Cover System - A visual suggestion

amarines

If there is one thing that looks out of place about the cover system it is that it has a very Eldar look to it, obviously being that it appears as a bubble shield. Now when there are Eldar sitting inside this cover (per below) it looks 100% fine, it makes perfect sense in the landscape.

The issue I have is that there is a bit of a missed opportunity when it comes to Orks and Space Marines. I think the appearance of the cover should customize its appearance to the race that captures it. For example:
1. Eldar captured cover - bubble shield in its current form used to protect circle
2. Ork captured cover - scrap pieces of metal/materials starts being pulled together in a circle
3. Space Marine captured cover - sand bags and tank traps are mixed together in a circle

I think this individuality gives the game more clarity and would be much more visually appearing. Instead of looking at the cover system as a shield bubble you can capture we can look at it as zones that are optimal to construct a cover system. The construction would obviously happen as you gradually capture the cover with your units.

Wish I had thought of this a few months ago instead of now...

Larkis

There are ashield bubbles for every faction. So not only eldar one but also orkz and SM one. But they dont change dynamically.

Gorb

Space Marines don't tend to use sandbags (or tank traps so much); that's more of an Imperial Guard thing.

But as Larkis said, there are variants of the cover system styled for both Orks and Space Marines, but these are fixed on the map, per map. At the very least this lets modders build "Ork-only" themed maps, and the like.

Larkis

Also i think that in the campaign we will get reasons why they are shield bubles, energy cores ect.

If you look on the multiplayer features, all maps has that "black holes" with the grey sqares around. So maybe the MP Maps are some part of "Arena" from the Cage World in Lore?

amarines

I didn't realise the shields were themed to each faction so that is good news to hear. Perhaps @Larkis is correct that it is explained in the campaign which would be an easy way to go about it.

@GORB yeah I get the feeling that sandbags & traps were more IG but I was drawing a blank there

WarbossGogangash

@Larkis said:
There are ashield bubbles for every faction. So not only eldar one but also orkz and SM one. But they dont change dynamically.

I think it would be interesting if the base of the shield would also change depending on who captures it, it's kinda weird when space marines are under an ork shield. But it isn't a thing that really bothers me.

PhantomRevenger

The reason there isn't anything that really fits SM as far as cover goes is because the SM don't tend to use cover (except Scouts of course). Camouflage is the color of cowardice, cover is for the weak, etc.

I wonder if it might have been a good idea to have the bubble shields be more natural cover for the environment (on snow tileset it's rocks or piles of ice, on cage world it's random debris) and have the dome be a visual effect to indicate a unit in cover or just scrap the dome entirely. The only issue with it is you're then left wondering what happens to the cover when the shield HP runs down, unless you implement a visual effect of the cover being knocked down by weight of fire and the garrison time is meant to represent the unit(s) frantically rebuilding the cover under fire.