) and development details, so I'll throw something into the fray.I think that something extra is needed in terms of terrain-strategy interaction on top of the already implemented ability for mappers to set terrain type to affect unit classes differently. Now, I've raised this before, but it was a long time ago, and was mixed in with a number of other ideas, so I feel it is worth raising it on its own.
I think that when units are in a heavily forested area, they should cloak when they have remained immobile for a certain amount of time. That is all units below a certain size (so krogoths, bulldogs and other big units can't hide), free of charge.
My entire premise for this idea is based on this quote:
Currently, with the big radar dots on the main screen, and the ghosted buildings, there isn't much room for deception in Spring. I think that this could potentially change that, by making all sorts of cloak-and-dagger tactics available to players. Ambushes, which thus far have been impossible in Spring, all of a sudden become a viable tactic.All Warfare is based on Deception.
- Sun Tzu
Please note that it is a very important aspect of this idea that units are only hidden from view when they are motionless, so that as soon as a unit moves, or aims to fire, it becomes visible to all players with LOS on that area. This means that if a player wants to do an ambush properly, he is going to have to use the "hold position" and "holdfire/returnfire" commands cleverly.
It is also an important element that Units do not become immediately invisible as soon as they stop moving in a forested area. They have to sit there for a certain amount of time (I'd say somewhere between 15 seconds to a minute). This is to represent units having to "conceal" themselves, and it helps to balance it, so that you don't have units mysteriously disappearing into trees in the blink of an eye.
There are two ways that I can think of (please think of more) to implement this into Spring, I think:
1) This is the most simple, but also the most limited way. This is to use a simple system similar to the way units are slowed down by certain terrain. Mappers simply paint out areas where their forests are (or anything else that they might want to offer cover, for that matter). The problem with this is that trees are destructible features, meaning that an area which might be set to offer cover could well have no trees by the end of the game. This means that units would get cover bonuses when there wasn't any cover.
2) The second, more complicated way is to have some complicated hardcoding, whereby units can tell that they are in cover by detecting the trees around them, and then cloaking. I don't think this would be too many instances, and would not cause too much slow down, because units would only look for trees in their vicinity when they have remained motionless for a certain period of time.
I realise that these two ways are both not perfect; but I am also not very proficient at all with coding, nor do I perfectly understand the Spring engine, so I don't want to venture any more complicated solutions. Please feel free to suggest better ones.
I think this idea would contribute to the strategic and tactical elements of Spring, meaning that players have even more strategic options at their disposal.
