Fog of war makes me forget where things are.

[khearn]

If I sens a ship out into the darkness to explore some and it finds stars and anomalies and stuff, then heads back to a colony to refuel, in a turn or two, the fog of war creeps back in and I loos track of where those planets and anomalies were. Can we get fog of war that's just foggy, and not completely opaque, so our exploration efforts aren't lost? Obviously areas that have never been explored should be black, but once I've been there, I expect my ship captains to submit maps of what they've seen, and I expect my naval mapping department not to loose the maps.

[Cory Trese]

Something to think about. Fog is saved tile-by-tile but reverts to fully opaque over several turns.

That is by design.

Something to think about, perhaps a way to view previously see planets or surveyed areas.

This is also problematic without Sector Scan Training being functional.

[qwestyngbeast]

I am also troubled by disappearing stellar fixtures. Uncolonized planets remain on the map. Anomalies and alien planets disappear. Once a tile containing a planet or anomaly is revealed it should never be removed from sight by the fog of war.

[Cory Trese]

Yes, aside from the anomaly issue, that is how it works.

Scout the Star Systems and they stay on the map.

The alpha team ensured that they are never removed from sight by the fog of war.

Upcoming updates add the same feature for unexplored anomaly and then it's all 100% perfect.

[qwestyngbeast]

That is not the way it is working for me with regard to alien colonies. In my present game planets with an alien presence do not remain on the map. I am still playing through the tutorial. I do not know if it works differently in the tutorial than the general game. I can only report what i have seen so far in the tutorial, and that experience has been frustrating at times due to the disappearance of alien planets and unexplored anomalies. I am glad to hear the anomalies will be fixed. I hope the hide-and-seek alien worlds will also be addressed.

[neveryours]

I think it makes sense that Xeno infested planets should be taken off the map and be part of the fog of war. It isn't unreasonable to assume that the Xenos have cloaking and ECM technologies. Besides, it'll be fun if you explore the whole system, sit back and time accelerate the game. Watch the Xenos advnace through the system and one by one those planetary lights blink out. Apocalyptic.

[fallen]

I do love seeing the lights go out like that

[pendell]

My suggestion would be that there be three states for the map.
1) Uncharted (black as now)
2) Charted-not recently scanned(you can see the squares, anomalies and stars but they are dimmed. You cannot see if there are ships there, and cannot tell whether the stars are currently colonized or not).
3) Charted-recent information (fully lit, you can see ships , stats, and details on every square).

I fully understand the need for fog of war but the fog of war shouldn't mean having to rechart the position of stars every few turns. They're stars, after all. . They have a mean-time-to-failure in the billions of years, and they move at the rate of galactic drift. They're also so bright you can literally see them from untold millions of kilometers away. I'm sure the aliens have advanced stealth and ECM technologies, but if they can completely hide a star's emissions such that it can't be seen from anywhere in the quadrant unless you actually fly there with a ship, the human race might as well quit now.

Of course, the whole question of 'stealth in space' is an issue ...

www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.php#nostealth


... but we've got to make SOME concessions to the game engine. Besides , there's no fun in having perfect information about the enemy's disposition at all times ... although I'll bet THEY have perfect information on US at all times, don't they? *Looks suspiciously at fallen*

tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheComputerIsACheatingBastard

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[fallen]

pendell - thanks for the feedback!

yes, the aliens play the game very differently. They are aliens, you are humans.

[qwestyngbeast]

Even if they do have the ability to cloak entire solar systems, once I have charted the system it is still in my charts even if they can hide it. I know it is there. It is on my maps. It should never be removed from my map by fog of war.

I think the suggestion that the known status of the planet be frozen at the state it was in last time we had a ship in scanning range is a good idea. Perhaps only update the icons on the map when we actually have the planets in sight.

[Cory Trese]

Jun 27, 2014 2:12:13 GMT -5 qwestyngbeast said:

Even if they do have the ability to cloak entire solar systems, once I have charted the system it is still in my charts even if they can hide it. I know it is there. It is on my maps. It should never be removed from my map by fog of war.

I think the suggestion that the known status of the planet be frozen at the state it was in last time we had a ship in scanning range is a good idea. Perhaps only update the icons on the map when we actually have the planets in sight.

We did experiment with this but the strain was pretty hard on the battery consumption and performance on the lower end devices.

I agree with the first part, and we already had the second point in the roadmap for possible consideration at some point way down the release list.

Next update will include what you said about removing maps and we'll see how many people complain that it is making the game too easy. Hopefully it won't be too bad, because I agree with you to an extent.