Fog of War and Unit Volume

Tibr, truth is always somewhere in the middle...as I have many times said. People in general, so gamers as well, get bored very easily. In order to keep them interested in something, you need to always add new stuff. The same applies to online games...You have to keep on adding content, or eventually the interest goes down...In that aspect, FOW and volume were not introduced to resolve all the problems and keep the players interested in BC forever, but they are operating as new functions to make things a bit more interesting....until the next thing comes...etc. etc.

Piktas wrote:

It's a good mechanic just needs technical reworking... I still think that some units need to be allowed to ball up. Namely UD but they would probably need another nerf or other races a buff.

The changes should affect all units, not just the UD. We cannot make it so the UD can ball up, but other units can. What I am thinking about right now, is to possibly allow units to pass through other friendly units with some kind of a "force" keeping them apart and definitely not allowing them to stop at the same position. In other words, players will be able to move units through other units, but no unit can stop at a position occupied by another unit. It will not be like some kind of a "wall", so units may be positioned "marginally" inside another unit (a few troops from one unit colliding with a few troops from another), but we will prevent cases as in Erevos and Olympus when the banners of units could be close to each other and in effect have units inside others. I am also leaning towards adding some penalties if one unit is in another...

Ideas:

i) Units passing through other units have a 50% slower movement speed.

ii) Units positioned into very close proximity with other friendly units (troops from one unit inside another unit) may receive a melee penalty if charged, to simulate the chaos due to the disarray in the ranks.

Piktas wrote:

It seemed to me that CP was dominant in the previous system. Sure maybe a little nerf on the fame rewards from buildings was in order but not a complete disregard to the time invested building those buildings imo.

Not as much as it should be to be honest. It was merely a bonus... I guess the ideal would be to count the City Score at 1/2 of its value and then add to that the CP, to have the final value which will determine the rank of a player in the Rankings.

Piktas wrote:

I think having it as an option would solve all problems. The person going into a solo battle could check a box in army screen. Could be like a hardcore mode that would give additional loot and rewards as well as CP. Or a person that is "hosting" a pvp battle could tick a box that the pvp will be FOW or not in FOW. Coops could be automated like we have people cooping in GW and others cooping in regular coops but sometimes they both end up fighting a race of their own factions.

I was thinking about that... I think I may have an idea...

Day and Night battle...

When a player enters a battle it could either be "Day" or "Night"...Totally random

2 scenarios

A) Day is without FOW and Night with FOW.

B) Day is without FOW, Night A with FOW at 50% (i.e. Increased Field of View for the units, which means that they can see 50% further than with normal FOW), Night B with FOW as it is right now

This could work for all battle modes.

Piktas wrote:

As far as new units are concerned I'd personally would prefer that the current units would get some new extra skills before new units being introduced.

It could well be 1 universal unit which will be used as a "Scout". Still under consideration..

Piktas wrote:

It definitely isn't, however, people in kongregate and armor games are mostly kids or people that play simple flash games during work hours. The audience is the simple flash gamey type is what I'm getting at. Hardcore gamers are few and far between in these places imo.

Valid point...something that we want to change...more on that later on...

Now that i have tested FOW... the base view distance is far too low for ranged units to be effective. The volume is a good thing in general.

What i would like to see is that the battle timer is also calculating speeding up. That way ppl can speed up battles in the beginning but also have an estimate about AI movement without risking to make a crucial mistake at the very beginning.

@RuneSlayer Now those ideas I could support. Only thing I would like to see done differently is night and day not being random but actual cycles. Since you did mention at some point that day/night cycles are planned for the game. So maybe the day/night could change hand every game cycle (though that's a long time) or maybe every hour or so? This of course would make the scout unit only useful during night cycles and you would know exactly when those would happen. So to make  a scout unit I would prefer to be some kind of summoning spell or a consumable. If there's a limited amount of consumables allowed per battle some people might opt out on using scouts and some wouldn't.

If not then at least make the town view change day/night in a consistent manner and have a failsafe for the random day/night encounters so we wouldn't end up with the old problem of "i'm fighting only undead". E.g. If a player did like 5 (or whatever number you deem better) consecutive battles in either day or night then the next battle would be in the other "timezone". Because I can totally see people complaining about this already

Everything else you said I like very much.  

Tibr wrote:

Now that i have tested FOW... the base view distance is far too low for ranged units to be effective. The volume is a good thing in general.

If we increase the FOV (Field of View), then we will have to increase the battlefield map as well, otherwise units will be able to see almost half the map without even moving...

