Uncertainty Veil (Fog of War)

[Blitz]

I think it was around 10-12 of the randy random playthrough I did. I am fairly sure it was the shortest path as well.

[Voltronguy]

i want fogz of warz

[Necronomocoins]

I think there should be an option for having fog or not, as some people seem to think it's essential and others never want to see it. Having a satellite or have someone stay in the remains of the destroyed ship in orbit, you'd have to keep sending food and oxygen to keep them alive but get bonuses like revealed f.o.w, research bonuses, comms. console, more frequent traders and cheaper trade goods, having to send stuff to the surface or back could cost big energy. Raiders that can scramble comms. and teleporters and have full map view from their ship, I would also want natives/raiders without this ability to balance this out. I personally would like to see a blacked out fog of war for areas you haven't seen yet, greyed out for areas you're currently not looking at and full colour for areas you can see, or if you include cctv, areas that the cameras can see.

[vagineer1]

I think there should be an option for having fog or not, as some people seem to think it's essential and others never want to see it. Having a satellite or have someone stay in the remains of the destroyed ship in orbit, you'd have to keep sending food and oxygen to keep them alive but get bonuses like revealed f.o.w, research bonuses, comms. console, more frequent traders and cheaper trade goods, having to send stuff to the surface or back could cost big energy. Raiders that can scramble comms. and teleporters and have full map view from their ship, I would also want natives/raiders without this ability to balance this out. I personally would like to see a blacked out fog of war for areas you haven't seen yet, greyed out for areas you're currently not looking at and full colour for areas you can see, or if you include cctv, areas that the cameras can see.

This idea is awesome.

[Involved]

Just bumping this fog of war thread, just because I'm new here and would love this to get implemented. Automatically knowing where everything is after being forced into a crashed landing on an unknown planet/region makes no sense. Exploring would be a great thing story and choice-wise, to discover what you have around you, where to look first etc. it'd be exciting to come across a geyser etc. By all means for those who don't like it, give an option at start of game or researched technology that would remove it, like a satellite as suggested above.

[Numar]

On paper, I love the idea of FoW, but not the classical FoW. We're in a sci-fi-setting, and the least what should be in a crash pod helping the survivors are some kind of scanners. Set them up to roughly know the directions of where to find minerals etc. And in case of dropping raiders or other survivors, you see roughly where they land, so you're not 100% clueless if the game mark the area of interest. Then it's up to you to order a colonist to scout.
Maybe the map can be randomly expanded or generated while exploring?

But I agree, it's a concept that shouldn't be high priority right now.

[Mystic]

Fog of War is an interesting idea, and one I like very much in many types of games, but I personally don't think I'd want to see it in Rimworld as it currently exists, for two reasons:

1) If FoW exists, it becomes vital to be able to establish proper lookout posts and such to spot attacking groups in time to react to them.  Lookout posts are invariably positioned in high altitude locations in order to provide a range advantage in spotting approaching enemies before they are so close that they can take out the lookout post.  That is the advantage of the defense, after all ... to be able to pick the locations where you position your defense. But since everything in Rimworld is at the same height, that mechanic is not available.  Just having lookouts sitting at ground level where they can't spot attackers until the attackers can also spot the lookouts doesn't sound very effective, and not too healthy for the lookouts either.  Not to mention the large penalty of having to assign any of our limited number of colonists to permanent lookout duty.  Now, if we avoid that by deciding that the "lookouts" aren't colonists but some sort of electronic surveillance equipment, then why not just save a step, avoid adding needless complexity and say that such electronic gear has been deployed (unseen on the map) around the colony to allow the view of the area that we already have now?

