Fog of war?

[rexx1888]

since im still trying to be constructive, lets try to address the rts thing. first off, you guys are rad, thanks for telling me how you feel even though the threads at risk of becoming a scary place*

second, your right. a fog of war implemented like it is in an rts would be a pain and kinda shit. This is because they have different goals. in an rts the fow is there to encourage players to scout and engage the enemy. since they dont know where they(or anything else) is, they have to spread out. it keeps the games economy working. Its vital to that economy in most cases. Its vital to really alot of stuff that rts's are built on tbh

See a trend, its not really about exploration, its about threat engagement. rts's want battles, and you dont get battles without players moving off in search of the things they need. RW though, is about story. the fog has to be built around different goals. That though, is possible. you seem to be thinking that the mechanic will always be the same even in a different game, but it cant be. thats not how system design works. you build the system to achieve the things you want. In Rimworld, the thing you want is mystery and the possibility that anything can be out there. you want the fog to encourage new stories. so it has to be less about being blindsided or covering up the enemies. it would need to be relatively forgiving, and not difficult to "defeat". it needs to be there in the background, a tool to aid the story, not a central theme. its the same premise as the costing overhaul that happened to the traders. that seemed like a really extreme response to the traders, but once you get used to it it actually made purchases be more valuable, more meaningful to the overall game. Same premise here. To me, the joy system presents some tools that can be used to help work with the fog(every morning people go for a stroll etc). same goes for the job system, since scouting and patrols could eventually be a thing. In the long run, a fog of war that exists and can be addressed will aid almost every aspect of the game.

Like i said, you're right that it could be shit, but i believe Tynan is a good designer, capable of overcoming that. So, what other concerns could be had about fow???

*if i see it become like that, if i see sides to this conflict being drawn up and constructive discussion being killed, im out of the thread btw

[TLHeart]

I will chime in, this is NOT a war game first and foremost. it is about survival, on a rimworld, a world that has already been explored and mapped, there is no reason for a fog of war. 

we have areas that are unexplored, until we find them, true to a mapped world. We do NOT know when the traders will arrive, or when a group of pirates will drop out of the sky, they all come from the unknown region above. 

We get information from the local tribes and settlements that eliminate the fog of war...

Fog of war does not fit with the back story of rimworld either.

[Mikhail Reign]

I get where your going with that idea; but I think my statement still stands - the map is to small. There really isn't any way that the enemy could occupy an area of the map, and stay there long enough WITHOUT encountering the colonists to have FoW really matter. Basically when the enemies siege atm you normally have to restrict colonist movement so that they don't wonder into the range of the raiders. Normal raiders take only a few seconds from appearing on the map, to being at the base. I guess you could consider everything that exists off map to be in a FoW that you cant remove.

Also, once again, and because I believe that this is an important point - gun range. Look at the range of a sniper rifle atm - compare it to the size of even the larger maps - now for FoW to work properly, either A: the range of all guns would have to be dropped drastically so that colonists could see at the at max range they could shoot and not have the range basically extend halfway to the edge of the map; or B: (if you could shoot further then you could see) sacrifice colonists by running them into the FoW to reveal map while covered by sniper rifles meaning that by the time they light up the enemy, they would be in the range of all their weapons and instantly shreaded - the only way I could see around this is to do the standard rts thing and make a way for colonists to move while hidden (acting as a spotter), a mechanic that I don't think would work in this game.

[Dave-In-Texas]

when i've thought about this kind of thing (a small amount of time admittedly) I just thought that the barely functional wrecked core of the original ship is in orbit giving very basic sitrep data.  this also explains the random drop pods of materiel and people and even the crashed ship part if you really think about it.   fog of war would add a few mechanics but not enough to make the game more fun in my opinion.  let tynan add more fun mechanics first.. like a better ai and then we'll see..

