Long range Artillery that fire over strategic Map

[sikbok]

Just a bit of a brainstorming.
Some more modern games (Supcom series, Wargame / Steel division) have artillery with extremely long range, as in they fire across all but the largest maps.

Just thinking what if Planetfall introduces similar units instead of highly annoying strategic spells.

We actually discussed several versions of this idea - i.e. a spellcasting alternative wired through units on the map.
A big issue here is that as soon as you have a few of these units on the map you get what we'd call Venn diagram soup. I.e. lots over overlapping circles to define what can reach where..
What makes this worse if the information each of these needs to carry: ownership, what the ability/attack is and what it can do, possibly the state of this ability, etc. Especially when trying to move into an area covered by multiple of these ranged enemy units. At a point it becomes hard to see the fun through the information overload.

There's lots more detail here, but I'll leave it at this to avoid those dreaded walls-of-text.

 

[sikbok]

On another note, one might argue that you do not *need* to show the reach of these Big Bertas, or you could put it on a new map layer (ie to see the reach of the weapons you know of, you must turn off domain/sector borders or whatnot to de-clutter your view). Beyond that it is about ensuring that there aren't too many of these super-special boomba machines, either by extraorbitant cost or limiting one per faction (but seducable/hackable). Perhaps even saying it has to come from the orbital station, but deploying it (summoning it) on the world map will deplete your orbital support (no in-battle summons for you from then on).

I'm not saying I am in favour of this, I'm saying I see potential solutions to the outlined problems. Call me Devil's advocate if you want, I do not protest.

If you have so few - i.e. 3 - that venn diagram soup is no longer an issue, would it still be fun?
Also, if you move your units on the world map you kinda need to know if you move into range of something nasty right? So, since movement is most of what you do hiding the information won't help in most of the cases.

Have you considered collapsing all the bubbles into a general "operations range", based off a factions territory representing controlled airspace the area where back line units can move safely? Because it does seem a bit of a leap that you should have artillery support on tap when on the literal other side of the planet from your only city, which could be hand waved in AOW3 because of the smaller scale and being magic. This keeps the option of cutting off an enemy army from their operations by taking fortresses or sectors near the frontlines without the venn-diagram soup.

Well done mr_stibbons. You'll find that to be pretty close to the solution we're iterating on now.
Add a bit of Ockham and ditch the unit requirement - which Quark02's comment was leading into conceptually - and you're pretty much there.

 

[sikbok]

The wall of text please. It's difficult to respond constructively without knowing the details.

Details about the current system are still subject to change, given we are still iterating on these.
It is on the Dev Diary list, to be discussed when we are happy with it.

Anyways I got no dogs in that race either way. It's just an interesting thought experimental as a Disjunction alternative.

No worries. We've got the disjunction alternative covered for Planetfall.