Which is the lesser of two evils: Immersion destroying fun gameplay, or fun gameplay destroying immersion? The process of uncovering the map in many map-based strategy games can be fun. Not knowing where the enemy is, or even the lay of the land, can create in players a fun panic that causes them to race around the map trying to discover its best features: Choke points, the high ground, vital resources. In slower paced grand strategy games (like Civ), uncovering the mystery of the map can not only engender feelings of discovery, it can alter the entire outcome of the game (as when players discover that their enemy is MUCH closer than they think). But with high tech in a science fiction game, a blacked out map doesn't make much sense. If you land on a new world and find the map to be blacked, it may provide fun gameplay, but it I suspect it really can hurt immersion. Players will be wondering where the heck the satellites are, or why their 22nd century starship can't even manage the tech of a 20th century radar probe. [rolleyes] So what would be some ways to retain the discovery and danger that a blacked map provides? Some ideas: -Just use black and don't explain it -Just use black and claim that its because of some important, high tech reason like Red Alert's Gap Generator or strange stealth particles, as in Gundam(?). (High cheese factor) -Reveal the map, but create naturally hidden areas, such as caves or forests. (Downside: Continental exploration holds no surprises) -Screw the surface! Make the really interesting planetary exploration a function of vast underground areas I don't particularly care for any of these, unfortunately. Any better ideas? Which would be the most tolerable?

It's more fun to have fun ruin immersion than to have immersion ruin fun. ;)

Don't make excuses. :P

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Original post by Wavinator Which is the lesser of two evils: Immersion destroying fun gameplay, or fun gameplay destroying immersion?

By reflex I always say "fun gameplay", but immersion is a core part of that, so if possible aim for both [wink].

Exploration is one of the four eXes (I think; I always get what they stand for mixed up in my head), and it's a core component of many great games, so as you've said it's an important element. But as you've said it's a bit weird when sci-fi games don't allow planetary maps; I always thought the tech tree in Alpha Centurai was a bit of a cop-out (such as satellites being so high up).

For your potential solutions, I have the following opinions:

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-Just use black and don't explain it

This only works if the game is arcade styled, in my opinion. I think you are aiming for an element of sci-fi realism (where everything makes sense from the perspective of the world), so you'll have to come up with a reason.

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-Just use black and claim that its because of some important, high tech reason like Red Alert's Gap Generator or strange stealth particles, as in Gundam(?). (High cheese factor)

This can work on certain planets, or if there's a dense cloud cover so that satellites wouldn't work, but it won't work on all planets.

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-Reveal the map, but create naturally hidden areas, such as caves or forests. (Downside: Continental exploration holds no surprises)

It's not true that continental exploration need to have no surprises, just of a different type. Maybe you can't see the wildlife or small villages on the satellite scan.

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-Screw the surface! Make the really interesting planetary exploration a function of vast underground areas

This will work too (as would undersea exploration), but it would only work well on certain planet types, unless your gamestory has everyone living underground (which also can work)

You can combine many of these together; have cloudy planets, cave planets, forested planets, sea planets, cloaked planets etc. to allow the blacked out map. For non-cloaked terran type planets maybe you could provide the satellite scan, to make things a bit different.

Another idea: You could make it that scanning a hostile planet will reveal your presence to enemies (similar to submarines pinging each other), so it could be optional to get the world map if you want stealth over being mercilessly attacked.

Hey, I'm not sure if this point has been covered but you could random unforseen events as to why planet wide exploration can't be achieved through the touch of a button.

Bad weather? Even if you have the best satelites to take a close up picture of an ant it won't do you much good if there's a storm? Obviously it would be hard to believe that it is always cloudy on your planet (assuming its habitable, if it's not then there's really no problem). Heck, maybe a meteorite landed in the last decade sending tons of particles in the sky blocking the view...<oops>(I just noticed that this has been mentioned)</oops>

You could blame hardware malfunctions or even orbiting debree that damages the satelite. Explore the planet while a team of engineer is rushing against the clock to get your satelite system running. This could be met with a lack of supplies which delays the unfolding of the fog of war but it could be used somewhere.

I attempted to contact my electric engineering buddy to help me out on this one but he isn't online at the moment so this suggestion is rather out of my league. You could have different types of electrical/magnectic interferences that keep your flagship from sending information to your land troops. Electric fields can fry circuits if it's in movement through the field since it runs a current where it's not supposed to be, however I'm sure space engineers could have forseen this in the design phase.

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Now, I'm under the impression that you have a very open ended game so some of these might not always work so you could mix things up. You could have a DB table just for events that keep your from having a planet wide map to tap from... and sometimes conditions are met and you don't actually have to explore everything. So basically it comes down to this: can you come up with enough BS to cover an infinite amount of star systems? :)

As other posters have said, there's a multitude of possible excuses which you could use for not being able to map a planet via satellite. Another possibility is to incorporate the limitations of satellite mapping into your game, for example it could take some time to map the entire planet via satellite, and it would have to be revealed a strip at a time.

The satellite mapping could only record buildings/troops etc. when it's physically over the correct location, so there might be a large delay before you could get updates on enemy positions, even though it would be able to map the geography of the planet fairly accurately. You could possibly work slow satellite movement into the game, so that the player could choose to concentrate satellite coverage on an area known to have high enemy activity, at the expense of being able to map the entire planet.

I think any of these techniques are probably too in depth for your average RTS, so it depends on the nature of your game really. They could work in a turn-based game however.

Also if there are enemies on the same planet, it seems likely that they would have technologies which could counter satellite mapping, for example being able to blast it out of orbit, or have some way to obstruct it to prevent it mapping certain areas.

First off, fun gameplay comes first You just get extra points for not breaking immersion.