[rexx1888]

the war game issue straight up isnt an issue. we have to assume a system like this that is implemented will support the initial design of the game. thus, it simply will not work the way it does in an rts. its not even be suggested as yet that it does, because rimworld is clearly not a rts and not intended to be one. Just because a mechanic exist in another genre doesnt mean it cant be changed, tweaked or otherwise made useful to any design, and presenting a mechanic as such is not useful as a constructive discussion. we know you dont want an rts, otherwise youd be playing starcraft*

next point. the thing about weapon ranges, is that the scope is abstracted into the weapon. people dont run around looking through their scope. so that creates an interesting situation where you actually want to position a sniper so he can then look through his scope.. meaning suddenly snipers are an interesting part of the design and arent just some other gun. In fact, lets be quite honest here. while there is a bunch of nuance to combat design in rimworld, its still lacking.. alot. Most weapons of a ballistic variety simply feel like different forms of the same gun. so any mechanic that helps to flesh them out more and differentiate them more and apply more choice to the game seems like a gain to me, and also makes your story more interesting(since thats the part we are supposed to focus on in the overall design). Additionally, LoS will support melee much more. since i expect ammunition is going to be a thing at some point in this game to make melee more viable, giving it a bit of a boost by allowing ambushes to exist seems particularly important.

that of course brings us all back to a specific problem. the AI atm is garbage. as far as i know Tynan has already identified this as something he wants to fix, so considering that, now might be an excellent time to actually revisit FoW in context. Its simply not feasible(or interesting) to have either the players or the ai be omniscient, so fixing one necessitates fixing the other. An the thing is, we cant fix the omniscience of the player without some way of obfuscating the map, regardless of how you want to fluff the inital mapping. You are, currently, able to plan around any problem. You are given notifications that inform you not only of the problem, but where it is. You then can plan around it. Your colony(and the story of it) suddenly becomes this contrived sequence of events where they knew exactly where the sieges were, or the beavers, or whatever, and they immediately planned around that problem and ended it. I agree that with the ai making every colonist a lemming,t hat FoW right now would be shit. However, we know the ai needs work, and i think it would be better to incorporate fow into that rework. For both stories and gameplay.

An just so we are clear, as yet no one has actually provided a solid justification for why FoW is actually bad. Theres lots of hyperbole, and apprarent fear of change in these responses, but you need to put that away and try to actually refine your answers to why it would be bad for the game in the long term. Yes, there are no systems in place at the moment that support FoW, because at the moment it doesnt exist. that doesnt mean they cant, so the question is why would it be bad long term, or why would it be good. I feel ive provided strong reasoning for why its good, but as yet the answers for its bad are as follows:

(paraphrasing of course)
->because i like having a map and feel that losing that would disadvantage me
->because other games did it and i dont like them
->because i simply assume the game will not change and just randomly strap this new mechanic on top with no thought whatsoever.
-> because i feel that limiting my vision will somehow fundamentally change the stories that RW tells.

those are kind of not great reasons to not do a thing folks, or more specifically, they arent very well reasoned. There's merit in the last one, but it still feels kind of hyperbolic, and it is a problem that is actually quite simple to design around. So, acknowledging that, is there anything more nuanced we can say at the moment(acknowledging of course that we cant know for certain one way or the other without something to actually test).

*side note, id like to point out that the first terran missions where you are playing with jim raynor as space cowboy remind me a lot of rimworld, in the sense that they try and convey that tone of being alone out on the edges of space... plus the soundtrack was super appropriate

[Kegereneku]

An just so we are clear, as yet no one has actually provided a solid justification for why FoW is actually bad. Theres lots of hyperbole, and apprarent fear of change in these responses, but you need to put that away and try to actually refine your answers to why it would be bad for the game in the long term.

Reasons it can't be like classic wargame FoW have been provided several time in this thread.

This is not a long term problem, this is direct short term incompatibility with what Rimworld is now, and meant to be later. To make FoW work you would have to force in all the mechanics that allow the player to survive in STR game (equivalent force, scout, guard, radar, keep the OP turrets...etc).

We can't assume that adding "Fog of War" to Rimworld will be a gain, just because. This would be like assuming "successfully adding Car Racing to Rimworld will be an interesting gain" and not detract from its point. You also simply can't have even a limited "X-Com Tactical combat" as an optional features.

Rimworld is focused on storytelling & characters, not tactical wargame with raider.
So the objective is to improve the storytelling component, events and FUN interactions from the player to shape his colony in whatever he want. A secondary objective is to lessen of the "Tower Defense" encouraged by Killbox.

