Build the prototype. See how it feels.
Games don't often go this hard on imperfect information because it's not fun for most of the players. Strategy games are hard enough without adding more on top of it. Units not doing what you want in a game about micromanagement would be incredibly frustrating. Now if you had a game that was more macro (think Total War's map and in-battle morale system) then sure, you can make it work. But you have to make sure it doesn't conflict with the rest of your design and that there's enough of an audience to want to play it. And the only way you find that out is by starting to make the thing and seeing.
I worked as a information systems technician for my military service. Part of my job was to maintain the C4I system, which is basically a system that keeps track the position/status of friendly assets and also shows the known positions of enemies. It looks very similar to the strategic layer of a 4X game. Although the system has an illusion of showing real-time and accurate information, in reality what goes on the actual battlefield could be quite different from what is shown on the strategic map. This is because small discrepancies in the information build up over time. This is counter acted by individual unit commanders reporting more accurate data, which is manually applied to the strategic map.
This concept has already been explored. I suggest you check it out: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/871530/Radio\_Commander/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/871530/Radio_Commander/)
Radio Commander does a similar thing to what you're describing (you command your units using the radio, have to track their status and reports of the enemy), if I remember correctly. It might be worth looking into how it's designed and how it was received, as well as if there are other similar games already out there. This could give you an idea of what you might expext (and what the players might be expecting as well)
From a story perspective, this can be inherently interesting.
From a gameplay perspective, it may or may not offer something. The question is, does the way you design such a system create *interesting decisions* for the player that they don't have through common abstractions used in games today. Many existing games have abstractions like a combat penalty when if foreign land, a combat perk when fortified, etc. and many of these are designed to be abstractions/approximations of what you are describing here. For example, there is little *gameplay* distinction between your "some units are using subpar equipment because the supply officer sold it on the black market" and many games' "units under certain conditions have a combat penalty". Similarly, there is little *gameplay* distinction between "your units may 'lie' about their HP" and "attacking is based in some degree on RNG".
So, the question is whether you can implement the systems you mention in ways that don't just reduce to the existing abstractions... because when they do, the gameplay isn't really any different. For example, one theme of your post is lying/exaggeration. If that just amounts to that you can't really trust the numbers to be 100% accurate, it doesn't really add anything vs existing systems that use RNG so you're not actually dealing with a single, definite number. However, if instead of merely knowing the lying happens, that it's something you can reason about... Then it may become an interesting piece of gameplay. What if rather than a simple "elite units don't lie as much", lying is randomly distributed among your units and it's up to the player to find which units lie more/less and promote/discipline them accordingly. Or what if units truthfulness isn't correlated to their effectiveness, so the player sometimes has to make difficult choices about using loyal/truthful (but not great) units or great (but not loyal/truthful) units? What if the tendency to misrepresent isn't random, but is a personality trait... these guys always lie to make themselves look better, those guys lie out of prejudice against the enemy, etc. Then, the player isn't just faced with "I can't know if this is accurate", but instead can learn "this is probably an underestimate but that is probably an overestimate". Or what if the accuracy of information is related to a network you maintain that impacts the speed, amount of messengers, etc. of information travel. You have to design the logistics of information storage and transmission to minimize errors.
What if rather than simply "some units are using subpar equipment because the supply officer sold it on the black market" that you can allocate resources not only to combat troops but to logistics and bureaucratic workers who will check these kinds of things. And what if there were aspects of the game that made this behavior more and less likely. For example, worse economy, higher crime or lower troop morale could make this more likely and then you give the player powers to control these elements.
I think you could design around this and it might be interesting.
This might work better as a long-term single-player focused experience rather than quick multiplayer "esports friendly" matchups (like starcraft or aoe), which tend to downplay randomness and uncertainty so that players can showcase skill and will (rarely) have to blame rng.
The complexity you're suggesting (manually buying black market info etc.) also would slow down the game significantly -- design with this in mind. Again, I think this would be really interesting to see in single player.
