Uncertainty Veil (Fog of War)

[Medio]

2 state fog of war. Explored/Unexplored

No line of site fog of war, to reduce performance issues.

Unexplored fog of war is not opaque, some transparencies (either brightness or fuzziness). You can still see where things outside your camp take place, just not exactly the events that unfold.

Day 15- We could hear distant battles taking place to the north of our camp. We know we were just scanned out by some pirate signals, so that might have been them. Maybe they had a mutiny, we might have to explore the area to find out what happened, then again it might be too dangerous not knowing if it was all a ruse to get us to come out. On another note, the animals have been acting strange. Some of the muffalos have been showing aggression for no real reason. We've stepped up our defenses to keep them at bay, not to mention if those raiders are still around.

Day 18- The raiders never came to our doorstep and now we decided to make a scout party to try and find out what happened. Pirates are enough to be worried about, but if they were killed than we need to know what did it. There could be survivors too, and maybe if we save them, they might be inclined to join us, it never hurts to have another helping hand.

Day 21- Our scout party moved north to try and get some more information to the whereabouts of the pirates, we found a body, along with a sniper rifle. I guess they must have left in a hurry to leave that behind. He looked like he might have been trampled, most likely from a muffalo.

Day 22- Andy is dead. On our way back from investigating what happened to the pirates, a muffalo caught us by surprise. Andy was the first to get hit. We put the mad beast down, and tried to bring Andy back to camp, but he lost too much blood and died. Rest in peace my friend.

[Darth Fool]

Personally, I would like to see fog of war as a night time feature, thus distinguishing night from day by more than just "my pawns sleep and plants don't grow."  Being able to see every revealed area as it is now during the day would make a lot of tasks reasonable (looting goo, etc...) while having the FoW occur at night would provide a certain amount of tension.  An alternate, though related, option would be to have FoW be controlled by lighting.  Outdoors during the day would be as normal, eclipses and night would be FoW, and building lights would permanently reveal areas, at least until taken out by tribal raiders.  It could be made quite efficient as pawns LoS would not need to be checked, and lighting is already calculated.  Fire would have additional uses.  Overall I think it would be a win.

[akiceabear]

Personally, I would like to see fog of war as a night time feature, thus distinguishing night from day by more than just "my pawns sleep and plants don't grow."  Being able to see every revealed area as it is now during the day would make a lot of tasks reasonable (looting goo, etc...) while having the FoW occur at night would provide a certain amount of tension.  An alternate, though related, option would be to have FoW be controlled by lighting.  Outdoors during the day would be as normal, eclipses and night would be FoW, and building lights would permanently reveal areas, at least until taken out by tribal raiders.  It could be made quite efficient as pawns LoS would not need to be checked, and lighting is already calculated.  Fire would have additional uses.  Overall I think it would be a win.

This is a nice approach.

[Mathenaut]

I think Tynan hit the nail on the head early on.

It's great for a strategy game, but he explicitly doesn't want Rimworld to be a quirky strategy game. He'd prefer strategic elements in a story/simulator type game.

I think that the mix we have at present is near ideal. Open parts of the map are known, but internal structures are obscured. This lends toward exploration as opposed to constant fretting over security and intel.

[Johnny Masters]

No fog of war is a missed opportunity regarding several (potential) survival aspects of the game. The concept of fog of war goes way beyond traditional rts games, which is the main criticism of FoW in these forums. You can even get to a point, due to research, to reveal the entire map and play as current.

"Why, if in the end it will work the same"  "because early game would be more tense evincing the survival aspect of 'we just got shipwrecked in a hostile planet', and getting over that stage brings more of a sense of achievement. Also, several events could influence fog of war offering tactical challenges and options."

Anyway, it all boils down to personal preference.  If it ever gets (re)implemented or not, it will be due to whichever side voices higher.

[geredis]

Thanks for the explanation, Tynan! More core content is certainly more important than extra features like FoW. And if the FoW was implemented, it should have the extra states and other high-quality elements. Although certainly not necessary now, if other players think the idea has merit it might be something to keep in mind for a future module.

I'd strongly disagree.