What does a player do when a Raid happen ?
- He goes to see who is attacking and how they can.
- He plan ahead, depending on the time he have left.
- He scramble his survivors to face them the way he planned.
- Once the enemy is here, hell break lose and the plan get killed by a stray bullet.

Supposing a "classic" Fog of War :
(edit : by classic I mean, you see the map but not the raiders and (their) items)
- If you aren't told the enemy is attacking (and supposing the alert come once one of your colonist see an enemy), you won't have the time to react unless you scout/guarded ahead.
- If you need equipment to see the enemy, you'll just spam those "camera" or your "scout" will need binocular/sniper to not be killed/captured (note : real snipers need spotters).
- If the raiders are smart enough to bait you on one side and attack from another side, this is just worse than "Raider dropping on top of your base" as you have 2 force to fights at once but no time to survive it unless you tone down both force.

So a "classic" FoW would only reduce the speed at which you can take action and the time you have left to take action. By making it very hard to know what you are facing it will add frustration when it turn out you needed a different plan but no time left to even try. And by making it much harder to take any proactive measure (especially outside the base) it will punish you for not holing yourself in a killbox.

In term of storytelling a "classic FoW" would be a disaster.
Even if you kept FoW from impeding other events it will become impossible to know if a Raider have been attacked by the fauna/flora, or if they finally aren't so ready on fighting you, are they psychopath ? empath ? You can't even tell if they are sleeping without having a scout.
All in all you are discouraged from attempting any crazy plan.

Rimworld's Raider combat AI is.... lacking yes. But FoW will not solve the problem, on the contrary it would be a patchwork that require the raider to never get too smart or you would suddenly be up against impossible odds (in turn forcing to get rid of FoW or reduce Raider force).

Now to play devil advocate,
you could have SOME events deliberately hide information from you in a purely exceptional event, ex : a single assassin is attacking, the game don't let you know where he is unless the colonist see him.
But it must be though in term of storytelling, not wargame tactics.

[Johnny Masters]

To be honest, reasons that FoW isn't comparable to "wargames" and - most commonly referred: a blizard-like rts game, have also been provided, if not in this thread, at least in the several preceding it.

Most people bashing FoW thinks, for some reason, that it will make the games focus more on the tactical warfare aspect, while it can very much mean the opposite: dealing with less nauseous and repetitive invasions and more on the psychological aspect of not having omniscience and most likely having the whole man vs nature way more predominantly than the non-existance of it now.  I don't know for others, but mxn is very important for me in a survival game, be it a fps or a management-builder hybrid.

Likewise, we can't assume that adding FoW won't be a gain, just because. This would be assuming that "being unable to see enemies through walls in battlefield would be bad because i feel lost without having everything shown to me". Yes, fog of war happens in fps too and pretty much any game where a player struggle to obtain information in a possible hostile environment.
--

The only two pertinent cons of FoW would be its development time and possible extra micromanagment. For the first, i think it's worth the investment, for the latter i'd say some thought must be made to indeed not become a click fest. But i see no problem with setting guarding and patrol zones/waypoints and let it be done automatically, saving special instances. Afterall, this is a management game and security is a management issue as well, i don't see why the rancidity on this specifically.

Then we get stuff like fear of losing control and incapability to accept loss. As we all know, save scumming is a bad habit that instant save-load gaming brought us to feel the need to always be in control. I'm not going to say how people should play their game, but losing a fave pawn because you screwed up or because of chance is not bad design or because FoW doesn't or shouldn't belong in the game, it's a player's inability to cope with loss and letting it go. Not knowing what is out there brings anxiety, which, again, is a feature, not a problem. In good stories good people also die.

