Parachute Flares to illuminate the dark.

I just repost the post of the other thread. To make it a single topic.

As some of us realized for themselfes. Units are hard to see and distinguish in the dark.

So reading some posts here it struck me: Parachute Flares.

I don't go into lore now, cuz that is the road to insanity.

Gameplay aspects:
- it keeps the illumination of day and night ->helps not to destroy immersion of the game. though you are able to light battles on nightside up.
- while automatic fired by only some units, it creates possibilitys for players (use them or not) so you can fight in the dark if you wish but you musn't
- it helps with the feeling of 3D if you have a higher altitude thing and rotating it and the planet beneath it.
- it could be used for plausible different lightings. Common real flares are white red and green
- creates room for cosmetic dlc (orange or pink flares anyone?)

To be honest i don`t think that this would make any sense but it sounds awesome! Robots usually wouldn`t rely on pure light source vision... They would have IR vision and other sci-fi stuff! But a mod maybe?!

Or you could have a spy satllite which points to a position and gives you vision?

Nah lore :lol: .

Yes you are right but we need light to see, we are no robots.

from: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... Camera.jpg

Hehe ^^ the first Paragraph was just to show you from which angle i`m looking at it

I like flares and everything... in arma 3 alpha i just pack extra flares for the nice effect at night

But it would crack the robot feeling when i have to fire flares in a sci-fi robot game like PA! So maybe a more `techy` solution like IR pinging and you can See the units highlighted or so?

Well you dont have to shoot them manualy. I thought of it as some units shoot them automatically at night. (toggleable)

Huh, this is starting to sound like a really quick-easy and cool unit addition mod. Maybe just make a stationary structure that fires them up at a regular rate while on the dark side of the planet, and maybe give it as a functionality to a certain unit to do the same. Not a whole lot of graphics design, already thoroughly supported with their dynamic lighting, and just plain cool.

Not a whole lot of gameplay use. But the sort of thing you could sneak into another mod to give it a new flavor.

Okay then why not just enlight the surrounding of each unit without flare effect... Which would be a translation of the sensory input of the unit?

Off Topic: The saying of this could be a mod starts to remind me more and more when in poiltics they say: let's do a committee.

On Topic: Well imo there has to be done something in regards to the readability of the game on the darkside of planets. That is nothing you should fix with a mod. Because its core gameplay. There are other attemps like: Tunning lighting of darkside at all. Introducing playercoloured Lifebars. Changing unit colors to brighter ones.

Every one has its pros and cons, flares too (mostly lore though).

Well... You make doubly good points. lol

But, the visibility of units needs to be addressed on more levels than about lighting on the dark side of planets at the moment. I personally wouldn't be opposed to intentionally worse visibility than they showed us on the dark side of planets, merely for a more impressive showcase of their dynamic lighting. I mean, every unit was equipped with a light of it's own, so, if the shadows were darker and more stylized, the units would have likely popped out better on the dark side of the planet than they did on the bright side of the planet.

So, I trust that any solution for visibility on the bright side will translate well enough to the dark side that they won't need to implement anything special for night time that they haven't already implemented.

And to intentionally irk you, in jest of course: This could be a mod.

EDIT: On another note, player colored life bars would be a cool addition even if it didn't effect gameplay in any noticeable way, and more saturated, vibrant colors for units would add some really cool contrast against their overall grayness.

What would help to see what needs to be tweaked is:
some screenshots or a vid of a multiplayer (at least 3) battle on the dayside of a planet.

edit: you ninjaed my post

Yep you are right, i realized this as watching the vid on youtube again. Thats why i am asking for screenshots on daylight with different playercolors to see if they are good readable without icons.
Currently i think only the tanks and the commander have lights.
Also this could with no doubt be a mod , it also could be core gameplay, it also could be not in it at all.

Off-topic-topic: Making a visual effect for better view in dark areas or dark side of the planet sounds to me like a fancy thing and i think the team should focus on making the core gameplay and then do the fancy stuff or leave it to the modders.

On-Topic: yeah i`m with you! I was just suggesting an easy way to solve this...
Why not couple it with the fog of war? Everything the unit sees is brighter than regularly uncovered fog? Just for the dark side of the planet?

That also may be a way to solve it.

It's a pretty neat idea, syox. I'm not sure just how specialised they're planning on getting with units, but this would be a cool attribute for a Command and Control unit. Something that gave, say, some sort of multiplier benefit to units in a certain radius via more advanced targeting of enemy from its own, powerful radar etc. As part of that, it could fire off slow release flares at intervals. It would make for pretty spectacular dark side combat.

It could even fire off different colours for different "events". Ie, Red when combat begins, white during etc. Or even more advanced, fire off a red flare when the total HP of all units in its area of effect are down to 40% of total health, giving their commander a good eye catching warning that they're about to loose a bunch of units.

Though there wont be any area effects like + bonus in the game, afaik.

:shock:
Good ideas!

Maybe not. That would be a shame though. I understand completely that they want to avoid micro, but there's some pretty cool, more complex strategies that you can put in with a unit like the above that doesn't really require any micro at all and is effectively a set and forget.

Does that mean we wont see mobile force-field gens, jammers, cloaks etc? That really would be a shame...

units could have lights pointed towards themselves to make it easier to identify them. they could also have tracking long range lights on the enemy unit they're shooting. the flares idea would be cool too but i dont think many units should be able to do that, it would be a mess having 20 flares of different colors at the same time...
in addition, maybe it would be a nice effect to see wireframed units if they are out of LOS range, but within radar or IR sensor range
i think these options would add less or no micro to the game.

This is honestly, a pretty cool request if it looks good in game. I think it would be desired to be automated. Also, this probably wouldn't be the only thing a unit did, but which unit would get parachute flares?

Just add it to some of the more common units. Because its mainly for the player. Also there should be no overkill of flares, just 1 or 2 at a time to illuminate the battlefield, more (distributed) if the battlefield is wider.

In SupCom2 there was a bomb camera. The stats were weak, so I tweaked them in my mod, but the general principals were all well designed. A hover characteristic and a light source (at night) could easily be added to the camera.

I dont get the connection to my suggestion?