The Case for Removing Radar

Isn't this feature assumed? I assume it is in supcom and even TA identified the blips in their tooltip once they were scouted.

Saying it aloud makes sure it isn't forgotten. Don't want the devs to forget it.

I would remove the advanced radar satelite and introduce static and mobile radar jammers. I think that would make the game more fun and you actually counter the long range radar blip shooting (if you build jammers).

Remove radar, don't be ridiculus. If you don't want radar just disable the building.

I like the range of the Advanced orbital satelite. But it should only show blips not visual.

I would like to see radar jammers implemented.

Artillary is like a precision bomber and way to effective against units, it should change.

If you don't want artillary shooting at your base you shouldn't have let them build it so close. Shooting and destroying stuff at long range is what artillary is made for.

What if those towers get destroyed? Then your catapult is useless and now you have to spend time manually targeting or sending out scouts which does make it harder for the defender.

In any good strategy game there is always counterplay possible. And as a result you can always say, "well X doesn't work because what if the other player does Y." Not to mention that now you're essentially handing the attacker free units in the form of the defensive towers killed, and then concluding the attacker has an advantage. You can assert your conclusion until you're blue in the face, nobody will be convinced. If you assume the attacker has an advantage, you should not be surprised when the attacker is in a superior position.

Moreover, this entire line of nonsense theorycraft is unproductive. Being able to make moves using units in the game which have different effects is pretty much the entire point of a strategy game. So it is ridiculous to say 'well what if the attacker does X, doesn't that change how these units behave?" because that is the point. According to your argument, a Catapult being useless because of something intelligent that costs resources/units would be undesirable. You can always presuppose the other player does something to their advantage, but you accomplish nothing by doing so. According to your argument, the very existence of counterplay can be used exactly as you have just done to argue that the mechanic that creates the counterplay dynamic is bad because it makes moves possible which create an advantage.

Put another way, it certainly seems like in your book, there should be no counterplay to Catapults shooting at their maximum range. You look at the inability to deny your Catapult from firing at anything, anywhere within its maximum range as a feature. I look at the possibility of denying an enemy Catapult from firing by denying vision as a feature.

I assert that this creates more dynamic counterplay for long range weapons, and can justify having more powerful and less expensive long range weapons that depend on other units for vision. You have more tactical options than "build a bigger gun" or "just overwhelm it." You can actually have units move about and even fight the enemy in areas covered by enemy artillery, since you have to find the enemy units before the artillery can destroy them.

In response to the sentence (that I) underlined in your quote: That wasn't my point, but it certainly does apply to what I said. My point was that it makes catapults fairly ineffective for defensive situations, and destroys the value of having long ranged artillery; it would end up being better to simply build a large army with the same amount of mass, and just counter any assault.

Now, those towers giving visual support for the catapults are guaranteed to get destroyed in the attack, so you are guaranteed to lose visual coverage for a fairly significant amount of time--it ends up being a loss on the defender's part no matter what. And what about radar jammers? Wouldn't those allow you to move in artillery controlled territory without taking losses? Without radar, what's the point of the planned radar jamming units? Using those still puts the defender in the same position, only this time they aren't going to use up so many resources.

Also, remember that when attacking a fortified position, superior numbers is the way to win. There is actually a certain ratio that is recommended for attacking fortified positions. (I don't know it, but I know it does exist.) So, why remove an actual battlefield dynamic?

I see your original point but I'm far from convinced completely removing radar is the solution. Would not a jammer/phalanx/shield be sufficient for this particular case? Up the energy costs and implement blips to maintain radar for other cases?

Spacing out defenders and light turrets just to maintain a constant vision range is more micro intensive in itself then it may seem on the surface. The act of maintaing a ring of visionary detection, even with patrol loops is something that just seems along the lines of busy work to get good coverage around your base.

Scouting can get pretty hard when your units can get swatted out of the sky randomly due to a missile turret or mis click. Radar is that invisible detector that doesn't give full information but just enough information to warrant attention to an area.

Saying its boring is throwing it under the rug in how to improve its "exciting nature" Why does radar have to be exciting in the first place. The excitement can come from knowing there is a huge blob of Dox's running at my base... I need to build defenses. Or Discovering a random fire base after establishing radar. I'm a little clueless into what" Boredom" Is happening. Knowing what is coming can be build up to having units ready to counter whatever push the attacker is trying to do. If you didn't have radar and relied on units patrolling, then it would need to be a seamless in its detection or your going to get surprised more.. I don't necessarily think getting surprised is fun.

Because its Tunnel vision to think that 1v1's and large team games are the epitome of balance. It is your opinion on whatever game mode that Slamz is refering to, but the case of gathering intel to decide on attacking and defending is important to mold a good strategy. Constantly microing units out to find if units are coming at you or if something is getting built close to your base just sounds like added busy work from what I gather your solution to the problem. It doesn't make the game more fun but sounds tedious.

To specifically address the effect that scouting has on attacking as opposed to defending, if anything the need to scout makes attacking harder. Needing to scout imposes an additional burden on the defender as well, but the defender has time and access to prepare their deployment as well as any defenses in advance.

Not having radar to fully reveal the positions of every enemy unit makes attacking much harder. Dangerous enemies could easily be lying in wait, regardless of their relative ranges. And attacking inherently exposes the attacking units to more risk than remaining static in a protective posture.

I get the impression that you have assumed that the attacker will have excellent scouting information. While that is not necessarily the case, you are correct in a sense that it makes perfect sense to scout and then attack. Attacking blind is extremely dangerous, meaning the attacker will likely take whatever steps are necessary to scout ahead. But the defender has the same tools and the same options to scout afield and see an attack incoming. On top of placing their units and defenses in advance, they can do anything that an attacker can do.

Radar is obviously useful for detecting an incoming attack. But I would argue that you have perfectly usable tools for doing that even without radar. But the kind of information radar gives for coordinating an effective attack is much more difficult to obtain without radar. Without long-range radar, you don't have any tools that are anywhere near as convenient or as cheap for scouting ahead of an attack. Sending scouts into enemy territory to get information before an attack is not nearly as comprehensive as long-range radar, and it is also very likely to lose you quite a few recon units.

In sum, in order to defend you only need to get vision over empty territory, or territory that you already control. In order to scout ahead of an attack you have to send scouts close to the enemy, where they are likely to die, and where they will almost certainly not give you as much information as the all-seeing long-range radar.

Again, Wargame is quite solid evidence that using vision instead of long-range radar makes attacking much harder, not easier. Attacking is extremely difficult in Wargame, but admittedly that is only partly because of scouting. It is also because units tend to be inaccurate while firing on the move (defenders can afford to be stationary), and also due to the prevalence of weapons like ATGM's that have excellent range and power, but must be stationary to fire. And are therefore such weapons are much more useful to defend.

I see you have still failed to realize ledarsi that the scale of this game makes removing radar quite impossible, & like I said earlier, über has already stated that they are reducing the amount of micromanagement that you would normally see in an rts due to the fact of the planned meta games which will have 40 players ingame, which begs the reducement of micro. Please remember that fact