Fog of war

[Ma77hew789]

What if your colonists had a view range and that was all you could see.
The rest of the map would be covered with fog so you couldn't see what
Was going on unless a colonist was in view  range of it. Think of it you wouldn't know what the raiders had, you wouldn't know how many there
are, you wouldn't even know where they are.

     Things like sandbags would slightly decrease view range but wall Would completely block it. Of course you would be able to build things like security cameras so you would be able to see out of your base but raiders might decide to knock one down. Bionic eyes could also increase the view range of the colonist who has them.

All in all I think it would be a great addition to the game. It would add suspense without make it too tense. Plus it makes sense, nobody can see through mountains.

[Johnny Masters]

No offense meant, but that's an older than dirt suggestion. I think the earlier pre-alpha iterations of the game had fow, but it has been taken for some reason (that i'll call dumb down the game).

Either way... Yeah, fog of would be great.

[Likif]

Aye

[Eleazar]

What if your colonists had a view range and that was all you could see.
The rest of the map would be covered with fog so you couldn't see what
Was going on unless a colonist was in view  range of it. Think of it you wouldn't know what the raiders had, you wouldn't know how many there are, you wouldn't even know where they are.

I dunno.  Fog of war is a great feature for certain kinds of games, but i don't think it would be a good fit for this game. RTS-type action is supposed to be a sideline of the game, not the centerpiece, as i understand it.  While fog might improve the RTS aspect, it would tend to hurt everything else.

How are you supposed to attack raiders/evil psychic ships/etc if you don't know where they are.  You have a colony to manage, you can't spend all your time directing your pawns searching through the map.

Anything that annoys you about pathing would be worse if pawns had a limited sight range, and could only respond to what they saw. (or what another colonist saw).

Also a some of the amusing stories come from knowing things that your colonist really don't have a means to know, clicking information and reading the wounds history, or pawns backstory

[Leird]

Fog of War wouldn't make the game better in any way, it would make hunting next to useless and also increase the micromanagement with a huge amount.

[Johnny Masters]

I dunno.  Fog of war is a great feature for certain kinds of games, but i don't think it would be a good fit for this game. RTS-type action is supposed to be a sideline of the game, not the centerpiece, as i understand it.  While fog might improve the RTS aspect, it would tend to hurt everything else.

Well, rimworld is one of those unique piece of quirky hybrid games. It shares elements of such games as of the building/sim genre, tactical games and "RTS-Action", as you put it (although RW is, fully, a RTS game). None of it is "sideline", you don't get to decide (at least not yet) what aspect you should put more effort into. If you neglect any of those, you lose or get closer to.

Although fog-of-war is closely related, at least imagery-wise, to how most RTS games portray it (a literal black veil or "fog") our friend wikipedia puts it:

The fog of war (German: Nebel des Krieges) is the uncertainty in situational awareness experienced by participants in military operations.[1] The term seeks to capture the uncertainty regarding one's own capability, adversary capability, and adversary intent during an engagement, operation, or campaign. The term is also used to define uncertainty mechanics in wargames.

So, FoW isn't a "RTS-action" exclusive feature. Most fps have fog of war, most games in fact (unless you have a power to show the enemy). Also, RW is about a stranded group in a dangerous unknown world. Not knowing what lurks out there fits very much into the concept of the game.

How are you supposed to attack raiders/evil psychic ships/etc if you don't know where they are.  You have a colony to manage, you can't spend all your time directing your pawns searching through the map.

That's the challenge of FoW, and some people like challenge. With FoW the game doesn't need to rely on absurd number of enemies to pose you a challenge. There's also a couple of ways to counter the fact you can't see everywhere, such as patrols, sensors (radar, cameras, etc), turrets, lookout posts, etc.

Also, and most importantly: FoW doesn't mean you pawns can only see in a silly few amount of squares around here. Several games have dynamic vision that depends on map features. So watching an empty field is easy, while a dense forest is not. It should make for some fun tactics such as surprise attacks/assassinations for melee type of pawns.

Anything that annoys you about pathing would be worse if pawns had a limited sight range, and could only respond to what they saw. (or what another colonist saw)

It wouldn't be any different than any other game with FoW. It would only really influence the player as in how he decides to run the show. If you think it should be safe for one of your guys walk alone 12 hours to pick some berries in the middle of nowhere and he runs into an aggressive animal, then yeah i suppose you could blame FoW (and yourself).

Also a some of the amusing stories come from knowing things that your colonist really don't have a means to know, clicking information and reading the wounds history, or pawns backstory

True, but you could also have such stories if you have vision (and as i said, there's plenty of ways to get better vision), and most importantly, fog of war provides more stories as well.

Fog of War wouldn't make the game better in any way, it would make hunting next to useless and also increase the micromanagement with a huge amount.

Well, let's agree to disagree then, FoW makes a lot of games better in a lot of ways. Hunting would mean the AI would roam the wilds until contact, which is fairly simple to make. Extra micromanage would amount to how you want to handle security, other than that it should be as usual, perhaps less so if attacks become less of a thing. Because i do think if we have FoW we wouldn't need to have raids every other sunday.

In sum, FoW isn't per se worse or better, it's different. Although i do think it would do this game good as it does serves 66% of the game (the sim and tactic bit).

[Leird]

Fair enough, but i think that maybe make it an option and not a feature would be a good compromise, because some people might want it on, but i think just as many doesn't want it.