As for my long list of oddball suggestions:

All planets start out with dark maps but you can get more detailed maps from different sources.

1. Commercial maps: These show detailed maps of commercial locations the player would be expected to go. Most inns, shops, space docks and governmental offices are listed on these maps to attract attention. So major cities are theoretically easy to navigate.

2. Passive Scans from space: These are geneneral scans you do from your ship, the more affordable ones only give a good outline of major features and may point out "hot spots". So a scan from space can tell you were cities, mountains, rivers, weird energy fields, or other general things are. Individual units are undetectable unless they have beacons or something.

3. High-Res scans: More detailed but costly scans, can give detailed layouts of areas including units, crates, and vehicles. The equipment is costly and can only scan a relativly small area at a time. Some equipment can jam it and many planets have laws against scanning residential or top-secret installations.

4. Personal probes: Little floating-eye robots you send out to explore the area. They can give you detailed maps of surroundings and report on any items or units they see. Some models let you remote-control them and view things in real time. This allows you to preview areas ahead of time and may come in handy if Rooster Teeth wants to make a Machinima series based on your game ;). Personal probes can be destroyed by the enemy or hazards and you may even find probes deployed by the enemy floating around.




Basically, the maps will generally be either black or sort of blurry when exploring new planets but you can have detailed maps in civilised areas. Getting detailed scans from space would be expensive but it should be somewhat cheaper (and more fun) to get floating probes to help you out when you land.

Both detailed scans and probes have the risk of being detected and getting you in trouble if you snoop where people don't want you to.

Also, I suppose the commercial maps would leave out many of the slums, wildernesses, and top secret installations on a planet. In fact, you could have it where commercial maps display certain things incorrectly. So you get a map and it lists one building as "Barney's Super Kiddie Show Studio" but it is actually a top-secret military genetics lab (because obviously nobody would expect it to be there). Or the map shows a perfectly pristine area of land and it is revealed to be a toxic waste dump.

You could also have space-borne explorer stailites that map wilderness planets and give you a free map of the surface without you having to scan it yourself.

anyway, I've rambled enough.

I like some of the suggestions so far, but just to save me reorganising as I think I'll just make a list of my own ideas, so apologies to those who have probably already mentioned most of them. [wink]

- Weather or similar obstructions could prevent you from getting a complete map of the surface, or could potentially require you to use more expensive and/or potentially more revealing equipment if you do want that complete map. This might give you a map that is mostly revealed but has patches missing. As you've already mentioned, things such as caves, inside buildings, etc. could provide more areas of this type, as well as some possible cloaking or 'hiding' technologies (like a gap generator).

- You can get a complete mapping of the surface, but don't have a real-time feed. This would mean the map is revealed, but unit movements, etc. are masked by a fog of war. I also liked the idea presented above that you could have something like this, but be able to get a real-time feed of specific areas by having your orbiting ship concentrate sensors there/however you're getting the data.

- Surface data is provided to ships, either from some sort of (government/trade?) database, or by individual planets when you enter the system. Obviously an uninhabited or unexplored planet definately wouldn't provide you with mapping data. This data may or may not be completely accurate, and could sometimes be out of date, intentionally hiding/mislabelling features, or may not be available to a player who wants to enter a system undetected. Perhaps different governments/trade groups/etc. have different mapping data, and this can be bartered/purchased/otherwise aquired. You could also be able to get this data yourself, but this may reveal your position to enemies/cost a lot/take a significant amount of time.

- Some governments or groups may not allow you to scan planets or specific areas, leaving surface exploration or some secretive method of collecting the data as the only viable option to map the planet.

- Obviously if you're assaulting a planet and have assets in orbit you'd presumably be getting some sort of data unless enemy technology was somehow preventing it (block the transmission of the data, prevent data aquisition, clocked facilities, etc.).


To answer the original question, I'd personally prefer to have the better gameplay, with as much immersion as you can manage without infringing on my fun.

Let's see if I can think of a few more ideas:

I like the idea of government regulation that Kazgoroth suggested. To add to this: it doesn't just have to be for security reasons; the planet could have ecological or religous reasons for why a group would not want you to scan it.

You could make scanners a highly classified piece of equipment, which has a huge excise on which only seasoned adventurers can afford.

You could make the surface of the planet chaotically changing, like it was being constantly formed from magma, but that's a bit of a hack and would really affect the gameplay [smile].

You could make it just a matter of etiquette; real adventurers don't need to scan the planet before landing! Or maybe the PC just doesn't know how to work the controls on the ship.

Umm, fluxuations in the space-time continuum interfering with the equipment? I guess I'm out of ideas.

I never really liked fog of war all that much. DoW got it right in my opinion; forget about having Mysterious Black Fog everywhere, show the terrain and just hide the buildings and units.

In RTS games I think it makes planning unnecessarily difficult, unless you already know the map inside out, and since I consider planning to be an important part of strategy, this harms the gameplay.

In RPG games, it can be fun... for about five minutes. Wandering around every corner of the map just to clear out every single pixel of black gets old fast, so why not give the player an idea what lies in a given direction, so he can direct his exploration more efficiently? Why not give him access to satellite maps showing him roughly where the 'interesting' bits are? If he wants to explore the less interesting bits, he can still do so.

So my solutions are:

a)No fog of war (unexplored areas darker/less detailed)
b)Normal fog of war, fully revealed minimaps

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Original post by Sandman a)No fog of war (unexplored areas darker/less detailed)

Hrm, I was actually thinking of what you've got in brackets there when I was talking about FOW actually, darker/less detailed, but terrain revealed. I guess technically that would actually be "shrowd" or whatever they called it now that I think about it.