Finally, there's people saying that FoW won't add to the stories, which i can't agree because there wasn't even an exercise in thought to at least come up with something. It's impossible that FoW won't bring any new stories, the discussion should be on which give us more stories.

just some random stories:

Day 1. Planetfall - No FoW

"We crashlanded on the planet JM-524c, the surface and local climate is similar to earth tundra biome. Our scans mapped the whole area and we pinpointed the perfect location to estabilish camp, it has a chockepoint for possible defense - should it come to that - and is close to some good resources. Our scans shows some animals and our hunters know exactly where to hunt for them. Thankfully to our sensors, we know where to get wood for some basic infra-structure and to keep us warm. Our built-in wrist omni-tool shows constant area surveillance, should any hostiles come in the vicinity we will know instantly. A word of thanks to Weyland-Yutani for these omni-tools, we'd be having really harder otherwise!"

Day 1. Planetfall - Fog of War

"We crash-landed on the planet JM-524c, the surface and local climate is similar to earth tundra biome. We didn't get a chance to scan the area and our omni-tools is no good here without sats...We are blind here. We crashed in a open area and we scrapped some of the fallen resources. We decided to make camp here for today, but tomorrow we should find a better place, because despite some bushes with a few berries there's little food here and our rations wont last forever, so we need to move asap. Luckily, Bill was doing a little reconnaissance today while we worked on a small hut (god, wish we had the technology to build tents) and he saw lots of footprints in the snow, some kind of quadruped animals, food! We should be moving north tomorrow, following those footprints. I hope they are prey, not predators. Definitely not going south, we heard some nasty growling from the woods that way. God help us all"

-
Day 249 - "crashtown" colony - No FoW

"Today morning we finished our third outer walled sentry slaughter-hall. Since hostiles always come from that direction and our omni-surveillance tool gives constant feedback, we can work ourselves out in whatever we want - We are making a little fortune here! and have no worries, except for those pesky orbital drops, but those are not so bad lately. A few hours later we received our raid #43. As usual we followed standard procedures and went to our designated posts. Since our omni-revealer gives constant updates we really have no surprises there, so we allocate people to stations as needed. To be honest, at first we had a lot of fun watching those assholes through our wrist-tool screens doing dumb stuff with random animals or just shooting each other...But nowadays is kind of just ok. I mean, it's still fun, but we've seen the same shit over and over, and cleaning up all the mess later is boring and disgusting. But i really gotta say, the zoom capability of our wrist-tools are darn incredible, i mean i can even see what kind of wounds those fuckers have or even their thoughts and personalities! Well, gotta go, another crashed resource batch fell on quadrant C-12 and guess who's fetching it? At least i know it won't happen anything to me. God bless technology"

Day 249 - "Crashtown" colony - Fog of War

"We finished building our outer wall today, hopefully it will stop things like last month's accident with julia and that damn lizard thing coming out of nowhere. Morgan is still researching better scans so at least we'll know if something is moving toward us, i hope it gets finished soon, because he stopped working on those farming improvements to working on the scans. Anyway, I've seen the prototype, should raiders attack us their movement pattern will betray their positions and we could prepare. Sometimes they are just visitors, but you never know, have to always be careful in the frontier. That's why Ross volunteered to patrol duty last month. Everyone knew he didn't want to but everyone knew he was the best for it. We could use another hand in the farms or at the walls, but we simply cannot be blind out there, specially after those raiders started appearing, and there's the fact he even brought a deer last time. Sometimes he gets to see (and his wrist-tool feeds it to us, thankfully!) them raiders fighting animals or other raider-folks, it's really fun actually, seeing them shoot each-other for a change...Well, sometimes he just stumbles upon some battle remains, dead people everywhere, we just wonder what might have happened and place a motion-rod there so we get an alarm going. Yeah, we also loot the bodies. Life in the frontier baby"

--

As i wrote on another FoW thread, i think we should focus on what good comes out of having or not having fow brings, instead of battling for the negative ones. I'm much more interested and find much more fruitful to hear from neutral people or from people that provides examples of stories we can build with each "side" instead of hearing naysaying from both sides. But then, that is just my humble opinion.

As for me, i already know what not having FoW brings, and i'm not impressed.  Now I'm just trying to find out how much better FoW is over the limited stories omniscience brings. Unless, again, people provide more positive examples of it.

Lets go people, be creative

[Kegereneku]

We can't discuss this if you just ignore half of the problem. Features always have good and bad elements that negate entirely the goods. Since we are keen on analogy it's like asking to focus on the good side of dying.

