming, blowing up trees.

Well, I'm not sure how it will be in PA, but in TA you where often as big as the trees, if not bigger. So even a forest wouldn't hide you (well, unless you weren't tall enough to see over the forest yourself) if there was one. Anyway, if you have to deal with each unit hiding behind a tree or something, it would require a lot of micromanagement.

It would be cool if forests (and fauna in general) could provide limited cover for units... depending on the type of fauna and the unit specifics.

e.g., a flea could hide in a forest (of 'earthy trees'), but larger stuff not.

How about adding a "Gap generator" just like Red Alert 2 had.

Basically it was a structure that would always keep the unexplored black view over an area.
Your enemy could only see on that area if he had a unit in the vicinity of that area.

To be more clear on what i mean, some games start with a "black map", like age of empires, age of mythology, even original TA had that.

You could reveal the black terrain by scouting it.

A gap generator would enforce the black terrain over the area so the only way your opponent can have view of that area is to either have a unit move there or take out gap generator.

Dont know how well will work in this game though.

Main thing I can think of at the moment is for the ability for some units to hide in trenches created by explosions from fights. Don't really get the point of any of the other stuff (well.... maybe the flea.... but those hide everywhere...).

Gap generators were a clumsy attempt at radar stealth, because C&C didn't have a proper radar system. TA and SC had proper radar, and proper radar jammers, so gap generators are unnecessary.

This is a great idea. Imagine throwing down an artillery strike to throw dust up to cover the movements of your units.

I would love to have these kinds of tricks to play. I LOVE playing mind games with people in RTS games. Having many different ways to trick your opponent always gets my vote. It encourages good scouting. (another love of mine in RTS games)

I remember the way that terrain and wreckage shaped the game in Total Annihilation being way more interesting than in Supreme Commander.

You could climb a mountain and shoot off a steep cliff to hit units easily below, and choke points would be formed by terrain. It could have just been the way the maps were designed, but it felt a lot more real in Total Annihilation. The fact that the units went slower also gave you more time to think about your tactics in combat.

It's not a bad idea to have different types of terrain having an effect on units like this. The biggest key would be to make any effects simple and concrete, and have the terrain be very visually distinct so you know exactly what terrain has what effect.

I am thinking covering an area with big rocks and rubble might indicate that it will be impassable to vehicles, but passable for units with legs, like walkers and mechs.

Forest might allow small units to be invisible to air units. Big units will stick out above the trees and be easy to see.

I'll see if I can cook up more possible effects- you guys should too.

Planetary weather effects might apply similar effects across an entire planet, making fighting on different worlds significantly different. Once again, effects need to be simple and concrete, and visually clear to the player what is happening, and where.

I like this. Except the bit about the weather. Would need more details.

OK for planetary weather I was thinking things like permanent dust storm, making the surface impossible to scan from orbit.

Could have planets that have no atmosphere, making normal aircraft unusable. You would need something that can work in a vacuum (suborbital craft only).

Another possibility would be have different stars apply effects to all the planets in the system. A star that outputs tremendous amounts of radio waves might make radar completely unusable for every planet in the system.

A red giant might be so large that it takes a very long time to travel all the way around between planets.

Could even have a "dark system" which is in orbit around a black hole of suitable mass. Colder than the northern slopes of hell, and utterly dark, but hey, they're robots. Figure it out. Could also have some really weird relativistic effects in such a system.

Several of you mentioned forest: my main idea is basically to reproduce the effect of infantry hiding in ambush in a forest or in city buildings to surprise a Panzer from behind.

The why and the how are not really important as long as certain units are able to hide in certain types of terrain, and that this terrain is easily recognizable and doesn't cause pathfinding to go crazy. (i.e. better to have units be slowed overall and pass through trees than to try to model individual trees with collision and hope the pathfinder manages [it won't]).

It could be natural smoke with particles that fool radars, it could be deep marshes that hide heat signatures, it could be psychic energy from space frogs... who cares as long as the mechanic is there on some kind of planets and opens up more tactics.

And let's not forget that you can have natural jamming zones (no radar), natural cloaking zones (invisible to LOS), both together, and you can also play with whether the terrain blocks radar/LOS for the units that are in it, or not.

Let's just have trees that are way wider and taller than many of the units themselves. If you make the trunks thin, but the clippable leaves very wide and thick, then you can easily hide units underneath the trees without causing routing issues.

You could hide behind trees in Total Annihilation if you really tried, but it took a lot of micro to do it. It would be really cool if there were such thick forest that you could barely see anything in them until the fighting started knocking them down or burning them.

Long-running raging forest fires would be awesome, where the trees burn for a while before losing all of their leaves.

Hey guys, we'll be fighting with these, not these. One of them is not very good at hiding behind trees. Atomic Death Robots + Advanced Futuretech Sensors = Anything that's stealthy will do so by magically turning invisible.

Super futuristic death robots don't necessarily have to be huge to be awesome.

Infantry-size mechs in hardcore insane crazy massed armies is pretty awesome, too.