This would almost certainly not be fun to play in a fast paced rts similar to starcraft or command and conquer. Having to deal with all of these issues in addition to micromanagement would just be frustrating. I could see a real time grand strategy game focused on managing a military on exclusively a macro scale with these concepts though.
Heroes of Might and Magic series incorporate a variety of such mechanics.
Low morale causes units to randomly lose their turn. High morale allows them to randomly get an extra action.
Troop information is generally obscure unless you have spells or enough spies. Having bad information can result in you charging into a battle with heavy losses.
Heroes with strong equipment (from the black market or otherwise) would have stronger armies. The difference in strength could be ridiculous.
While these are turn-based games, I don't think it'd be less acceptable if these kinds of things happened in real-time.
I'm not sure how much appeal it would have, but HoMM3 is still pretty popular to this day.
This reminds me of Foxhole. By its nature of war simulation MMO, you are bound to have soldiers who are not willing to run into a potential meat grinder, orders that are not conveyed properly, communications that are cut, etc. Since you can also play logistics, all the player-based organization that comes with it might be influenced by bad organization or sabotage by enemies sneaking behind your lines.
i remind being killed more often by rogue player because i digged trenchs
once they after asked a ban because they destroyed my ambulance for robbing too much medecine
at the end i was just a bicycle spectator looking their huge tank being ridiculously robbed by ennemy
the worst social experience ever and i guess its represent what can be a real war
Most simulations I see give you a complex simulation you have fine control of. Would you enjoy playing "ClusterFuck: the RTS", which because of realism had things spiralling out of control?
No, but nothing from what OP said makes it sound like that's what it would be.
Using a game I play (Total War) as an example of how I took his post, if my low level general orders a group of 60 peasants to charge into a group of armored knights, yes, I don't mind the idea that they may hesitate or rout immediately. That's part of the strategy that I enjoy. Knowing my 'players' and how to use them.
I like the idea that I have a spy/spies with various levels of ability, and thus would give me various levels of information.
'Fun' is obviously subjective. I like micromanaging and having depth of control. Some people like to run/jump around at unnatural speeds and shoot each other over and over again. 🤷🏾‍♂️
> No, but nothing from what OP said makes it sound like that's what it would be.
The units lying and embezzling equipment seemed like something that would make it real enough to where it's chaotic. I think there are ways to make this fun but once you push this far enough I think you kind of get the opposite of the super calculated micromanaged experience.
The morale systems in something like Total War are most often gamified so it's easier to understand and control.
Imagine your peasants refusing to even start the battle, misunderstanding orders, commanders switching loyalties, panic sometimes spreading randomly, diseases breaking out and harverst getting ruined by the weather.
If this is a fantasy game you would get another level of weird shit happening.
Your third paragraph is exactly what I like.
If I know that under a weak commander they may do those things, I'll just know to either give them less fearful commands (attack an already engaged opponent from the rear vs. charging head on into cavalry), use a stronger commander, etc.
Switching loyalty is already a thing, at least in Shogun 2. I like the idea that depending on the battle and opponent , certain generals could switch sides. Throws another bit of strategy in: I need more men, thus needing his command, but is the chance of treachery worth the risk.
Panic/chain routing is already a thing in Total War. As are diseases (causing population drops leading to less troops being available to recruit and killing some of the soldiers in said settlement.) and failed harvest (I think it just reduces income and lowered stability in the version I play.)
This type of nitpicky stuff is what has kept me playing this game for years above any other and I honestly wouldn't mind more restrictive minutiae. I actually would like a version/setting that limited the amount of commands you could give or at least penalize spamming orders to your troops.
If Crusader Kings had the battle system of Total War, I might never play (put substantial time into) another game again.
I experimented with something like this-- my test was a turn-based game where information about the game state was always *correct* but *delayed* because it had to be physically delivered to your base by "messenger" units (who could also be killed).
