Things missing in Forged Alliance, Session 2
Session 2: Elevation affected range.
This is the second installment in my series on issues that I still have with Supcom FA. Again, don’t get me wrong, I love the game. I think that GPG really did a lot in balancing the game and listening to the community, and they deserve credit for that. Unfortunately they did miss a few things. This is number 2.
Elevation actually already effects range in the game, it’s just that the unit targeting does not take it into account, so I can make absolutely no use of it at all. All the engine needs to do is calculate the farthest shot, and let me target anything closer than that. Hell, if this just worked for t2 arty and PD I’d be happy. . .
Also we still need an option to see where a PD/arty station can hit, even if you can only see this info when placing the structure. It is till too easy to place a PD next to something that blocks a lot of its range. We need some sort of visual indicator for where it can and cannot hit. Take the guesswork out of base defense! (also, see my previous post on the topic here)
Short and sweet. Discuss.
As a side note, Monday EbolaSoup brought up the topic of elevation affecting sight range. I think that this would be a wonderful addition to the game, but as it stands sightlines are not even blocked by hills and mountains. this is probably another one of those computationally expensive things that was axed (or never even considered) because of the amount of power it would take. I personally am of the opinion that a more refined and detailed game mechanic is better than pretty graphics, and I would prefer to see this added rather than have the game prettied up with more polygons and flashier explosions. But thats just me.
December 4th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
I realize that today’s games require a ton more computations all the time than the games of yesteryear, but bringing up one of the games Chris Taylor worked on when he was in Cavedog Entertainment, Total Annihilation: Kingdoms, defensive structures gave a larger line of sight the higher up they were compared to everything else. They would also shoot farther than they would normally, but then again, you could tell a stationary unit to target an enemy forever and once that unit came into range it would remove it from play. Granted, Kingdoms didn’t have all the fancy lines and targeting distances showing, but I’m just saying, they’ve done it before, and with a game that would run on my old P3 with 256MB of ram and a Geforce 4 (the cheap one).
December 5th, 2007 at 12:21 am
uhoh… another mention of “that game”
December 5th, 2007 at 3:40 am
Actually now that i think about it, if sight range was blocked by hills, it may also be a good way to tell what turrets (and other “direct fire” units) can and cannot hit. but we still would need a way to tell where art could hit. which we *desperately* need, GPG. desperately.
December 5th, 2007 at 8:54 am
Some sort of range indicator is an excellent idea.
Considering the size of Sup Com maps, increased range with elevation would be nice, but it’s not something that’s going to have much of an impact on gameplay in 99% of situations and only the pros are going to really notice it.
Right: one suggestion for future “Things Missing from FA” update. Naval resource buildings. Probably the most important thing about The Core Contingency was the water structures. It meant you were able to construct naval bases. This gave you a whole range of options, and meant you could almost abandon the land battle altogether. This is an aspect I’d love to see in Supreme Commander and it’d make the naval maps 10 million times more interesting and unpredictable to play.
December 5th, 2007 at 11:46 am
I think underwater base-building is the subject of a future session, so lets not open discussion on that now.
Elevation absolutely should effect range, and units should take this into account automatically. It’s kind of a no-brainer, and I don’t even think it would be that hard computationally, since the game is already doing a lot of similar physics calcualations. Or at least have it effect indirect artillery units.
As far as LOS goes, it would be nice to have elevation block LOS but I think this becomes a lot tougher computationally and is probably not as important gameplay-wise. However, I would absolutely love to see an overlay when placing PDs that highlighted all the area that can be hit by that weapon, thus instantly making visible blind spots, dips in terrain that your PD won’t be able to hit, etc. This would be a one-time thing that would only be rendered as you were siting the defensive structure, and it would take a ton of guess-work out of placement. I think this would not only be easy to implement but would be the kind of UI feature that SupCom is already famous for.
December 5th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
I totally agree regarding PD + Arty LOS and range…
Speaking of LOS, I always thought that sonar should be affected by LOS… as far as I understand it, sonar in reality shouldn’t be able to see around islands. Springing off of the underwater bases, this could add motivation to hide bases in the sonar shadow of islands. Maybe someday?
December 5th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Water based structures is number 5 i believe.
and as i said, range is already affected by elevation. its simple to do an experiment to see for yourself. open up a map with some tall cliffs and some plains (i think ians cross was the one i was playing when i noticed). build an arty on the cliff, and one on the plains. then have the arty force fire at its extreme range. you’ll notice that the one on the cliff sometimes shoots way further than the one on the plains (on ians cross, that can almost be to the midpoint of the opponents base when you build on one of those little “island” platues. i remember the first time i played that map, i took the platue outside the enemy’s base, thinking that the range boost would allow me to shoot clean inside (i remember Chris saying something about elevation affecting range prior to the release of the original sup com). well, it did, i just couldn’t *target* anything outside the fixed “max” range line. this, i think, is a problem. if you could target at the true max range then, on ians cross especially, keeping you opponent from setting up a firebase on the high ground outside your base would be essential to victory. combine that with the variable slope movement. . . . well, lets just say it would be very interesting indeed.
December 5th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Yeah its odd to have a feature only half-implemented like that. The physics are there, but the unit AI doesn’t take it into account. Very frustrating and we can only hope it gets fixed at some point, there’s not much more we can do here except to explain the situation, describe what we want to happen, and then go on from there. Hopefully GPG is aware of these things already.