As for the volume...it surely needs some tweaking...

Piktas wrote:

@RuneSlayer Now those ideas I could support. Only thing I would like to see done differently is night and day not being random but actual cycles. Since you did mention at some point that day/night cycles are planned for the game. So maybe the day/night could change hand every game cycle (though that's a long time) or maybe every hour or so?

Hmmm..that could create other problems... People on certain regions in the world would have more Day battles and others more Night battles. Unfair...

Even if we made it so there is a cycle in the game (not related to the conquest cycle), then we would "divide" the Community even more, by having "Day Generals" and "Night Generals", people fighting only during the day and people fighting only during the night...

RuneSlayer wrote:

Ideas:

i) Units passing through other units have a 50% slower movement speed.

ii) Units positioned into very close proximity with other friendly units (troops from one unit inside another unit) may receive a melee penalty if charged, to simulate the chaos due to the disarray in the ranks.

A very good start

RuneSlayer wrote:

I was thinking about that... I think I may have an idea...

Day and Night battle...

When a player enters a battle it could either be "Day" or "Night"...Totally random

2 scenarios

A) Day is without FOW and Night with FOW.

B) Day is without FOW, Night A with FOW at 50% (i.e. Increased Field of View for the units, which means that they can see 50% further than with normal FOW), Night B with FOW as it is right now

This could work for all battle modes.

Option B, 2:1:1 structure, not 1:1:1

RuneSlayer wrote:

Piktas wrote:

As far as new units are concerned I'd personally would prefer that the current units would get some new extra skills before new units being introduced.

It could well be 1 universal unit which will be used as a "Scout". Still under consideration...

If not a new unit, perhaps players could appoint a scout unit (or 2) from Cav and LI/LIA (and maybe archers, but not arti or HI)?

Tibr wrote:

Now that i have tested FOW... the base view distance is far too low for ranged units to be effective. The volume is a good thing in general.

This is what scouts are for

Suddenly having a Cav unit is no longer detrimental to your overall army strength, as the utility it provides can be crucial to victory.

The most expensive scout you can have .. that you expose to ranged enemy fire. Not the best way to handle things.

Has worked mostly ok for me so far.

But you're right, its not ideal.
Perhaps we can look forward to a new unit role, a cheap mobile scouting unit that is horrible in combat, but has a larger view distance and some nice utility abilities

Thats the part of flying units yet to come. I have not noticed that cavs have bigger Fov range.. they should. And archers should too, they are trained to look into the distance. Still in general, the fov range is too low, an increase in 25% is necessary imho, any proper use of archers is very limited atm.

Just remove FoW.

Use a kind of FoV, if an enemy unit is behind a building, it isn't in the FoV of your unit, therefor your unit can't see the enemy unit.
This can happen in any range, full map or 4 units away.
If you're the one hiding, you should be touching the building, and there will be maybe a 3 - 6 second timer until you 'control' the building, which means you can see the enemy and the enemy can't see you.

For collision,also completely remove it.

Do the 50 % movement penalty and the melee penalty idea. And add no volume on enemy collision once engaged.

I like the new rankings a lot more than the fame rankings. However I also think City Score should not be worthless. Maybe either a separate rankings or continue to make Aether rewards from City Score. The new rankings are better though I think.

ok first the things i like:

cps ranking is awesome

no more bubbles is nice too

nomore red color in my barrack when i equip my units->nice

now things that need a change:

FoW can be nice in PVP but its not in PVE as long the CPU can use his Predator spyglass knowing where i am

i like the fact that units can hide behind places but i think every real arti-unit has it own spyglass to look much more far away so why do my cav has to play the "eye" for my blind arti

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i agree with others that we need a way to let friendly units pass each other
---greetings---

edit clarifications on FOW in PVE ->>just 4 the record im Still Winning 99% of my pve battles it makes no difference and its not "harder" its just annoying..

1st: i like boh FoW and unit volume!
2nd: this way, also in PVE, rewards the bravest warriors, and if u are a coward who likes to hide and shoot, fu
3rd: if u like to do automatic PVE wins, fu
4th: these battle rules kick the axe!
5th: try to train to manouvering and to spot (with cavs), and u will win and enjoy every battle, for now the victory is not a gift!
6th: coop needs to aid each other more than before, this is great!
7th: please don t take away the FoW in solos, nore realistic and funny (and tough too)
8th: make wider manouvers, and u will get the right deployment
9th:if u like to make da ballz, (liaball), fu
10th: Kill'em all!!!