Fog of War

[Cannibal]

The current fog in wesnoth doesn't affect MP gameplay much imo, since a single fast unit can wipe out a large area of fog. Thus I find it very difficult to be "sneaky" in MP, most units that are within ATTACK RANGE are also VISIBLE. This current situation enables you to AWKNOWLEDGE and PREPARE for enemy attacks. Few units other than flying units have the ability "pop out of nowhere", and that only happens on certain maps in certain situations.

My proposal is to decrease line of sight to 66% or 50% the amount of movement, instead of 100%. After all, if a soldier can march 10km in a day, can he see as far as 10km? No, he would have to be an elvish marksman to even see 5km

I understand that this will change gameplay tremendously if implemented, and have a 99.9% chance of getting rejected by mainline wesnoth. But I thought it was interesting and I'm gambling on that 0.1%.

*waits for devs to tell him that he can make this in WML*

[TheLost1]

I really like this idea. I believe that fog is lacks "oomph" as it is.

What if there was a "view distance slider" in multiplayer?

[Sangel]

Hmmmm. If this can't be implemented in WML, maybe the code should be changed so it could. I could see uses for a "heavier than usual" or even "lighter than usual" fog, definable on a map-by-map or even side-by-side basis.

[Darth Fool]

This is not currently possible to do in a clean way in wml. You could, for example, set a units movement points to 2 to restrict its view, and then store a different variable with its real movement points and update it every time it moves. This would be quite ugly. At some point I plan on tackling making FoW more flexible to provide different options for campaign developers, but I don't plan on doing that until I finish my AI which will not 'cheat' in fogged games the way that the current AI does.

[Baufo]

The current fog in wesnoth doesn't affect MP gameplay much imo, since a single fast unit can wipe out a large area of fog.

Your idea has definitely a point and I quite like it but I think you are wrong if you think it would not affect gamyplay much. I think in some faction combinations it is nearly a game winning advantage to know the enemy faction and I have never met an experiencecd player who preferred to choose his faction instead of going random so his opponents have to recruit a good combination of different units instead of choosing "specialists" against the choosen faction. This is how fog of war affects the gameplay IMHO.

[zookeeper]

The good thing about the way the current FoW behaves is that it's intuitive and simple. I think the cleanest way to implement shorter vision range would be to make it a unit-specific attribute: for example gryphons would see 10 MP's away, elvish fighters would see 4 MP's away, trolls would see 2 MP's away due to bad sight, etc. However, this obviously complicates everything by introducing yet another unit-specific property, so I don't think it's a good idea (so don't spend your time arguing against it unless someone else argues for it). Just making units' vision range be half of their movement range would have to deal with rounding, which might not be that big of a problem.

I think the idea of making the sight range be limited by enemy ZoC is the more interesting FoW idea.

[Cannibal]

The good thing about the way the current FoW behaves is that it's intuitive and simple. I think the cleanest way to implement shorter vision range would be to make it a unit-specific attribute: for example gryphons would see 10 MP's away, elvish fighters would see 4 MP's away, trolls would see 2 MP's away due to bad sight, etc. However, this obviously complicates everything by introducing yet another unit-specific property, so I don't think it's a good idea (so don't spend your time arguing against it unless someone else argues for it). Just making units' vision range be half of their movement range would have to deal with rounding, which might not be that big of a problem.

I think the idea of making the sight range be limited by enemy ZoC is the more interesting FoW idea.

I also thought of the ZoC idea, but it lacks a realistic explanation (units throw smoke grenades into their ZoC)... tho I don't think realism matters since this game already has "magic" and walking corpses

oh and I just got another idea! how about chaotic units see further at night and lawful units see further during the day? and terrain also affect sight range? I know that this is extremely messy and breaks half the FPI rules, but its'll be cool to see this done in a custom scenario.. right now I don't even know how to use WML, so I'm not 1337 enough to implement any of this myself, I'm hoping one of the WML experts take interest

[zookeeper]

FoW behaviour can't really be tuned with WML. Neither do I think it's especially necessary either, since it would be rather annoying to start having different kinds of fog rules in different campaigns, for example.

If the fog rules are changed in some way, it'll have to be a code change.

[Cannibal]

FoW behaviour can't really be tuned with WML. Neither do I think it's especially necessary either, since it would be rather annoying to start having different kinds of fog rules in different campaigns, for example.