So we must accept that the 'FoW' features can be worth or not worth adding.
Rimworld not having FoG won't make it inferior in any way, or incomplete as a video game. However having needless complication that impede other feature is always seen badly.

We have to analyze Rimworld, propose how this FoW-inspired feature might fit, and see IF it actually improve the gameplay most players expect of Rimworld. But if it turn out you cannot integrate such "fog" without hijacking the gameplay or breaking creativity, then you've got to accept there's no reason to have such feature.
The best would be for someone to make a mods that can test various form of Fog/Veil of uncertainty.

Likewise, we can't assume that adding FoW won't be a gain, just because. This would be assuming that "being unable to see enemies through walls in battlefield would be bad because i feel lost without having everything shown to me". Yes, fog of war happens in fps too and pretty much any game where a player struggle to obtain information in a possible hostile environment.

Indeed, but if we keep the analogy going remember that a FPS usually give you the time to react to the suddenly appearing threat and a trigger ready to fire 'solutions' at that problem, and yet in many game you can get headshot from nowhere without ever feeling satisfaction.
Were Rimworld to regain FoW it mustn't make you feel like you are being swarmed by enemy coming out of nowhere with no alert, no chance to actually fight, no chance to avoid loosing a pawn through your skill, and no room to plan as you like.

Fighting this "loss of control" is the real interest of FoW, more than the ambiance I would say.
You aren't having fun with the sentiment that you'll fail at the slightest bad luck you can't avoid. You are having fun seeing more than the others, which suggest that the Raider must also obey the same rules, making precisely Rimworld the RTS we don't want it to be. It also explain why FoW would need to be accompanied with a plethora of scout/guard/patrol/radar most of us don't want.

Let's consider a PRACTICAL EXAMPLE :
The enemy is approaching from multiple direction and you can't see them. One of your colonist spotted an enemy, you go micro-manage it and make time pass to see the result. HOW do you do if another colonist away is being attacked by insurmountable force while you are looking away ?
Do you have the game automatically stop time every time a new enemy get in sight ?
Do you let the time pass and have a colonist get killed by enemy you didn't knew were here ?

That's the recipe for saves scumming : unfair death of colonist and colonist dying without you knowing if his death was in vain.

About pawn death :
Myself, I accept a colonist death when (1) I see that I have still achieved a lot (2) it would take time to try to do better with no certitude of doing better.
The above can only happen if I am informed of everything that is happening on the map, and if I have the margin (from information gathered through omniscience) to try achieving something EPIC.

Finally, there's people saying that FoW won't add to the stories, which i can't agree because there wasn't even an exercise in thought to at least come up with something. It's impossible that FoW won't bring any new stories, the discussion should be on which give us more stories.

Actually the argument is that FoW won't add new interesting things to the story. Not just new thing.
Because myself I'm not interested in 20 new story that all end by "...then my colonists were killed by new Raider/Tribal/animal I didn't saw" nor story telling me you just found new cadaver of raiders with no idea who killed them, if one of them got crazy, if they were actually hit by your mortars, if they starved...etc

Aside, a bad storyteller is a tellers who ignore everything outside his own characters actions, and a bad game-design is when features depend entirely of blind luck to be fun.

YET, as I said I won't just bash the idea without at least imagine ONE case where a semblance of FoW fit. (although I don't believe we need FoW because the map can be big enough to functionally do the same)
On my precedent post it was the "Assassin" : A lone enemy event that do not appear on except to colonist, and let's say it can even open door. The goal in term of interesting gameplay is to force you to have all your colonist stay together and mount guard until you killed him.
The idea also apply to hypothetical "predator" events.
To follow on your story about finding food : We don't need a fog for that, the map can be so large you can actually miss those. I once suggested a purely visual dirt that would make it harder to YOU to see them, thus reconnaissance effort would be on YOU, THE PLAYER. Much more fulfilling in my mind than having a colonist walk for days in search of ration rather than working.

Of course, this isn't so much (persistent) FoW than (temporary) surprises.

[Famous Shoes]

Not sure I should step into the middle of this. Here goes nothing.

