Didn't you ever find strange that a Krogoth or a Monkeylord can be seen at the exact same distance than a Peewee or a Hunter, despite being many times bigger? It would be interesting if each unit has a specific "visual size" value (probably from only a few values), and can be detected further away if it's bigger. The fog of war should probably be of several shades instead of only clear/dark, to visualize that. This would, for example, make small scout units better. More generally, it would make small units more interesting. IIRC, Wargame : European Escalation manages FoV like that. This may or may not work best for PA itself. W:EE is great, but it's a tactical game, not a grand strategy game, after all, and it includes things like hiding in forests and such. But it should definitely be made possible for mods. PA could then simply give the same visual size value, so they would all be detected at the same distance. Another interesting thing done by W:EE is that units can be visible but unidentified. You can say that it's a tank, for example, but you can't say which one. This is also something that would be great, if not in PA itself, at least for mods to be possible.
you are right, that the fog of war system that is used in most RTS I know is not realistic at all. but why is it used always? Cos its good for gameplay. I dont think one should change that.
It's used because it's less likely to cause the game to bite it's own tail due to some over-complicated FoW system. I don't like it though, we need something different.
I think that other LOS systems are worth exploring. There could always be a toggle like in TA with options Fixed, Circular, Terrain Modified, and Realistic. Rather than a "visual size" should not the primary factor be the height and elevation of the unit? Also maybe things that are higher up get greater view distances (as the horizon is further away).
I would like to think super advanced robots can see a fly if they have line of sight to it. But something (or everything) could have some sort of active optical camouflage or cloaking which would mean detection equipment would matter more than a good LoS... I do not know. Edit: The best "realistic" system would take into account true LoS (or an approximation of it), stealth/cloaking/camouflage factors, unit size, and units detection ability.
but this would be incredibly hard to understand for the player, what do I actually see, what dont I see. Because if it is that complex, you cant draw a "fog of war" on the map which shows, what you see and what you dont.
I don't think it's because of the gameplay. Having such a system would be good for gameplay easly allowings T1 units to stay relevant during the game. The main problem is the visualisation. In the current system, it's really easy to know where you can see, and where you can't. With the proposed system it become really hard because there are no clear delimitation. It could be good for progamer, but really disturbing for causual ones. I did play Spring without fog of war and it worked quite well. Still, at the beginning it was one of the main complain of the game.
Would could stratify the system to produce three (or any other number) layers of LoS. The outermost is foggiest (where only easy to detect things are found), the closest is clear (where hardest to detect things are found).
I guess that Line of Sight will be used. It is for Zero-K (including for radar, which makes things quite interesting) and for SupCom as well IIRC. I don't know if they take into account the unit size, though, or only an arbitrary point in the unit. It could be interesting for big units to do so. Visual camouflage could work by reducing the effective visual size of the unit. With smart enough units (that would avoid getting too close to units if possible), it could work well. In the Spring games like Zero-K, visual camouflage is broken when a unit is too close, the distance varying for each unit (or when a unit takes damage). It works quite well. It wouldn't be that different here, particularly if most units have standard LoS distance and scouts are easily identifiable. As said by torrasque, it works surprisingly well with Spring without drawn fog of war, after a while. It works also quite well with W:EE, for what it's worth. But as I said earlier, you could still draw a fog of war. Instead of being only clear / dark, there would be several shades.
Several fog of war considerations specific to PA: - fog of war is calculated server-side - we'll have large planets as well as small asteroids, so the curvature of the terrain can vary greatly - deformable terrain
