Optional fog of war

[humbe]

It would be really nice if it was possible to enable some highlighting of the area your currently selected soldier is able to see right now. I tried to search the forum, but only found a thread in modding section for someone asking if there already were such a mod, with no reply.

- If there were an alien out on that field, would I be able to spot him?
- There's a tree 5 tiles north and 1 tile west. If there were an alien behind it, would I be able to see him or is the angle to steep?
- Is that tree trunk big enough to hide someone behind it?
- Do I see over this obstacle or is it too tall?

I guess one way to do it, was for daylight mission to make light outside your vision a bit darker, and for night time missions, make the visible area illuminated a bit more.. Or maybe a ground texture on visible tiles would be simpler and work for all light conditions. Doesn't matter if the visualization is pretty if it's only shown while you press a key or something.

Should of course be optional to use it.

[Meridian]

This was suggested several times.

I have rejected it each time as cheating.

A lightweight version of this, only considering night vision radius, not considering any obstacles, is available in OXCE.

[humbe]

Being easily available to see the 9 distance from flares, and whether or not this fairly dark place use 9 or 20 limit seems like a good improvement at least. I might try out OXCE later ..

The game shows visibility as you move into the unexplored territory for the first time, so the information isn't secret. It would just be about making it easier available, so you don't need to track every step forwards in detail to learn all the visibility rules. Not sure why you call it cheating. Because people should learn those details? Or because noone should know those details, and you should be required to guess. Anyhow I agree it would make the information far more available, and thus make it easier to handle it, and as the information wasn't easily available before, it should at least be optional.

Not expecting it to be made, just thought I'd offer up a suggestion

I've been saving and loading too much in this game, and I'm trying to find ways of avoid it (like using activity graphs and patrolling to find UFOs rather than reloading a game because RNG lost it for me by not detecting enough UFOs 2 months in a row). Getting experience for my soldiers is a lot of fun, so I'd like to get to where I manage to keep most my troops after a battle, at least most my experienced troops, and that seems to entail learning a lot of mechanics. If I end up losing soldiers too often to what feels out of my control, then I fear load/save mechanics will still be too tempting.

[Meridian]

The game shows visibility as you move into the unexplored territory for the first time, so the information isn't secret.

No, the game doesn't show visibility as you move.
It shows more.
True visibility information is secret.

Attached is an example of a completely unexplored map after opening the doors.
You would not be able to spot an alien on many of the tiles that have been marked as explored.

[humbe]

Hard to argue with you.. You know your stuff

But a fog of war based on what you would have explored if it was not explored yet, rather than true visibility, would still be helpful, and might not fall in what you consider cheating basket?

In any case, I guess I'll have to try and pay more attention as to when I do spot aliens and not..

[wcho035]

I have rejected it each time as cheating.

Cheating is good for the soul, it is a cardinal sin we all commit..even the best of players..

[Meridian]

I don't have anything against cheating. Feel free to cheat. I cheat too.

That doesn't mean I have to implement new cheats. They have such a low priority, they are practically rejected.