I think limiting of visibility in some fashion is an interesting idea for RimWorld. And, that there are two big unknowns in the current game that make articulating anything like a coherent suggestion (or suggestions) about it an impossible exercise, i.e., one more about faith and personal desires than Ludeon's vision for RimWorld.

 
• The maps are just too small to pick an approach to limiting, even if we made the assumption limiting would be good. This likely a symptom of scaling characteristics of the prototype architecture and so will likely change. That's not a criticism, this is alpha after all, just a point that we'd be making calls based on a critical data point we don't know, i.e., typical map sizes in the final design.
• There's not a robust storytelling concept visible yet. Until there's some meat there, some conceptual framework for us base our ideas on, I don't see how we can offer helpful thoughts on any large, experiential concepts like limited visibility (as opposed to incidental details, like item quality filters in the user interface or making snowmen.)

Personally, I think uncertainty (nagging doubt, panic over the unknown, and nasty surprises) is an essential element of a great story. But, what we can see and have to play with now is essentially the mid-section of the game design--drapes and furniture without a building--and that's just not enough for us to turn a debate about something that's really part of the design foundation (the first principles) into informative suggestions for Ludeon.

[Elixiar]

I don't really see the point, however if it was in I would like to see it only at night time. The point about stuff being lit is cool.

Also, not that total black fog of war that covers terrain as it would make establishing a base at night super annoying.

Mostly however I'm kind of against it in this game. Its nice to see everything thats going on for once.
...
OR! have a new build able console which lifts fog of war at night and is a power hog. Now that would be cool. (they can trade with orbital ships after all)

[Turps]

After rimworld is finished maybe Tynan could make the "Rimworld FOW Edition" because it would be a almost a different game. Not worried about change and yes I'd try it and yes it would add some new features but it would also remove a lot of the features its got now. So atm I say No.

[rexx1888]

none of you have me convinced that FoW is actually bad. I mean, im convinced alot of you are really great at obfuscating a discussion and turning it into an argument, but your actual cons are either blessings you just havent thought through very well, or else non existent issues. Take the premise that FoW is bad because it adds more to the game. Thats literally what was said a few posts up. Thats ridiculous. Thats possibly the silliest thing ive every read in a forum about a game where things are built, because it literally means "oh its bad because ill have more things to build. how dare you give me more things to do". Or the comment about how an FoW RW would just be a completely different game. Thats hyperbolic, but completely disingenuous. Of course itd still be the same game. You all keep arguing like you would be playing RW starcraft edition, but thats just stupid. You dont just bolt a whole new mechanic onto a game in development. You design it, integrate it, and then tweak it. Every mechanic works towards the same goal.

As such, let me paint you a basic FoW that would enhance the game, and not piss you off. First up, assume the ai has been fiddled with. Your colonists now have basic self preservation instinct. When they see someone with a weapon, they try to work out if its a friend or foe, and they run from foes. They even zig zag, try to hide, or shoot back. The enemy ai has also been tweaked. It can no longer see the whole world, so in order to attack a colony it first has to scout locations(so it cant just pick the weakest spot, or beeline straight to your home). Or, it may not even be an atttack, and may simply be an enemy force moving through a locale(different event). Assume a whole raft of other quality of life ai stuff has been done. Basically, if you think to yourself "but the ai cant deal with blah" just stop and think it can.

So, the Obfuscation itself. I personally like a static overlay. so not even fog. i like that better because then weather effects like actual fog still exist and dont get confusing. I also think there should be a shroud over the fog(the black terrain blocker, but ill be negating alot of the annoyance this has for you all in a few sentences). Id lock all maps to be the same size, and make em massive(so theres actually places to explore. It may need a bit of work to have the map maintain itself, but if its not looked at by a character, it doesnt need to render an can probably be made to be rather light on the processor), but id get the storytellers to actually drop events that are beneficial kind of close to some LoS. So colonists dont have to explore too far to find them. Then, when our colonists turn up, id have a big chunk of the map around there starting spot revealed to the player. So they have some room to make decisions. In terms of the static, i would have it close back in really slowly. like a day or two would pass before it got to the point where players cant see anything in an area. Id even have it move in in stages, so at first its only a little staticy, and then a little more etc. We do this because we want to make slow burn tension on the player. We dont want to jack up their anxiety in minutes, thats just shitty. We wouldnt have the shroud move back in. its actually just there so players can see where they have never explored before. Its not there to annoy, but to inform. We also give our colonists a relatively large site radius... during the day. At night, we narrow it down heaps, and bring it in close. Make it link to light sources at night. Basically, during the day the game wouldnt actually play much different to the way it does now. There might be a few more jobs colonists can do, but the fog itself isnt there to fuck around with the day to day running of a colony. Hell, we dont even let the fog move within a certain radius of the players home. It'd be really weird for the colonists to forget they have a shed just because they hadnt been there in a day or two.

