What is it with Fog of War? This has been possibly the least innovated aspect of RTS games since the genre was first brought out. Since the days of Dune and C&C fog of war has been the only real way to control a players ability to see everything that is going on and while it does the job it feels slightly unsatisfying.
It feels contrived, its like the game developers just shrugged ran with it and have been running with it ever since. The average human can see car sized objects coming from kilometers away given good eyesight and good conditions yet in the majority of RTS games out there I barely feel as if my units can see more than 20 meters away. I feel like my units are all short sighted and wear huge lensed glasses.
It also seems to negate the usefulness of terrain as a vision stopper, if we cant see anything inside the fog what reason have developers got to program it in that if unit A is behind a hill unit B cannot see them until the hill is not longer causing an obstruction. While yes we play games so much in the way of strategy and tactics is taken out by the use of the fog of war, Example, the simple ability of being able to hide artillery units behind a hill and use a spotter to sight for them, enemy cannot see them because they are behind the hill they have no idea where the shelling is coming from the only thing the know is that they can see a spotter. Don't want the enemy to be able to see inside your base build a wall block their vision.
On the flip side much of this has to do with the scale of the game and the size of its maps. Take DoW2 for example, when controlling a genetically engineer super human who happens to be wearing a suit of power armor that enhances visual capabilities I find it hard to be believe that I can't see more than 20 meters in front of me, however the scale of the map would mean I would be able to see from one side to the other given no intervening obstacles. However there is plenty of terrain that blocks vision buildings, rock outcroppings, walls etc. Why limit my units vision with an artificial aspect of the game? Why not just let the natural terrain features do it for me? Also why exactly can I see exactly whats on the other side of a wall that towers above my head and is solid stone?
Supreme Commander had an ideal opportunity for developing this, terrain was implemented with varying heights could block incoming projectile trajectories etc, yet your units are still wearing thick lens glasses and terrain has no bearing except to make certain parts impassable etc.
Something that has eternally frustrated me as to why in almost every single rts game I have played there is always a sniper unit that can shoot further than they can see, THEY HAVE SCOPES FOR A REASON! Take any FPS game take a sniper rifle and on some maps you can and will be picking people off on the other side of the map before they can even make you out as a small dot on the landscape. Why oh why in every RTS do snipers have to have someone spotting for them to make the best use of their range?
While I cannot disagree that Fog of War does its job, it does however limit many aspects of strategy and I suspect of map design. Without true line of sight the use of vision imparement tools such as smoke greandes or even weather conditions do little more than add visiual effects or use a mechanic such as reduce damage for a limited time period instead of what they are supposed to be for which is to prevent the enemy from knowing what is going on. Using true line of sight opens up a world of possibilities for both smaller scale squad based rts (looking at DoW2 and Company of Heros) and larger scaled games like supreme commander.