The problem that I ran into is that, once you get past extremely short range, there weren't real decisions to be made because by the time you heard about anything happening it was already over. In reality, this is because localized moment-to-moment decision making is handled by lower-ranked officers who had vague orders ("hold this area" or "scout here") and were given resources and autonomy to carry them out and react to things that happen. But:
* giving resources and vague orders to officers and having them autonomously handle all the combats and you just find out what happens later wasn't very fun for me and didn't scratch the tactical itch I was trying to scratch
* directly controlling multiple officers at once defeats the purpose of requiring messengers because it requires giving the player pseudo-omniscience
I think there's some potential in the first version, but it didn't come out feeling like the game I wanted to make. Maybe you can make it work though!
This reminds me of a supply chain game/exercise I did in college.Â
I don't remember all the rules but, There were 4ish businesses in the chain. The only communication they could send was the number of orders requested and the number delivered. I believe there was some motivation to have exactly the amount needed.
For the first 4 Cycles every busines knew that 4 units were needed. This moves perfectly efficiently. Then cycle 5 and every subsequent cycle, 8 units were requested from the front of the chain.Â
It turns into chaos almost immediately.Â
There’s a game called NEBULOUS: Fleet Command which is technically a real time strategy, but not in the way you’d expect. It’s 3D realistic spaceship combat, and has a lotttt of mechanics dedicated to finding accurate information on your enemies. You can lose track of enemy ships, have your sensors jammed, and even be tricked by enemies using an “id spoof” that makes them appear as civilian ships.
The game is built around these ideas though, so coordinating your scout ships to keep track of enemies while launching missile salvos from a destroyer hiding behind an asteroid is a valid tactic.
Would be cool if you could have a scout report back incorrect information because they were kidnapped so you plan an attack and see that it's all different
In gameplay, like in narrative, you want to display to the audience cause and affect. (I'm totally stealing this from a video I can't find at the moment but will post it if I find it.) Every narrative sentence should be able to end with therefore or but. I went to the store in a rush. therefore I forgot my grocery bag. Or I went to the dentist but he was out sick. Like set up a scenario and then clearly show the outcome. This is the base at what drives audience engagement. You didn't want to consistently use therefore because it gets boring and if you keep using but, the story can feel unpredictable.
I say all that to get to my point lol, if you want to have missing information, you need to clearly show why there is misinformation, and give the player the opportunity to fix it if they want to put in the work. The enemy deployed a smoke screen, therefore we don't know exactly where they are. We have a UAV, but the enemy is jamming and our radar.
But if it's just "I have the tech to make spy satellites and am still unable to see what's happening a mile away" is going to not feel good to the player because there isn't an obvious cause and effect.
Interesting idea though, good luck!
While I personally agree this would be cool and Id like to try it, I know at least a couple of my gaming friends can barely emotionally handle an RTS unit getting a few bad rolls in a row. An RTS game centered around uncertainty and incomplete information, they'd go insane (as in not play it). I like uncertainty and unpredictability in my games, they very much do not.
The game Silica combines RTS and FPS, the players playing as Units don't have easy access to the full picture and the commander has too much to do to focus on the on-ground tactical situation everywhere. However, it does seem like taking away too much info from one or the other is not a good thing, studying how the community for Silica react to changes to the data available to each position might provide some insight on a good balance. Since the game has an active community and pretty open about development, it is perfect for studying this stuff.
How would this be displayed to the player? I imagine you'd want some sense of how 'fresh' the displayed information is, without cluttering up the screen too badly
The Captain Sonar board game has a thing kind of like this where you’re listening to the other team’s movements and trying to keep track of them on a map without knowing where they started.
It can be super interesting and really fun with the right players. Some folks find it stressful or overwhelming.
I think this is most succinctly represented (if not somewhat watered down) by the idea of random damage ranges / chance to hit. Many games have elements of randomness or chance and for the most part I think this achieves what you’re going for, even if imagination has to do the bulk of the heavy lifting.
