Ever notice how you can see Nuke trails and even some Artillery trails even though you don't have sight on them? Well, I've found a fix.
The question comes about with explosions, though. At this point, it's decided that the lighter stuff (T3 mobile/T2 static/mobile artillery, T3 Bombers, etc) should not have explosions visible through Fog of War, while the heavier stuff (T4 artillery/Bombers and Nukes) should be.
But what about T3 Static Artillery explosions? There are two options here (and if you have an argument for one way that's not listed, feel free to post it):
Yes, make it visible.
- The explosions are pretty big, it could be considered reasonable for them to be seen.
- Shelling choke points but having it go unknown to the opponent really isn't that useful cause once they send a unit in, they know anyway.
No, don't make them visible.
- The explosions could still be argued as being smaller than T4.
- It could be feasible to attack ground with the artillery at choke points but have it go unknown to the opponent until units cross through there.
I'd like to get a general feel from the community as to which way you all feel it should go. I'm leaning more so for no, but am right about in the middle. I'll go whichever way the majority wants, even if I was strong against it seems this is supposed to be following the spirit of Brute's work with the CBFP.|||I'd say do it however is least destructive. I know the Cybran projectile/explosion is the same for all sizes of artillery (which is why Trebuchet explosions can stupidly be seen through FoW right now), requiring a new projectile for at least the T3 strategic artillery to make this happen.
If other factions have shared projectiles between T3 strat and lesser artillery as well, my vote is no, just to keep as many projectileids intact as possible.
If it's only the Cybran one, and the rest of the T3 artillery have unique projectiles, then yes, as that's only one projectile that would need to be copied.
Alternatively, it might be possible to do this without switching projectiles at all, using an OnCreate hook that checks if the firing unit is a T3 strat artillery and adjusts the emitter blueprint names to Blueprints.lua-copied versions that have their FoW visibility on. This would maintain as much compatibility as possible.|||I would say yes. Just as with nukes, if someone has constructed T3 or T4 artillery everyone needs to know. And by showing the explosions to all players they then know that they need more shields or to take out the artillery piece. Think of the explosions as a "strategic launch detected" but for artillery.|||Ironically, no one has addressed the key point.
Big explosions are detected via seismic sensors. (Nukes can be detected anywhere on the planet!)
Large T3 fixed arty would be trivial to detect in the small confines of a SupCom map.
Units can easily hide a seismic signature. - Large explosives not so much.
Make ALL T3 arty (even the mobile) visible through fog! It's just more realistic that way.
- I mean their impacts
|||All realism aside, the fix should ideally maintain some adherence to 'developer intent' or you risk creating an editorial interpretation on the game that some people won't want to play because it does things differently. Not that this one issue alone would cause people to avoid the bug fix mod, but without that consideration in mind, it just becomes any other mod that makes arbitrary changes to the game.I know Fury knows this, but I thought I'd re-iterate it for people who aren't necessarily thinking about it within the context of a bug fix mod.
It's difficult to derive the exact intent behind the visibility of strategic weapon explosions, but it's clear that they wanted a good number of them visible as the only emitters that are visible all belong to strategic level weapons: T3 strat artillery, T3 bombers, nukes, and very large experimental weapons (e.g. Ahwassa bomb).
I would have been on the side of leaving things exactly as they are now, if it was balanced along faction lines, but it isn't. There are also exceptions to this where units share projectiles-- like the Cybran artillery projectile, which is used by the Trebuchet, Gunther, and Disruptor. My take in this case is that they made it for the T3 artillery, and ended up recycling it for the other units without being mindful of the FoW visibility consequences.
blah blah blah basically I'm changing my mind and saying that all of the strat-level weapons of the aforementioned types should have at least visible explosion flashes, because the vast majority of them do. Any and all projectile trail emitters should have the viz turned off, as should any other non-strategic units that share some of these projectiles (except in cases where it is already balanced across factions, of which I believe there are none).
This can all be done while maintaining 99% compatibility with any mods that alter these projectiles with the assumption that the change will affect all weapons that share them (the 1% would be a situation where other mods actually do change the emitter blueprintids that these projectiles use, which I doubt has ever been done or ever will be done).
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