quality of life things, we make the planning tool more nuanced. We let it track notes, and also track different commands like mining or harvesting. An we make sure its nice an clear over the static, so even if the players lose sight of terrain, its really easy to see what they might like to do out there if they planned for it. Another thing id do is maintain the current notifications, but make it so that once its clicked, it takes you to a position somewhere near where the thing happened. Id probably remove some of them and tweak them, but once again the goal here is not to make the players life hard, just more interesting.

Finally, as to jobs and items. Truth is, not that much needs to be added to this system. Its not designed to kick players, its there to help them. As such, you would only need a security job. The hunt job would get changed a bit to make colonists go off and actually look for game, and they would have to prioritze bigger better game as they got better at hunting(so they wouldnt shoot squirrels when they could shoot elk). The security job would probably be a whole new bunch of stuff much like the timetable and the outfitter was for update 10, in that you would have the ability to set up patrols that colonists might follow, or else have them man some variety of console that has security consoles linked. Thats literally all that would need to be added. Other things could be added, but they dont need to be. No radar, no scouts. The only iffy thing is if you would want a dedicated explorer job. But that would just need some poking.


now look, im sure your looking at that design and trying to poke holes in it, but you need to stop. Its rough, i smashed it out in five minutes. That design though would work. An it wouldnt fundamentally change the game, or add too much stuff, or be too hard on the player, or make them have less reaction time or anything like that. It would basically make the game play like if you were on a small map currently, right now. BUT you would suddenly not be on a small map. there could be things to find out there. Interesting stories an other such things. Suddenly, theres an actual sense of discovery in your game. An it wouldnt be a shallow sense like civilisation, because the world itself would change. Sure, you dont see the raiders kill the tribals, but you might miss that right now in this game. What you will find is the scene of a massacre, and maybe  some carrion eaters. You gain lots of things you dont have right now, and if you're gonna be really close minded about what you can gain, then i have no idea why your playing a game called rimworld where you play as random colonists out in the far side of the galaxy trying to survive in whatever way they can.

[akiceabear]

I'm not a fan of the tone from either side, although in principle I support the pro-FOW camp. What I find interesting is there is now a majority that appear to support the idea OR tolerate it, contrary to in the past. It also highlights that just because one can write long posts doesn't mean they represent the community.

[b0rsuk]

This isn't because you can add a feature or a level of complexity that it will improve a game.

Rimworld isn't a military RTS where one can produce scout and guards that stay idle indefinitely, nor sacrifice unit on a bad decision and still win thanks to the data gained this way.

Baldur's Gate isn't a military RTS game either. Pillars of Eternity isn't a military RTS game. Maybe they lack storytelling or something ?

Also, not that total black fog of war that covers terrain as it would make establishing a base at night super annoying.

A popular solution to this is sending people to beds.

[Kegereneku]

none of you have me convinced that FoW is actually bad. I mean, im convinced alot of you are really great at obfuscating a discussion and turning it into an argument, but your actual cons are either blessings you just havent thought through very well, or else non existent issues.

IMO you are the most obfuscating one here. We've given pretty clear example of things we don't want FoW to bring and pointed out the bad things inherent to FoW while you are being all "stop saying things I don't like, you are all lying, you don't understand, FoW can't be bad !".
I must give you that here you explained lengthly how you imagine it.

now look, im sure your looking at that design and trying to poke holes in it, but you need to stop. Its rough, i smashed it out in five minutes. That design though would work.

