Basic Vs Advanced Radar

I think some people here should actually play a RTS game in a competitive way instead of talking about it before saying that T2 radar are better in every way than T1 like it's an absolute truth.

This thread isn't about saying t1 radar is useless.

This thread is stating that t2 radar makes t1 radar obsolete. We are debating/suggesting ways to change how radar works. The aim is to make radar more interesting and at the same time stop t1 radar from becoming obsolete.

Saying that some things end up becoming obsolete in RTS games doesn't add anything and there's no truth to it. Its just that some people choose to make units/building obsolete.

-Can make radar work only in one direction.
-Can make radar only show everything with minute updates. Meaning that army it saw might have moved in any second and where you would not know.
-Can make radar show realtime updates, but of the unit's location a minute ago. Meaning you see it move fluidly, just of what things were a minute ago.
-Can make radar the same range as t1 but "aimable", so it is like building a t1 radar in one area and getting coverage in another area.
-Can make radar long range, but only detect a unit if there are 6 other units within so far of it, so groups of less than 6 go completely undetected.
-Can just make t2 the same range as t1 but the structure has more health to survive small raids.
-Can make t2 longrange but only detect stationary targets, perhaps anything standing still or perhaps only units that are unable to move such as structures only.

Some of those would cater to the recluse being the reason t1 is continued to be built, where t2 radar would miss those randomly playing guerilla in random spots to pick off kills and thin armies. And snipes, not seeing a small snipe team of units until they hit.

Others of those would make t2 just different from t1, like getting t1 radar coverage somewhere you cant build radar, or other perks that conclude to "paying t2 price for a t1 radar if you need it to do something special".

Except that it doesn't. For almost the same reason T2 mexes (NOT like current PA implementation) are not better than T1, and more (check my long post about it).

T1 radar is essential early game to provide early map awareness. T2 radar is essential when trying to support or defend with T2 artillery. Orbital radar is essential end game to finally remove the fog of war. All three are strict upgrades. However orbital radar renders all land based radar systems useless. I guess by many of these arguments orbital radar should not exist.

Ants are essential early game and should be supported by AA vehicles. Once T2 is available Levelers are essential. However their excessive cost and build time makes it impossible to completely switch to those units. Ants then shift into a critical support role along with AA vehicles. The ants are not made useless at the T2 level so the Leveler is not a replacement unit for the ant.

If you want to talk about duplicate units lets consider the fact that the Spinner and Stinger are very identical. Perhaps we should make one of them a T1 Artillery unit. I think that would be a fantastic idea. Then instead of having 2 T2 artillery units like we have now, let's make one of them a T2 AA unit.

Lets talk Defensive structures. Do we really need 3 different laser turrets? Yes, because of the price point. While all three fill the exact same role in exactly the same way, the cost scale makes it worth while. These laser turrets are also very good examples of what should be an upgradeable structure. Build the single barrel and later upgrade it to a 2 barrel, etc.

We would talk about those units, but that isn't the focus of this discussion.

Well, you know that in general I agree with you, ledarsi, KNight and all those other reasonable people. But you've made a very strange statement about the specifics

which I don't think you have justified. I don't mean the T2 radar as currently implemented, just some T2 radar which differs in cost and range.

I would like some sort of extra distinction between the radar units. Fuzzy radar, directional radar, spinning radar sound good. An obvious special ability or difference between the radar towers would make it very easy to balance them such that they both have a purpose. Sure it would be nice to have these things but they take work. I'm just a bit up in arms about the idea that some few parameter changes can never create distinct units. That games have to hit us over the head with special abilities at every turn otherwise we can't tell the units apart. I think there is enough room to make radar distinct without wacky abilities, I'm not arguing that it will be easier to balance or even that it would be a better game but I still think it is possible. Sure, people who run their economies so loosely that they don't feel the difference in cost will just spam T2 radar. But there is almost always a level of play which will see people who can't tell the difference between units.