If the fog rules are changed in some way, it'll have to be a code change.

well... I guess this is a lost cause, it probobly took you guys forever to balance and polish wesnoth to its current state, changes to code? lol no

[Sombra]

Cannibal, I would like to add that I already argued for a similar change and for similar reasons.
http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13806

I would like to to see ZOC- FOW to allow sneaky attacks. Realism aside, one of the main task of your own troops is to catch enemy scouts in your territory to prevent the enemy to know your plans. In the history of war I think that it is much more realistic to work with limited information about your enemythan know the exact strengh and placement of the enemey troops.

Still this would be a mayor change regarding the way ´Wesnoth is played. =>new balancing of units etc. Skirmish ability etc.

The benefit would be for me:

- Even more intuitive than the current system (I had to get used to the Wesnoth way coming here from other strategy games)

- I think the game would be more attack driven. Right now (and lok at the tournament replays) Wesnoth is mainly played defensivly . As you know how strong your enemy is you can always move in the optimal defense position.

- Most serious games on MP server are played with FOW. Simply to add a little bit of uncertainy. I think many players would see the added complexity as another test of skill.

[bert1]

I instinctively like the idea of more sophisticated FoW, enabling more sneaking, which at present is only a minor part of MP play. It would make intelligence gathering a bigger part of the game, with scouts and flying units being more useful. Wesnoth would become less like chess and more like war.

I prefer the idea of FoW being limited by terrain rather than ZoC or movement. Ater all, just because you can't move beyond enemy lines doesn't mean you can't see over their heads or through the gaps. Again, this would make wesnoth more like a battlefield than a chessboard, which I think is perhaps what people like.

But changing the FoW rules may have significant balance implications for the default era on standard maps, which would be a pain for the devs. I think the present system is still perfectly OK.

[JW]

I am completely surprised that everyone is jumping on this bandwagon. I'm not saying I'm against a change in FoW, but man....everyone else seems to really want it. I didn't realize the current system was thought of so poorly.

[Keiju]

I prefer the idea of FoW being limited by terrain rather than ZoC or movement. Ater all, just because you can't move beyond enemy lines doesn't mean you can't see over their heads or through the gaps.

Somehow that made me think about the hexes themselves. "Hexes are possibly miles across", or however the saying goes. How exactly are you going to see over an unit which has maybe 50k troops or more? Or over a hex that is 10000 miles "long"? [The point of this is only to show that these explanations shouldnt be used to make this decision. They can easily be used to support the suggested FoW and the old one]

Personally I like the idea that you can see only the hexes where you can move (ZoC redusing the visibility).

One reason is that a game with FoW isnt very different from a game without it. This would enchance the difference, which would give the game versality. The game would be more of a strategy game and a bit less of a tactics game with information being a thing that needs to be fought over. With information being scarcer youd have to make strategic choices at some point.

Besides, would the current FoW need to be removed in order to to implent this? Just call the old FoW "Tactical Fog of War", or TFoG, and the new one "Strategic Fog of War", or SFoW. Might be little complex with three options, but I, for one, would appreciate this and Im sure Im not alone.

[thissneppah]

Actually I think the ZoC FoW is more realistic then the current system, not that I care for realism. But if you do want a realistic or real life relating reason for this then my explanation would be:

If a hex could be a mile long then a unit could be a legion.
A legion would have its own scouts as well as other specialized subgroups. A scout group from the legion can only scout so far from the base of operation and if an enemy legion blocks the scout its not like they can single handedly take them all on. So the scout range is limited to movement and ZoC. Ta-da!!

As I said I don’t really care for realism but I though I give my thoughts on the subject neither the less.

[Keiju]

If a hex could be a mile long then a unit could be a legion. A legion would have its own scouts as well as other specialized subgroups. A scout group from the legion can only scout so far from the base of operation and if an enemy legion blocks the scout its not like they can single handedly take them all on. So the scout range is limited to movement and ZoC. Ta-da!!

That was what i was trying to say in the first paragraph there =]. However, it can be easily said that unit stands for single man and hexes are quite small, so in that case you can see over an enemy unit. Thats why those arguments really arent arguments. Wed need two FoWs to represent both of those situations (small scale and big scale). Another thing is, are two different FoWs needed and if not, which one is prefferrable.