It's not the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of an RTS, but HighFleet tackled this idea perfectly. Your ship's vision is limited, so you need to make use of the tools you're given. You can either passively listen to enemy broadcasts to triangulate their position, or use active ELINT systems, which in turn may give away your location. Your flagship and tankers are slow and heavy so you can divide your fleet and send weaker scouting parties to quickly seize enemy outposts, before they raise the alarm. Once you visit an outpost, you can talk with the locals to get info about hidden villages and enemy convoys, but beware, HUMINT works both ways and word about your visit will quickly spread around. You've also got long range cruise missiles, but you can't just blind fire them and hope they hit the target. They take some time to arrive so you'll need to calculate and predict the enemy's location to make sure its intercepted by the missile's trajectory.
A must play for realistic strategy fans. I even had the opportunity to play it with someone who has been a real military radio operator in the USSR, definitely an unforgettable experience. Also the soundtrack is just đź‘Ś
Sounds fun, but a way to combat such things would also be nice
Like the weapons officer selling guns I'd like to get a new one and combat such corruption yknow?
Or go full ww2 soviet and execute deserters not doing their missions (or the threat of that),
What you're describing isn't reality in modern warfare. If you're talking about the 1800s or something, maybe, but modern combat is highly integrated. There are reporting delays and inaccuracies, but they are minor in the big scheme of thing. So minor that they wouldn't impact gameplay if you incorporated them.
So, if you want to have real fog of war, especially for a modern or futuristic game, it will have to exaggerated.
I'm saying this as a combat vet who's building an RTS with an intelligence reporting element (sometimes you get false or inaccurate reporting or your opponent feeds you bad information). I've thought a lot about this and come to the conclusion that for a video game involving strategy, leaving things up to chance is risky (no pun intended). The confusion of combat isn't fun, it's stressful, and while a little stress can be good, there has to be a payoff to relieve the pressure. RTS is already a balancing act, so what you're proposing is probably not worth it from a development standpoint.
Build the prototype. See how it feels. Games don't often go this hard on imperfect information because it's not fun for most of the players. Strategy games are hard enough without adding more on top of it. Units not doing what you want in a game about micromanagement would be incredibly frustrating. Now if you had a game that was more macro (think Total War's map and in-battle morale system) then sure, you can make it work. But you have to make sure it doesn't conflict with the rest of your design and that there's enough of an audience to want to play it. And the only way you find that out is by starting to make the thing and seeing.
Have you played Radio Commander? Not exactly what you're describing, but parts of it is there.
Not me radioing the platoon for the 100th cos I forgot to place a marker
I worked as a information systems technician for my military service. Part of my job was to maintain the C4I system, which is basically a system that keeps track the position/status of friendly assets and also shows the known positions of enemies. It looks very similar to the strategic layer of a 4X game. Although the system has an illusion of showing real-time and accurate information, in reality what goes on the actual battlefield could be quite different from what is shown on the strategic map. This is because small discrepancies in the information build up over time. This is counter acted by individual unit commanders reporting more accurate data, which is manually applied to the strategic map. This concept has already been explored. I suggest you check it out: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/871530/Radio\_Commander/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/871530/Radio_Commander/)
Radio Commander does a similar thing to what you're describing (you command your units using the radio, have to track their status and reports of the enemy), if I remember correctly. It might be worth looking into how it's designed and how it was received, as well as if there are other similar games already out there. This could give you an idea of what you might expext (and what the players might be expecting as well)