Now I'm just wondering if you have a a general argument for this sort of stuff and where you might draw the line. In general if two units differ only in two parameters are they redundant? What if one of the parameters is cost? What about cost and two other parameters?

They way I would test it is to put both units together. Now do you still get an advantage from the weaker one?

With defenses the weaker one still deals damage and distracts the enemy. With units the weaker one still deals damage and distracts the enemy. With power the weaker one still produces energy. Now look at radar. The weaker one servers no purposes.

The other reason why I hate the current system is that it forces basic radar to have such a short range. At the same time you can't increase the range of the advanced radar because it gives too much information. To me, radar should out range any offensive building by a significant degree. But with the current level of information from radar it would be way too overpowered.

Thought on advanced orbital radar...

What if it displayed unit icons on the map but did not actually lift fog of war or give radar blips. That is, YOU can see unit icons to know what's up but your units can't fire at them because there is no true line-of-sight or radar blip.

If you want automatic firing, you need real radar coverage (or real line-of-sight).

Another option might be that advanced orbital radars can see buildings but not units. You can see the nuclear missile silo going up but you can't see what's building it. This would also help keep the late game from turning into a race of commander assassinations instead of the slugfest it should be.

It would be renamed to "Spy Satellite", since it no longer provides regular radar.

That test makes no sense. What if you have a turret with 5x the damage and 2x the cost of it's weaker version, you may as well just reclaim the weaker version and make more strong ones. With power generation it is clearly stupid to make the worse version once you have access to the better one. Your metric completely ignores cost.

Having visibility makes sense because you are in orbit. While I like the full reveal of the map at that point I would be willing to say we should only have fog of war lifted if the satellite has line of site.

But the key point your missing. A turret still attacks and a PGen still generates energy. A basic radar does nothing.

I'm thinking that if we made it into a "Spy Satellite" and gave it a line of sight equal to that of a basic radar (but it's a full lifting of the fog, not "radar"), it would still be useful -- you could move it over the enemy base to see what's going on -- but it wouldn't totally replace the ground radars.

If you let its line of sight be what it can really see, which is to say, about half of a planet, it would still make all ground radars obsolete on scale 4+ worlds.

It makes sense if there is no such thing as pollution. However, pollution runs rampant in a world of endless explosions and planet stripping industry. For a real world example, China has one of the most effective anti spy satellite programs in the world. Good luck trying to penetrate that defensive fog.

The idea of a "heat map" radar system is intriguing. However you need to process the entirety of units on the field, AND turn that into a NEW data set containing the heat values, AND to inform the player in the least bandwidth consuming way possible. It seems like a ludicrous amount of effort.

One way to get rid of the T2 radar(as a separate unit) is to simply not have a T2 radar. Use a modular design and stack up the T1 radars until you get the power output that you want.

What if t1 radar gave more information and alerted the player of threats it sees?

All I care about with the unit roster is that every unit has a use at any point in the game. I have never once built a basic radar once I could build advanced ones. This is mostly because the enemy has advanced radar (and most likely holkins/trebuchets that outrange the radar in the first place)

As for orbital, I don't like the fact that adv radar sats give the entire map awareness. It would be nice, IMO, if orbital actually orbited and the only units that could be in geosynchronous were very expensive ones. There is no need for units to be completely untouchable by units below and have even better stats.

I was very intrigued by the "basic vs advanced" concept where all units were supposedly going to be useful, and then I played the game and saw ant vs levelers, mexs, radars, etc. I hope this will change.

Then the problem is the T1 radar not being efficient enough.

The advantage of T2 radar must be only convenience. It's should be always better economically-wise to build multiple T1 over a single T2 (only because of the power consumption), but T2 can be useful because it requires less brain-power to manage.

Like mexes, they may seem a direct upgrade of the previous tier, while not being that much more efficient (it's off for the T2 mex by a scale of 2, and probably the radar too seeing what you are saying)
But in reality, they fit a unique role that the T1 does not : They save brain power (the third and most important resource of the game).