[Likif]

As I wrote in my thread here, Rimworld currently has very little to challenge the player once the kill box is up and going.

Fog o' war would make physical sense, fit right into the game mentality, and increase the challenge.

[Splinterbee]

Sounds cool, but I would like an option or something... I'm really bad at this game

[Johnny Masters]

Fog of war isn't so much about difficulty as it is about how you play the game.

Certainly the game would need to be rebalanced around that, but difficulty would be handled mainly by directors and challenge %

Fog of war is love, fog of war is life, embrace it 

[Eleazar]

I dunno.  Fog of war is a great feature for certain kinds of games, but i don't think it would be a good fit for this game. RTS-type action is supposed to be a sideline of the game, not the centerpiece, as i understand it.  While fog might improve the RTS aspect, it would tend to hurt everything else.

Well, rimworld is one of those unique piece of quirky hybrid games. It shares elements of such games as of the building/sim genre, tactical games and "RTS-Action", as you put it (although RW is, fully, a RTS game). None of it is "sideline", you don't get to decide (at least not yet) what aspect you should put more effort into. If you neglect any of those, you lose or get closer to.

By "sideline" i don't mean "optional", but that it simply isn't the main focus of the game.  The front page says in large type: "A sci fi colony sim driven by an intelligent AI storyteller."  Via storyteller settings (and perhaps to some degree with diplomacy) you can play the game with less combat, but you can't really play a combat game with minimal base-building and colony-managment.

How are you supposed to attack raiders/evil psychic ships/etc if you don't know where they are.  You have a colony to manage, you can't spend all your time directing your pawns searching through the map.

That's the challenge of FoW, and some people like challenge. With FoW the game doesn't need to rely on absurd number of enemies to pose you a challenge. There's also a couple of ways to counter the fact you can't see everywhere, such as patrols, sensors (radar, cameras, etc), turrets, lookout posts, etc.

I love FoW in other games, like Civ or Battle for Wesnoth or games in general that focus on exploration, and i'm not against "challenge" per se. But not every challenge is a good fit for every game.  In particular for Rimworld it seems like FoW would require a lot more pawn babysitting with more dire results if you don't.

Also FoW would give the enemy a significant advantage, unless is was also applied to the enemy AIs.  And from what i've seen, designing competent-seeming AI with incomplete knowledge is a much harder challenge.  By which i mean triple A game studios often fail.

Fair enough, but i think that maybe make it an option and not a feature would be a good compromise, because some people might want it on, but i think just as many doesn't want it.

That may be a way to get people to agree on the forums, but it is often a terrible way to design a game.  Tons of systems would behave subtly or significantly different with fog-o-war on or off-- so it increases the labor and time of adding, tweaking, or balancing many features because you have to do it twice.

As I wrote in my thread here, Rimworld currently has very little to challenge the player once the kill box is up and going.

Perhaps-- i'm not that advanced yet.  But there are plenty of other ways to increase the challenge without making combat  a larger focus.

[Johnny Masters]

Via storyteller settings (and perhaps to some degree with diplomacy) you can play the game with less combat, but you can't really play a combat game with minimal base-building and colony-managment.

I'm not sure i really understand this phrase, could you rephrase it?

What i meant is that, as it is, combat in rimworld is as center-piece as it is collecting food and building a shelter. It all comes down to survive. So you might come to RW because you can build stuff, but you have to take the tactic/combat bit as well.

Babysitting would largely depends on your game difficulty i'd think, and i certainly expect the AI to play by the same rules. Your argument on AI implementation stands tho
..

I also don't think it's possible to correctly or humanly balance the game around such distinct gameplay. It'd have to be one or the other, although one would be able to cheat the FoW away is it is possible in other games.

Perhaps-- i'm not that advanced yet.  But there are plenty of other ways to increase the challenge without making combat  a larger focus.

It's worth mentioning that FoW is not (only) about combat. It's mainly about the feel and the psychological effect. Like i said, it plays well with the concept of the game, even though the game doesn't play it's own concept very well yet (its a rimworld with so many people and robots one wonder what's so rim about it).


edit: take games like prison architect. You can't see what your prisoners are up to and that plays wonderfully both in concept and how you tackle issues, and the game is far less "rts action" than rimworld, yet FoW plays an important part.

[Eleazar]

Via storyteller settings (and perhaps to some degree with diplomacy) you can play the game with less combat, but you can't really play a combat game with minimal base-building and colony-managment.

I'm not sure i really understand this phrase, could you rephrase it?

I haven't done it yet, but i understand that if you play with Phoebe Basebuilder there are many fewer random events, and thus less combat.  If Phoebe took all the combat out, it wouldn't be ideal (to my taste), but i still think it would be fun.  It's still Rimworld (more or less).  On the other hand if there was some other mode that emphasized the combat but took out the base-building it would be a very different game, and not nearly as compelling.   

It's worth mentioning that FoW is not (only) about combat. It's mainly about the feel and the psychological effect.

I get that, and the exploration and uncertanty factors are theoretically appealing.  It just doesn't seem like the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

[Johnny Masters]

Well, to each his own i guess, although I still don't see how FoW wouldn't fit into the game, and how it's drawbacks are as theoretical as its advantages.

It's worth mentioning that classic games like Dungeon Keeper, Startopia and Space colony had both a fog of war and a near perfect balance (or at least the option of play) between combat, building and management.