@Monk Ellipse, yes both sonar and radar rely on high frequency waves traveling through a conductive medium; water in the case of sonar, air in the case of radar. When that medium is broken by high density material such as a mountain the high frequencies are unable to penetrate. Therefore, to be realistic both radar and sonar should be more or less LOS devices. There is a reason you see all those television and radio antenna towers on top of high hills. For gameplay purposes, however, I think it works fine as is, this is probably one of those things that sounds great as an idea but works out poorly when you are actually playing. I have enough things to think about already in Supcom without worrying about radar blind spots.
December 5th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
I agree, radar blind spots = bad, but i would still like to see LOS blind spots. it would add to the immersion factor, plus be a really good way to quickly see low hills. and scouts, essential as they are, would be even more essential. im half and half on sonar though. i always thought it was kinda sillily how i could see clean across a long skiny island, but not atualy be able to see “around” it. (the first one that comes to mind is the “world” map. put a t3 sonar in the little hollow below Brazil, see into the pacific = lame)
December 5th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Engineer:
Yes, I hear ya, the beauty of simplicity is sometimes overlooked. However, naval battle does suffer from being inherintly linear regarding terrain (where you have elevation) and I think the sacrifice to simplicity would be outweighed by the positive addition of tactics.
Consider, for instance, where you usally place your sonar station. Usually it’s close to your land base + naval fac. If sonar were succeptible to LOS, you wouldn’t see an enemy naval force approaching until it came out of the shadow of your island. This it would be to your benefit to put the sonar on both sides of the island. It would also be advantageous for attacking naval forces to stay in the shadow of islands. Building that base-busting MonkeyLord behind the enemies base? Try hiding it in a sonar shadow for grins!
I dunno, I don’t expect them to add this, nor will I lose sleep over it, I just think it could be fun :) Rant over!
December 6th, 2007 at 8:41 am
I might be mistaken, but didn’t TA have units LOS effected by terrain? I seem to remember not noticing an enemy force on the backside of a hill when I crested it, and getting taught a lesson for it.
Also, while it might not be as efficient, I’ve used transports on Field of Isis to get t2 engies onto the wall above my base, and then used attack ground with those to create a constant field of fire in and beyond the northern gap. Obviously some shots fall short, but some go long as well, overall it kept people from wanting to send many units in that direction until T3 when they could handle that type of fire reasonably well.
December 6th, 2007 at 10:56 am
I think TA had it as an option. Visibility could be cicular (as it is in SupCom) or it could be LOS-based.
I do agree visibility blocked by terrain would be a positive gameplay feature, at least as an option. I don’t know how difficult it would be to implement. It’s likely they toyed with this idea in development and decided against it, probably for gameplay reasons once again.
Regarding sonar, you guys are right, it would be nice if sonar at least was blocked by land. Not so much for realism as to allow for a bit more sneaking about with subs and amphibious units.
December 6th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
I think a lot of the problems i am going to bring up were left out for performance reasons. i also relies that most of these will never be implemented in the original sup com engine, we will have to wait for sup com 2. this list is designed primarily to open up the debate on how these features should be implemented in the future, and to let GPG know that the community would really like to see it implemented in a specific way. FA is a really great game, but it does need some polish to make it a good as it can get. some things also seem kind weird to leave out (or half implemented), but i think it was done that way because of performance issues. of course my personal preference (as i have said before and will say again) is for better game mechanics rather than a better looking game. i would rather have terrain affected LOS than better looking units with more polygons and shaders. but i’m also in the minority there. i think the main, over all idea here is just attention to detail. when i build any arty on top of a hill i want to go “wow, i can shoot further!” and when i send a tank up to the bottom of a hill i want to go “hmmm, i can’t see the other side of this hill. i wonder what happens if i go up to the top. . . ” that would be the kind of stuff that would really impress me.
December 6th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
I agree, as LOS was a part of TA, you know it had to be considered as they were creating this game. Cresting a hill to see a Krogoth coming up the other side that you didn’t notice before is classic.
I find it very cool that GPG has created a game so epic that it runs up against current computer horsepower limits, similar to what TA did 10 years ago. They’ve laid the groundwork for something that will continue to evolve as CPU tech evolves, and discussing what we want to see, and how to impliment it is a great way to see it come about.
Radar shadows…I don’t think this is useful enough to waste computational power. Sonar shadows though, would as others have said, add a lot of depth (ha ha) to naval warfare (as well as more naval base production, the later topic).
I agree with others though, the two biggest things needed right now are arty targetting actually based on elevation, and point defense/arty hit area masks to let you know where your coverage is. Nothing is more frustrating than discovering a void in your defenses the hard way.
December 6th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Radar shadows would not only be useful, but it would make having complete radar coverage on certain maps much more difficult. As it stands, in a 2v2 I know almost everything about what my enemy is doing, at least in a generic sense. If I had to put my radar on a high hill, possibly with less area to protect it from attacks, in order to avoid it having large blind spots, that would be a very interesting and new aspect of the game. It would be interesting to see if someone could make a mod with any of these adjustments for experimentation.
December 7th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Just want to add my agreement to adding LOS/Range affected by elevation and terrain. I’ve wanted to make some maps that play with strategic high ground to fight over but I’m not sure how meaningful that would be with the current engine. I still find myself wanting to put things on top of hills though. It may not make much difference in how it works but it makes me feel better.
December 7th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
OK from the top
Sonar NEEDS blind spots! its a must for the game!
radar also should have something done with it to, but Omni needs to be uneffected i think so u can say anything in omni range i know about!
Arty NEEDS to be effected by hight!! same with PD id like to see some maps where u could fight for a hill in the middle that IF/WHEN u get it u could hit anything with arty a sort of King Of the Hill senario!
December 16th, 2007 at 1:56 am
Omg my first post!!!
Anyway.. elevation should affect the max range and the minimum range aswell.
If these changes were made it would be hell fun as everyone rushes to highground :)