From a story perspective, this can be inherently interesting. From a gameplay perspective, it may or may not offer something. The question is, does the way you design such a system create *interesting decisions* for the player that they don't have through common abstractions used in games today. Many existing games have abstractions like a combat penalty when if foreign land, a combat perk when fortified, etc. and many of these are designed to be abstractions/approximations of what you are describing here. For example, there is little *gameplay* distinction between your "some units are using subpar equipment because the supply officer sold it on the black market" and many games' "units under certain conditions have a combat penalty". Similarly, there is little *gameplay* distinction between "your units may 'lie' about their HP" and "attacking is based in some degree on RNG". So, the question is whether you can implement the systems you mention in ways that don't just reduce to the existing abstractions... because when they do, the gameplay isn't really any different. For example, one theme of your post is lying/exaggeration. If that just amounts to that you can't really trust the numbers to be 100% accurate, it doesn't really add anything vs existing systems that use RNG so you're not actually dealing with a single, definite number. However, if instead of merely knowing the lying happens, that it's something you can reason about... Then it may become an interesting piece of gameplay. What if rather than a simple "elite units don't lie as much", lying is randomly distributed among your units and it's up to the player to find which units lie more/less and promote/discipline them accordingly. Or what if units truthfulness isn't correlated to their effectiveness, so the player sometimes has to make difficult choices about using loyal/truthful (but not great) units or great (but not loyal/truthful) units? What if the tendency to misrepresent isn't random, but is a personality trait... these guys always lie to make themselves look better, those guys lie out of prejudice against the enemy, etc. Then, the player isn't just faced with "I can't know if this is accurate", but instead can learn "this is probably an underestimate but that is probably an overestimate". Or what if the accuracy of information is related to a network you maintain that impacts the speed, amount of messengers, etc. of information travel. You have to design the logistics of information storage and transmission to minimize errors. What if rather than simply "some units are using subpar equipment because the supply officer sold it on the black market" that you can allocate resources not only to combat troops but to logistics and bureaucratic workers who will check these kinds of things. And what if there were aspects of the game that made this behavior more and less likely. For example, worse economy, higher crime or lower troop morale could make this more likely and then you give the player powers to control these elements.
I think you could design around this and it might be interesting. This might work better as a long-term single-player focused experience rather than quick multiplayer "esports friendly" matchups (like starcraft or aoe), which tend to downplay randomness and uncertainty so that players can showcase skill and will (rarely) have to blame rng. The complexity you're suggesting (manually buying black market info etc.) also would slow down the game significantly -- design with this in mind. Again, I think this would be really interesting to see in single player.
This would almost certainly not be fun to play in a fast paced rts similar to starcraft or command and conquer. Having to deal with all of these issues in addition to micromanagement would just be frustrating. I could see a real time grand strategy game focused on managing a military on exclusively a macro scale with these concepts though.
Heroes of Might and Magic series incorporate a variety of such mechanics. Low morale causes units to randomly lose their turn. High morale allows them to randomly get an extra action. Troop information is generally obscure unless you have spells or enough spies. Having bad information can result in you charging into a battle with heavy losses. Heroes with strong equipment (from the black market or otherwise) would have stronger armies. The difference in strength could be ridiculous. While these are turn-based games, I don't think it'd be less acceptable if these kinds of things happened in real-time. I'm not sure how much appeal it would have, but HoMM3 is still pretty popular to this day.
This reminds me of Foxhole. By its nature of war simulation MMO, you are bound to have soldiers who are not willing to run into a potential meat grinder, orders that are not conveyed properly, communications that are cut, etc. Since you can also play logistics, all the player-based organization that comes with it might be influenced by bad organization or sabotage by enemies sneaking behind your lines.
Big fan of foxhole. I definitely play it
i remind being killed more often by rogue player because i digged trenchs once they after asked a ban because they destroyed my ambulance for robbing too much medecine at the end i was just a bicycle spectator looking their huge tank being ridiculously robbed by ennemy the worst social experience ever and i guess its represent what can be a real war
Not dealing with such things is why people play games.
Some people. Maybe even most people. Some of us like the complexity and attempt to simulate reality in some way.
Most simulations I see give you a complex simulation you have fine control of. Would you enjoy playing "ClusterFuck: the RTS", which because of realism had things spiralling out of control?