I'd say that uncertainty/fog-of-war is a core concept of the game.  As it stands now, part of the appeal of mountain bases (not to say they are bad) is how easy they are to set up because yo ucan easily scan the map for the largest mountain and simply go there to build.  With a Fog of War feature, you incentivize building right where you are, or nearly at your landing site, simply for survival's sake before you put yourself in a position to move to that more defensible mountain hole.

Similarly, while warnings that raiders are coming are great, the lack of a fog of war means that you always know exactly where they are coming from the moment they pop out...whereas with it, you actually have to put guards everywhere when an alert comes and hope they come at that perfect speed, and from the right direction, so that your people aren't sleepy by the time the raiders attack, but also aren't so fast that you are able to put your people exactly where you want.  A little uncertainty is never a bad thing, especially in a game like this.

[daft73]

......whereas with it, you actually have to put guards everywhere when an alert comes and hope they come at that perfect speed, and from the right direction, so that your people aren't sleepy by the time the raiders attack, but also aren't so fast that you are able to put your people exactly where you want.  A little uncertainty is never a bad thing, especially in a game like this.

To put guards everywhere means you have a surplus of colonists, or your colony goes on time-out until the raiders eventually show up. Not sure if this add tension, or just waiting and wasting time.

I could see a possible angle for FoW, actually using fog as the catalyst..so weather related. This might work to satisfy the need for tension.

Or the really crazy idea of making it a toggle in Options to turn on/off FoW.

[geredis]

Everywhere is somewhat exaggerated, but I meant everywhere as in key points all over your entire colonial perimeter, not...everywhere as in scattered sufficiently to un-fog the entire map at all times.

[daft73]

Everywhere is somewhat exaggerated, but I meant everywhere as in key points all over your entire colonial perimeter, not...everywhere as in scattered sufficiently to un-fog the entire map at all times.

I understand what you mean, but still having to spread-out your colonists for roughly 2-3 real-time minutes is waiting is still tedious.

[geredis]

And to that aspect of wasted time...I don't see that necessarily.  Sure, it may seem like wasted time but I see it as tension and also creates an interesting choice for the player.

Either you can pull the colonists off of work the moment you get the alarm (since even if you cant'see them in the fog of war they're probably making enough noise/yous aw the streaking balls of fire in the sky/whatever) and pull your colony's productivity to zero while you either man your positions so you can reform the defenses in the right place...and in the process perhaps waste days on end...  Or you can take a more proactive approach and keep some of the colony working while you send a handful of guys out to take the fight to them...and in doing so risk the colony being defenseless if you chose the wrong place to search, all while ensuring that you deal with the problem in such a way that your production is not entirely reduced.

[daft73]

I suppose after 2 years of a certain fitting style of playing the game, changing seems foreign, if not unnecessary. Only though because the game is not set up that way, not because I strictly am against the idea of FoW.

FoW for me at best is a situational thing, ie weather or night time.

If though a really clever way comes up, I'm not 100% opposed to the idea either.

[ja7833]

I think introducing a limited "Fog of War" concept within the current confines of the game could be beneficial specifically:

1.  Entire map always revealed during crash landing
2.  Location of all resources (packaged survival meals, metals, etc.) not revealed until your colonists find them OR you build a
Comms console which serves double-duty as a "big brother survey and monitoring station"
3.  Nighttime FOW abstracted by severely limiting/eliminating the time before any raiders attack (at night)

[Adamiks]

+1, but only if fog will can be switched off/on.

[Mathenaut]

I don't really see where all of this massive appeal and sudden challenge is supposed to come from.

Fog won't stop mountain base digging. It won't even add tension to raids, it will just grant a huge incentive/reward for having complex turret arrays and killboxes to avoid getting blindsided, which is exactly why Tynan removed it to begin with.

[akiceabear]

I don't really see where all of this massive appeal and sudden challenge is supposed to come from.

Fog won't stop mountain base digging. It won't even add tension to raids, it will just grant a huge incentive/reward for having complex turret arrays and killboxes to avoid getting blindsided, which is exactly why Tynan removed it to begin with.

It's about tension and story telling, not challenge. Your concerns about killboxes and turrets could be addressed with a rebalance of build costs/needs, rather than just ignoring an entire gameplay concept.

My main gripe is that Tynan has guesstimated it would take about a week to implement a decent system. I wish he would - I imagine a few modders would leap on it for balance, new tech, etc etc, if just the framework were there.