Fog of War Thread - Machinations

This was one of my favourite ideas from AVCon. The best way I can think to do it at them moment is to be able to see stations in the fog (otherwise you could never move to them) but no details. You couldn't see the upgrade slots, who owns it, number of ships (if it was neutral). You could also not see any ships in the fog.

Is this something people think is a good idea?

A fog of war would certainly increase the difficulty of the game, decrease the human's advantage over the AI, and effectively completely change the strategies employed (all of those intended as positive points) .

Note that with the current game mechanism, the smallest fleet you can command is 10% of a station's capacity, so a strategy of sending out single scout ships to explore the map may not be a sustainable strategy.

If you couldn't see the stations in the fog, you'd have to move to a situation where ships would become units that could travel to any point on the map and "wait" there, which I imagine would over-complicate the game engine at this stage.

I definitely think it adds a completely new dimension to the gameplay, which is good, but obviously it would scare off the players that want an "arcade" style game that is quick and easy to pick up and play - a key objective of many mobile games to attract an initial core player base.

So I almost see it as a completely different game mode rather than a permanent feature... it could be a global configuration option if a fog of war makes sense in all the different game modes you have in mind.

Yeah I think you are right about it complicating the game. What I had in mind was:

• Quickplay - it is an option to turn on and off
• Campaign - it is a concept that appear later in the campaign and is not in every level