If you post something, it will be judged on its own merit.
We won't ignore the flaws and pretend it would ultimately be great just because you say so.
You have to accept that no matter on long you try, you might never make it worth, the point of discussing it is to seek a consensus on what we like and what we don't want.

Video games aren't made by simply adding as many features as possible regardless of how they fit.
The same way, having more things to build just for the sake of having more things to build don't make a game better.
If Tynan somehow added any "improvement" suggested by anyone (like colonist needing to take a dump) you would be begging him to cancel them.

Now, before "poking hole" (or rather give you a feedback on your suggestion) let's see I can summarize it :
- Your idea prefer a gigantic map (what size ? bigger than 400x300 ? how much ?)
- ...so that zone-of-sight be increased up to make it no different from what it is now (except at night).
- ...and so you can actually explore (at day of walking range ?).
- The "fog" stay cleared a day or two, then the player cannot see item and animal again.
Combat-wise...
- You want security-job and patrol, that's quite the big important change most don't want. Rimworld isn't meant to be a war camp simulator.
- You want Hunt to be more like full-time-job hunt. (like taking the whole day to hunt I suppose ?) again, big change, many players like hunting only when they need it, and considering how you can order it easily you don't need to make it a job.
- You want Colonist intelligent enough to wage war. (Drafted of not ?) Myself I think we just need notify&time-freeze when a non-drafted colonist is harmed.
- Next : your Raiders must do recon to see your base : do you intend Raider actual base (temporary or not) on your terrain, or for "recon event" to happen before an attack ? Once again, this is RTS line of though.

Is all the above correct ?

My opinions :
So far you are only adding a repetitive hassle to force players to scout for the sake of scouting. A waste of time that require a colonist full time. If until now you though you were lucky to survive, with this FoW you'd need blind luck just to find resources & hunt. You'd be punished for not being lucky.
Then you have to admit your suggestion only make sense if you intend to turn RW into a strategy game where you need patrol,scout, hidden shooter to defend or attack enemy position.
Once again it will discourage from trying creative tactic to deal with events, and encourage failsafe solution because you have no leeway.
And if you lose any Pawns on a patrol/scout mission, you can be assured that we will reload the save.
In term of Storytelling this sound like my feared disaster : you can't see shit except your colonist, can't make story about how two enemy fought each others, can't see who is passing by your colony, can't see if there's herds of animals unless you are lucky, it make pointless to even think about events that don't happen where you can see it.

If I over-analyse, you real problem with RW is that you feel confined and want to explore.
I say you don't need a gigantic persistent FoW field for that and suggest you better alternatives :

- Simply wait for Tynan to upgrade the AI, once the AI get smarter you won't need FoW to spice things, just seeing them going around your failsafe killbox and murdering your plans should be enough thrill.
- Only have "dropped resources" hidden once, once the items are revealed they stay as visible as they damn should be.
- Same for raider, only make a no-see fog around them, once.
- ask for an alternate "Draft" where the Colonist still go eat&sleep, add the timetable and you'll have your guards-jobs.

As well as suggesting variation of "travel/exploration" topic, it have more potential.

I'm not a fan of the tone from either side, although in principle I support the pro-FOW camp. What I find interesting is there is now a majority that appear to support the idea OR tolerate it, contrary to in the past. It also highlights that just because one can write long posts doesn't mean they represent the community.

So far the lack of support and worried comments about "not wanting to patrol and such" that came in every thread is saying that many won't tolerate any form of FoW.
I can and did write my own "FoW-like" ideas, but because there's some dreamers who will claim everybody support their own "better because global" fantasy we need some lengthy criticism to point all aspect.

Baldur's Gate isn't a military RTS game either. Pillars of Eternity isn't a military RTS game. Maybe they lack storytelling or something ?

And Rimworld isn't a Combat RPG either. Maybe you lack good analogy ?

I'm not saying Rimworld can't hypothetically profit from a feature akin to FoW. I'm warning that most implementation I imagine could wreak havoc in how Rimworld is played to the point of making not worth.

Remember that Tynan already disabled at least one implementation of FoW.