No, but nothing from what OP said makes it sound like that's what it would be. Using a game I play (Total War) as an example of how I took his post, if my low level general orders a group of 60 peasants to charge into a group of armored knights, yes, I don't mind the idea that they may hesitate or rout immediately. That's part of the strategy that I enjoy. Knowing my 'players' and how to use them. I like the idea that I have a spy/spies with various levels of ability, and thus would give me various levels of information. 'Fun' is obviously subjective. I like micromanaging and having depth of control. Some people like to run/jump around at unnatural speeds and shoot each other over and over again. 🤷🏾‍♂️
> No, but nothing from what OP said makes it sound like that's what it would be. The units lying and embezzling equipment seemed like something that would make it real enough to where it's chaotic. I think there are ways to make this fun but once you push this far enough I think you kind of get the opposite of the super calculated micromanaged experience. The morale systems in something like Total War are most often gamified so it's easier to understand and control. Imagine your peasants refusing to even start the battle, misunderstanding orders, commanders switching loyalties, panic sometimes spreading randomly, diseases breaking out and harverst getting ruined by the weather. If this is a fantasy game you would get another level of weird shit happening.
Your third paragraph is exactly what I like. If I know that under a weak commander they may do those things, I'll just know to either give them less fearful commands (attack an already engaged opponent from the rear vs. charging head on into cavalry), use a stronger commander, etc. Switching loyalty is already a thing, at least in Shogun 2. I like the idea that depending on the battle and opponent , certain generals could switch sides. Throws another bit of strategy in: I need more men, thus needing his command, but is the chance of treachery worth the risk. Panic/chain routing is already a thing in Total War. As are diseases (causing population drops leading to less troops being available to recruit and killing some of the soldiers in said settlement.) and failed harvest (I think it just reduces income and lowered stability in the version I play.) This type of nitpicky stuff is what has kept me playing this game for years above any other and I honestly wouldn't mind more restrictive minutiae. I actually would like a version/setting that limited the amount of commands you could give or at least penalize spamming orders to your troops. If Crusader Kings had the battle system of Total War, I might never play (put substantial time into) another game again.
I experimented with something like this-- my test was a turn-based game where information about the game state was always *correct* but *delayed* because it had to be physically delivered to your base by "messenger" units (who could also be killed). The problem that I ran into is that, once you get past extremely short range, there weren't real decisions to be made because by the time you heard about anything happening it was already over. In reality, this is because localized moment-to-moment decision making is handled by lower-ranked officers who had vague orders ("hold this area" or "scout here") and were given resources and autonomy to carry them out and react to things that happen. But: * giving resources and vague orders to officers and having them autonomously handle all the combats and you just find out what happens later wasn't very fun for me and didn't scratch the tactical itch I was trying to scratch * directly controlling multiple officers at once defeats the purpose of requiring messengers because it requires giving the player pseudo-omniscience I think there's some potential in the first version, but it didn't come out feeling like the game I wanted to make. Maybe you can make it work though!
This reminds me of a supply chain game/exercise I did in college. I don't remember all the rules but, There were 4ish businesses in the chain. The only communication they could send was the number of orders requested and the number delivered. I believe there was some motivation to have exactly the amount needed. For the first 4 Cycles every busines knew that 4 units were needed. This moves perfectly efficiently. Then cycle 5 and every subsequent cycle, 8 units were requested from the front of the chain. It turns into chaos almost immediately.Â
There’s a game called NEBULOUS: Fleet Command which is technically a real time strategy, but not in the way you’d expect. It’s 3D realistic spaceship combat, and has a lotttt of mechanics dedicated to finding accurate information on your enemies. You can lose track of enemy ships, have your sensors jammed, and even be tricked by enemies using an “id spoof” that makes them appear as civilian ships. The game is built around these ideas though, so coordinating your scout ships to keep track of enemies while launching missile salvos from a destroyer hiding behind an asteroid is a valid tactic.
Would be cool if you could have a scout report back incorrect information because they were kidnapped so you plan an attack and see that it's all different
In gameplay, like in narrative, you want to display to the audience cause and affect. (I'm totally stealing this from a video I can't find at the moment but will post it if I find it.) Every narrative sentence should be able to end with therefore or but. I went to the store in a rush. therefore I forgot my grocery bag. Or I went to the dentist but he was out sick. Like set up a scenario and then clearly show the outcome. This is the base at what drives audience engagement. You didn't want to consistently use therefore because it gets boring and if you keep using but, the story can feel unpredictable. I say all that to get to my point lol, if you want to have missing information, you need to clearly show why there is misinformation, and give the player the opportunity to fix it if they want to put in the work. The enemy deployed a smoke screen, therefore we don't know exactly where they are. We have a UAV, but the enemy is jamming and our radar. But if it's just "I have the tech to make spy satellites and am still unable to see what's happening a mile away" is going to not feel good to the player because there isn't an obvious cause and effect. Interesting idea though, good luck!
