I think time of day should change with the RL time of day. It could add some interesting features, like nocturnal crab species and increasing/decreasing sight ranges (if fog of war is ever implemented).

A day/night cycle would look nice and add an even more natural feel to maps. But having it correspond to the RL time of day might get boring.

Maybe have it move at a 8x speed?

That way 24 hours is 3 hours. Still too slow.
If it happens, have it linked to the turns in the Metagame, so it is day for 2 turns, then night for 2 turns.

For the story campaigns, have some maps during the day, and some during the night.

Yes, this.
I think it would be a small but interesting touch if story missions that take place at night could only be done at night.
Not really a big thing, but it just adds slightly more internal consistency to the game.

Also, for the record, day/night variants of maps would be awesome. I imagine it could be as simple as a couple of texture changes and some sort of blending effect on MOs, along with shorter view distances and 'thicker' fog of war.

Numgun, I'm not sure if the area you've labelled as volcanic is intended as a caldera or just as earthy steppes..

Darn, looks like I said it the wrong way about the day cycles. I intended to ask how the day cycle works in the overall world, not ingame. So based on how it actually would work in "real life" then we could have some backgrounds that are not limited to blue sky theme.

Having actual day cycles in the game would not be intended. Its a feature that I bet would require serious reworking of the engine to do it smoothly enough. I'm just talking about different backgrounds for a change.

Surely you could just do a day night cycle by having two-four backgrounds per scene and alpha-blending between them, no?

Either that, or for Metagame turn style day and night, double the number of scenes, one day, one night. Change the background, move the fauna around a bit, make stuff night-y...

Two suns. Like Alpha Centauri. Or better yet, like K-PAX with the really cool orbits. Day/night cycles completely unpredictable. Allows for global verdancy at some points, freezing temps and desert conditions at others. Very fun. Makes wildlife (krabz 'n' grass) extremely adaptable.

Ahhh...concept art one of my favorite topics. I ecspesialy love the new coalition art. I think that would just about have the makings of an actual faction, and not just a mod. I think the next build or the final product of cc should have those coalition sprites.

Um, what are you talking about?

The pictures on page 1.

@Element-zero

They will be official content. Prom will propably polish them a bit, but they will.
Everything in this thread is about official content.

@teh somebody Really? AWSOME! My favorite is the steroids one. But the real one is pretty cool too! I dont really get answer from these questions but about how far are we from the next build release?