2) If our colonies can't see the attackers until they are that close, then it would only be fair that the reverse is also true, otherwise it would get frustrating to essentially be constantly fighting as a blind man against foes with perfect vision.  (I very much dislike games that have those sorts of baked-in penalties for the player.)  But attackers should automatically have knowledge of the location of your base, because otherwise are we to assume they were just wandering around in the wilderness looking for someone to attack?  Seems much more sensible that they've already fixed the colony's location when they enter the map - maybe through spotting it from orbit (i.e., pirates), or by triangulating transmissions from the comms console, or even just through rumors from other visitors of some colony that has been spending or making lots of silver with passing trade ships.  Anyway, my point is that they know where we are, and as such, to keep the game playable and enjoyable, I think we also need to know where they are coming from in time for us to be able to deal with them when they show up by surprise (something which is often hard enough already when you've got colonists in bed, or your best shooter halfway across the map on a hunting trip, and so on).

[MajorFordson]

+1 for FoW

Would give you things like colonists on sentry/patrol mode, watchtowers, rudamentry motion detectors, sensor towers for proper vision, satellite launch for full time vision.

[Geokinesis]

-1 for FoW.

I like being able to see everything going on, watching stuff like tribal visitors fighting the crazed boomrat and all that.

Also as Mystic says you either waste a colonist on lookout or building static equipment which is just an extra pointless step.

[akiceabear]

It's a chunk of work to make it function beyond what it does now. The current fog looks like rock - not something you want to layer over the world. There's also no "three-state" fog of totally unknown/seen before/seen currently. Worse, there are performance implications to constantly tracking line of sight from a dozen colonists over the hundreds of squares that each of them can see.

Basically, I could do it, but it would take 4-6 days and I think those days are better put elsewhere. I could make a dozen new kinds of raider groups in that time. Or create a proper stockpile system (DF-style). Or a dozen new buildings. Tradeoffs, ya know?

Given Tynan's estimate that it would take 4-6 days of coding to implement, I sincerely hope that fog of war is included in a (near) future version. Especially before new raiders, etc, given the current modding community has proven very competent at expanding the game within existing systems. As a toggle would be totally understandable, given it is a big plus or minus for varying players. Personally, this feature would greatly improve my immersion/narrative experience within the game.

There are plenty of posts within this thread on how this might be implemented in a way that is manageable. I signed up for this forum specifically to make a first post on FoW for A9 (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=8372.msg93769#msg93769). In addition to those, I have a few new/refined thoughts on how it may be balanced in a "simple" vanilla version:
* Automated viewing posts - as mentioned earlier in this thread, perhaps with a included solar panel and battery. Thus the player needs to research and then build (at a high cost) those posts where it is worthwhile.
* Scouting drones - a one-function drone that simply moves around to "clean" up the fog of war, prioritizing areas that haven't been seen in the longer time. Costly enough to research and build that having more that a couple is very unlikely, reducing CPU usage spamming...
* Scouting "ammo" for mortars - easier to obtain, a simple one-off mortar ammo type that you shoot around the map and it then reveals the area for x minutes. The probe is very costly to buy from traders, but can be retrieved later by a hauler to fire again. The idea is to incentivize the player to shoot out probes when audio indicates an attack incoming from an unknown direction.
* Raider priorities - smarter raiders prioritize killing the above tech, if seen, forcing higher scouting costs on the player if they overly spam the map with probes etc.

Of course there are many other possible ways to balance a vanilla version, hopefully some of which are relatively "lightweight" once the three-stage FOW system is in place. I personally like the scouting drone the most, as it fits within scifi and I think would reduce the possible tedium of rebuilding posts all over the map. In any case, I expect once a system is in place it would spark a mod frenzy in that space...

I didn't see many other posts by Tynan on this topic - has he touched on it since 2013?

[NoImageAvailable]

Consider: Raiders approach, some muffalo go mad and attack them and there's a dramatic battle. With FoW over them, you never see any of it.

You might not see the battle itself unfold, but it would still add to the story. Think a raiding party arrives, but after a day or two there is still no sight of them. A scout is sent to determine their whereabouts and stumbles across a field of dead muffalo and raider corpses. In fact I think the uncertainty of not knowing *exactly* what and how it happened, leaving the player to figure it out would add to the story, not detract from it.

Edit: Wow, somehow I completely missed the fact this thread was from 2013 and that it has two more pages. I really need to get more sleep.