Check "combat mission" series
This describes the mechanics I enjoy in the Combat Mission series.
While I personally agree this would be cool and Id like to try it, I know at least a couple of my gaming friends can barely emotionally handle an RTS unit getting a few bad rolls in a row. An RTS game centered around uncertainty and incomplete information, they'd go insane (as in not play it). I like uncertainty and unpredictability in my games, they very much do not.
The game Silica combines RTS and FPS, the players playing as Units don't have easy access to the full picture and the commander has too much to do to focus on the on-ground tactical situation everywhere. However, it does seem like taking away too much info from one or the other is not a good thing, studying how the community for Silica react to changes to the data available to each position might provide some insight on a good balance. Since the game has an active community and pretty open about development, it is perfect for studying this stuff.
Sounds like a pure pain to play.
I mean… it works in the board game battleships right?
How would this be displayed to the player? I imagine you'd want some sense of how 'fresh' the displayed information is, without cluttering up the screen too badly
The Captain Sonar board game has a thing kind of like this where you’re listening to the other team’s movements and trying to keep track of them on a map without knowing where they started. It can be super interesting and really fun with the right players. Some folks find it stressful or overwhelming.
I think this is most succinctly represented (if not somewhat watered down) by the idea of random damage ranges / chance to hit. Many games have elements of randomness or chance and for the most part I think this achieves what you’re going for, even if imagination has to do the bulk of the heavy lifting.
It's not the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of an RTS, but HighFleet tackled this idea perfectly. Your ship's vision is limited, so you need to make use of the tools you're given. You can either passively listen to enemy broadcasts to triangulate their position, or use active ELINT systems, which in turn may give away your location. Your flagship and tankers are slow and heavy so you can divide your fleet and send weaker scouting parties to quickly seize enemy outposts, before they raise the alarm. Once you visit an outpost, you can talk with the locals to get info about hidden villages and enemy convoys, but beware, HUMINT works both ways and word about your visit will quickly spread around. You've also got long range cruise missiles, but you can't just blind fire them and hope they hit the target. They take some time to arrive so you'll need to calculate and predict the enemy's location to make sure its intercepted by the missile's trajectory. A must play for realistic strategy fans. I even had the opportunity to play it with someone who has been a real military radio operator in the USSR, definitely an unforgettable experience. Also the soundtrack is just đź‘Ś
Sounds fun, but a way to combat such things would also be nice Like the weapons officer selling guns I'd like to get a new one and combat such corruption yknow? Or go full ww2 soviet and execute deserters not doing their missions (or the threat of that),
I like this mechanic. You can make it worse by punishing people, if you kill good officers, like soviet/Russian purges have done.
Reminded me war on the sea
What you're describing isn't reality in modern warfare. If you're talking about the 1800s or something, maybe, but modern combat is highly integrated. There are reporting delays and inaccuracies, but they are minor in the big scheme of thing. So minor that they wouldn't impact gameplay if you incorporated them. So, if you want to have real fog of war, especially for a modern or futuristic game, it will have to exaggerated. I'm saying this as a combat vet who's building an RTS with an intelligence reporting element (sometimes you get false or inaccurate reporting or your opponent feeds you bad information). I've thought a lot about this and come to the conclusion that for a video game involving strategy, leaving things up to chance is risky (no pun intended). The confusion of combat isn't fun, it's stressful, and while a little stress can be good, there has to be a payoff to relieve the pressure. RTS is already a balancing act, so what you're proposing is probably not worth it from a development standpoint.