This is way more important and relevant for gameplay than having a T2 mex with a turret or a radar with heat signature.

Shall we compare the actual images, rather than speaking about the theory and the principals? I'm assuming that a t2 fab has laid a template for radar, and then immediately been reassigned to do other things.

T1 Radar
Radius: 360
Cost to Build: 150
Energy Cost: 300 per second.
Unassisted Time for T1 fabber to build: 30 seconds.
Unassisted Time for T2 fabber to build: 5 seconds.

T2 Radar
Radius: 600
Cost to Build: 1800
Energy Cost: 2000 per second.
Unassisted Time for T1 fabber to build: 180 seconds.
Unassisted Time for T2 fabber to build: 60 seconds.

The Images of Radar Coverage are below. There is a bot standing on the approximate northernmost point of the T2 Radar.
As the images clearly show, you actually get more radar coverage for less upkeep with 6 well placed T1 radars. Sure, they can Holkins creep you. But if they are Holkins creeping your main base I think you may have already lost.

I'm not really sure that more of a distinction needs to be made. If you have stealth units that are perfectly invisible to radar, and can make surrounding units undetectable by radar as well, 6 t1 radar are more effective than 1 t2 radar because you actually have to have line of sight, so you have to maintain your outposts.

The dynamic between radars are like the dynamic between levellers and ants. The same investment in Ants greatly increases the time to kill a leveller and increases its damage output a lot more than a second leveller would.

Not really sure there's an issue really. You have the T2 radars backing up the t1 radars in case your network starts getting destroyed. You can lose the entire network and still have coverage.
1 T2 Radar:

Cost to Build: 1800
Energy Cost: 2000 per second.
Time for 6 t1 fabbers to Build: 30 seconds

4 T1 Radar:



Cost to Build: 600
Energy Cost: 1200 per second.
Time for 6 t1 fabbers to Build: 30 seconds (two are unassisted)
6T1 Radar - Poorly placed.

Cost to Build: 900
Energy Cost: 1800 per second.
Time for 6 t1 fabbers to Build: 30 seconds

6T1 Radar - More efficiently placed

Cost to Build: 900
Energy Cost: 1800 per second.
Time for 6 t1 fabbers to Build: 30 seconds

kiwi, you make a very compelling argument. There are two things you are not considering, travel time between all of the build sites and the amount of micro that is needed to get them spaced well. When considering those factors I think the advanced radar is still more efficient.

It is. Same as the satellite is way more efficient because it's a lot easier to defend. You don't need actual land control to have map coverage.

Having a "bigger" radar with a bigger range is perfectly fine.
But then again, you can't just try to make up for the range with higher cost, since there are more factors involved which will make the unit with a bigger range ALWAYS superior unless completely locked away behind an economical barrier.

It's actually quite simple. Did it in May already: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/discussion-about-vision-if-at-all.44469/#post-687594 (Aggregation of the data using an optimized quadtree is fast! It also costs far less bandwidth than you would expect.)


But thats only one possible way to deal with larger radars:

• You can exclude all small / stealth units from long range radar. The bigger the range, the bigger the unit must be to be detected.
  
• You can use an awareness system, whereby each radar in range adds a certain amount of "awareness" on a cloaked unit. Each radar can only contribute up to a maximum awareness level (decreasing by range), but multiple radars can accumulate awareness faster. Special units actions (like explosions or weapons fire) add even more awareness as a penalty. (REAL stealth gameplay...)
  
• Heat map like display, where individual units are hidden, but still accumulated into zones whereby the size of the zone depends on the distance to the next radar station. (Like in the post I linked.)

What all have in common? Perfect information ONLY on short range. Radar must never become a replacement for scouting. And every unit in the radar class can still have a unique role, which do not invalidate each other but can coexist.