[Klitri]

Agree with above, it should be a toggle and it would actually add to the story to me if I didn't know what happened to the raider party, but was given evidence as to how it happened.

[Johnny Masters]

Considering the amount of invasions you get in a regular play, i wouldn't miss if i didn't see any of them until some sort of map revealer tech was built.

As per the muffalo-raider story: Sure, that's one story, but with FoW + revealer you have at least 2 stories (like NIA wrote, about scouting an after battle scenario AND the same muffalo-raider story). Plus it makes way more sense that a survivor game has the uncertainty that FoW brings.

It also strikes me as odd that a game with ever increasing complexities such as rimworld, specially considering mods, has (few, some, lots?) its players confused with FoW. Sure, with the amount of raiders we have, and the absurd amount of raiders we had in previous alphas, that doesn't surprise me, but that seems like a case to balance the game around having fog of war, not having huge amounts of enemies.

[MrSurvivor]

That suddenly makes RW sounds a whole lot like your run-of-the-mill Civilization-type games...

I don't know if it's a good or bad thing to you, so I'll assume the worse and continue on my idea.

Right now RimWorld with its total vision is very predictable and thus closer to pure management games (in the german spirit vein) than RPG or Strategy. So yeah, with Uncertainty Veil it would become closer as common strategy games. However, its goal is different of those of games like Starcraft, for example, that's why I changed its name.

After all, it's a choice: do Tynan want RimWorld to be close from Starcraft and Civilization than Farm Simulator and Cities in Motion. But I personally feel there's more potential stories coming out the first games than from the latter. Surprise and exploration are elements of successful stories. Careful planning and management, however enjoyable for other very good reasons, aren't as inspiring storytelling-wise.

True, it seems far too easy now to fight raiders because you always know where they are and where they will go and also where all your resources are, etc

I think that it should be an optional add-on on world generation because Rimworld seems far too easy without it.

Furthermore it should be like the AOE series where you don't know where anything us unless you scout and see the mountains and stuff and that you can only see units/animals/mechanoids/etc if it's in your person's "field of view".

[SpaceDorf]

I am still undecided what Fog of War could give to Rimworld.

I started a comparison text to Dwarf Fortress ( which I accidently deleted )
which made me tip in the No-Fog Group.

I try to reconstruct the arguments from memory, so stay with me.

As for now Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld use the same Sight-Blocking concept.
The Outside Map is visible from the beginning, everything that is undergroud is blocked from sight
and gets revealed by digging it out and then stays revealed.

Uncertanty is created through the size of the map. Everything is visible but you can't look at everything
at once. This is why Games that use Fog of War have multiple options to keep at least on top of which
areas you can and can't see. Minimaps, Radar, Jump to Locations ..

True Line of Sight is a performance killer with the sheer number of sight obscuring obstacles than can be randomly placed on the map
and path finding. You don't want 60 or more units doing this at the same time.
This should stay with turn-based strategy or roguelikes.

Then the Sight Radius with fow is anoying as heck, I would not want to watch colored circles move through grey sludge all the time.
And you would have to mark the unseen areas in some ways ..

As for the effort Tynan would have to put into a really working FoW System, I think that would be at least to alphas .. or with the
actual release schedule two to three month.

I base this on his guesstimate that he would need about 6 days to install a 3 Level FoG of war. ( Blocked / Revealed / Seeing )
Another week to balance sight radius with weapons range .. what will happen to mortars and sniper rifles ?
Implementing RTS Features to keep in touch with areas that are not visible for your pawns ... ( Radar, Minimap, Oversight map ..
whatever comes to mind ) Another week or to ..


All in all, I don't think for a feature that could be nice .. the effort is not worth it.

Still hiding some stuff from the player would be nice.

Single Invisible Enemies that Scout the base, entries, weaknesses and so on, until in ( invisble ) sight radius of pawns
Not showing what was in drop pods, so that at least somebody has to go look .. is it something good ? devilstrand ? raiders ?
wounded ?
If Raids and Sieges should be hidden, I don't know .. I am not overly fond of sudden localized mortar showers