I used to think so, (and it made some interesting gameplay in Total Annihilation, where it was extremely important, because many units could fire at much longer ranges that they could see, requiring cooperation with other forces). But after playing Z, a RTS with no fog of war whatsoever, I changed my mind. In Z keeping an eye on everything the enemy did and instantly reacting to each of his moves was paramount to winning. Fog of war on the other hand reduces the contact between players severely. As a consequence, the level of interactivity drops a lot as well, making peon pumping / base building gameplay a necessity. True, most RTS games provide options to scout the enemy positions, but I find these operations pointless at game start and quite a hassle after. Having informations about an enemy is largely the exception, not the rule. As for games where the map is unknown at game start and needs exploring, they irritate me to no end. I propose that RTS games give up on fog of war and instead give a few options for hiding troops (commando troops, expensive cloaking shields, moving troops at slower paces to keep them hidden, special terrain types that allow hiding). But make sure that most of the information is available to everybody and the unknown element is the exception.

Fog of war is realistic in that even with modern surveillance equipment you still can''t see where everything is.

I agree blacked out map areas are irritating. In real life you would have access to maps of the area or a local peasant who would tell all for a gold.

But unless you can make knowing all your enemy locations believable I think you should keep fog of war.

You overlook the fact that fog of war is a dependency of which use simplistic AI tricks, in Starcraft, if you cheat to see the whole map in the beginning you''ll notice that your enemies bases are only partially developed.

That''s a weak point, a much stronger point is that hiding what you have is a tremendous part of strategy, and it''s very rare that any force has the rescources to see all of the battlefield (in TA you could get many many scout aircraft and fly them around the place, but that costs). What''s more, in some games fog of war adds a great element of surprise, because you can park Siege Tanks on a ridge and then tell them to let loose on someone''s base, but if they could seee them coming, there would be no point in even trying to do something like that.

I should also say, that there is little point in trying to start a campaign against FOW, it''s good stuff, and you''ll have trouble convincing people otherwise.

George D. Filiotis
Are you in support of the ban of Dihydrogen Monoxide? You should be!

instead of doing away with FOW altogether, i suggest we find other ways of implementing recon/scouting.
for example- instead of seeing what your enemy is doing in realtime, how about a grayscale satelite still image on the part of the map where their base would lie?
sending spies in would be another nice twist.. spy planes, ect..
unmanned spy planes would also work and wouldnt take away from your armed forces...
if we start thinking along more realistic terms, we can find fun ways to implement them.
i especially like the spy idea... i mean.. how would you know if one of your peons was a spy? if he was running around on his own that could be a clue.. you can execute him, throw him in jail or whatever for a timelimit (say 5 game minutes.. in that time they''d find out if he was a spy and either execute him or release him). if you execute him on the spot it could take away from your forces if he''s legit..
just a few ideas.


-eldee
;another space monkey;

That spy idea is really cool. The player being spied on would have control of him for most of the time (as a regular peon)(, so as to not arrouse suspision(sp?). But, whenever the creator of the spy wanted, he could make him do something else. If he was a powerful unit, maybe even sabatage buildings and machines. Or maybe that would be an expensive upgrade. Or an assassin which could kill. Stop it! You''re making me want to make an RTS!

I suggest that a modified version of fog of war is kept. A price could be payed in the rts, by building a structure that automatically did global ops as long as it stood, or have a buildable unit that has smart ai and could automaticacly patrol, hide and call in support based on what it sees. Intelligence is obscenely important in any rts, being able to see everything somebody does really gives the others players an advantage and removes the fun from the game. Lets look at starcraft (i know it''s old but it''s useful in this) if we saw all, we wouldn''t be surpised by a protoss reaver drop, because we would see him setting it up. if you want to, all races in that game had very good modes of covert ops. Terrans with there remote scans of an area and there cloakable ghosts and wraith. Zerg had units that burrowed, and the queen who could see through enemy eyes as it went about it''s daily business. Then protoss, with observers, and then in the expansion dark zelots. I disagree with removal of fog of war, but i would like to see better ways of removing it, say ai controled scouts, something that wasn''t needed to be micromanged so the player wouldn''t be burrdened by it, but not make it free. So if someone wants to pay the price for the intelligence, the other person who dosen''t care could not and spend the resources on thier stradgey (maybe counter espionage)


LOWORBIT
ORBIT

from watching my friends play RTS games I can see that at lower skill levels it kind of gets in the way. They don''t scout much and when they do they don''t interpret what they see correctly. So they muddle about and the game loses a lot. At higher levels players are much better at scouting and much better at using the information gleaned. So I think that companies should take this into account, and go with what makes more sense for their particular audience.

In my opinion it depends on the scale of your game. Is it intended to be tactical or strategic in nature? If it''s tactical then FOW for units but not terrain is more realistic but if it''s strategic then FOW is ridiculous for anything. I liked your ideas about how to make certain units invisible. Maybe different "races" could have different levels. For example if you''ve ever read Tom Clancy or Frederick Forsyth they talk a lot about maskirova which is the Russian word for deception and camouflage. The Russians and to a lesser extent the Iraqis were able to deceive American sattelites about the location of various facilities by camouflaging them. Read Clancy''s "Cardinal of the Kremlin" and "The Bear and the Dragon" then read Forsyth''s "The Fist of God"

Nope, without FOW is not reallist at all.

In fact, now in the Talliban War (only a sample, don''t blame about it), the USA can see the enemy country using satellite.. you are wonder why the USA need to send a lot of spy-plane?

In starcraft (also in Dune 2), you can see in another area using the satellite, the vision is in any range, but is limited and by short time.

In Warcraft, all units have view-range. The archers can be powered by expanded the view-range. It is reallistic.

How about you have a sorta "spotlight" satellite thingy which would reveal only a certain portion of the map (it would go back invisible after the spotlight moved). You can move the "spot" wherever you want to, but it only shows about half a screen''s worth of the map if you know what i mean...