What if it's the radar the problem?

Yeah, you read it right. What if knowing too much is the real problem in balancing nukes, artillery and such?

As soon as we launch an Advanced Orbital Radar, we can see everywhere on the map. That's a great power, all suddenly it confers a huge advantage to who first reaches the orbital layer.

Intel is king during a real conflict (and also in PA indeed). Real armies never get to know everything about the enemy. They may know where the enemy has its major area of influence, and where most likely its production is. They can probably be advised if an army is heading for the borders. But knowing in advance the exact composition of those armies is rare (and it's gold). As well as what exactly has been produced in some area, or where the most valuable assets are.

To know it better, it would be mandatory sending scouts or having spies. Perhaps an unit similar to what is the Ghost in StarCraft.

In fact, perhaps the Basic Orbital Radar could be enough, giving the player an overview of where the enemy is, in form of anonymus dots. If the player needs more intel, one should invest in some scouting on the field. Having all the data *on tap* looks a little like a cheat. Isn't it?

Conventional artillery could still open fire at those dots, like they do know. Shells aren't that expensive. While a Catapult being way more costly may be tuned to shot only when a valuable target is confirmed by a scout (or ghost).

Nukes would be able to stay as they are. One could drop a nuke on a dense populated enemy area. But only having more intel one could tell if there is a Commander in the area or just units and factories.

I'm curious to know what you think about the above. It might be interesting to give a try on a match. instead to set "No Nuke", to set a match with "No Advanced Orbital Radar" and see what will happen.

I think advanced orbital radar would be fine as long as the vision radius was reduced. Only on the largest planets do you not get full coverage. If their vision radius was reduced significantly, you would need to move them into position and use them like an actual spy sat. Of course, they become a lot more vulnerable to avengers and catapults that way, but they could be made a little cheaper and with reduced energy upkeep if they were toned down some.

jesus I like how the the advaced vison thigimabob gets away unscratched and the radar gets the short end of the stick



remove advanced orbital radar sure. radar didn't do anything why do you say it's it's fault.

Yes I agree with tatsujb. The problem with advanced orbital radar is only vision, not radar, and even then it's only a problem because you can't stealth your units

Course, you could just attack it with fighters



As for balancing artillery, the issue is blatantly firing ranges.

This is exactly on the right track calorizzante. I completely agree.

The problem is there is too much intel available too cheaply. Without the cheap and immense intel capabilities of existing units, long-range units, big-ticket units, and just general maneuvering on the battlefield would be far more interesting. It becomes possible to deny or severely limit the effectiveness of artillery by just not allowing the enemy to get scouts near sensitive targets. Or have secret bases because the enemy hasn't scouted them yet. Or make nukes relatively ineffective because of a lack of good targeting intel, causing the user to pick an inferior target.

Scouting the best location to nuke would actually require some investment and thought, even if it just means sending some spy planes in the general area of a known enemy base. Just looking at radar blips makes gathering good actionable intelligence just silly.

If features like advanced radar, advanced radar satellites, and so on were completely reworked or removed wholesale, it would open up the unit roster for a wide variety of different scout units. Cheap scout bots, stealthy scout sniper teams, high-vision recon vehicles, armored recon tanks, spy planes, narrow-vision spy satellites, and so much more.

Units with good vision, but still much less than current radar, would cost more resources, and give different players different amounts and types of intelligence depending on which units they use, and in what quantity, and where. You would have to actually decide how you want to use them and the enemy has the ability to destroy them, deny intelligence, and severely limit the effectiveness of extremely powerful weapons like nukes, long-range artillery, and more.

Obviating the entire dimension of intelligence about where the enemy is with a single huge-range radar or vision asset is not interesting.

Actually, looking at one of the latest playtest vids from Metabolical, it looks like the radar sats have been nerfed quite a lot. http://www.twitch.tv/metabolical/c/3543155 Go to 38 mins, and you'll see that the advanced radar sat only costs 3600 metal, but only has a range to cover a small/medium base. A few minutes later and you'll see one finished. The vision radius is small, smaller than a basic air scout even, while the radar range is decent but not planet wide.

This has been talked about on a lot of threads.

I'm really curious to see how the rebalanced orbital mechanics changes things. So I think we should wait and see what this week's patch is like.

Ummmm ever heard of a uav??? Predator drone???? And satellites we have currently???? Yea you can get all the Intel you want on the enemy. Just like Obama is gathering all the Intel he can on the American people.

Now that said yes I agree advanced sat is super op and my second unit after Lander....... the vision could use a slight nerf but I don't think it would be removed entirely. Lots of rts contain a nice los unit. I believe it would be better if it were much harder to obtain the sat. Hopefully this is included with the new orbital re work. I don't want my los tool removed altogether tho, it shouldn't be so op when the avenger bugs are fixed and they can actually shoot the Damn thing.

And hey!!! Intel is king is my line!!!

Yea not to mention jamming units are hopefully coming but I guess if you have a giant jammed area in your los it would be in your best interest to attack that blind area

I think satellites should have a very hard time gathering intelligence about the surface. Make that functionality a specialized orbital unit for a high cost, with limited vision because of its tremendous freedom to view anywhere.

An orbital radar might give a player total information about orbital units nearby, but absolutely nothing in the game should give such a huge amount of intel about the surface.


Beer4blood, there is a tremendous difference between a scout unit and an "omni" unit.

A predator drone is a perfect example of a scout unit. It flies directly over the target area and gives intel about that area only. Gathering intelligence in a military context is a constant, highly intensive, and very expensive process. You can't just float one Predator drone and call it a day. There are tons of drones in constant action. Recon planes, observation helicopters, recon infantry/special forces, armored recon vehicles, and an immense variety of other efforts. There are many different aspects of gathering information, each with strengths and weaknesses. For example, satellites are very expensive, and let you decide to view one particular area with total impunity. But satellites view a small area at a time, and aren't useful for large-scale intel gathering (unless you spend a huge amount on a LOT of them). Vehicles on the ground are cheaper and more flexible, and can have weapons. And are generally better than satellites, even in real life.

In any case gathering intelligence is, if anything, more expensive than the actual combat units. And certainly involves a lot more thought and strategy than an actual attack where the enemy's strength and capabilities are known with certainty.

It is technologically impossible to build a single radar tower or spy satellite and reveal the entire planet. It takes a large number of very weak and relatively expensive recon and intelligence assets working together to get a picture of what is going on in the large scale. And the effectiveness of your other units, and even your strategic decision-making, are affected by the information you have. So the decision about how much to spend on scouting, and what kind of units to use, and where to put them, is almost a meta-strategic decision that will affect your later strategic decisions.

Fortunately, in an RTS game, all of that information can be processed, integrated, and displayed instantly to the player in real time. But I don't see a reason why the intelligence assets should be so minimized, to the point that you build a single unit and then you're done. It should be a constant process of building, deploying, and fighting using lots of types of scouts in the field.

I swear people don't read.....I said it should be nerfed.....smh and I never said anywhere that we have just one of each revealing the world....... but for most engagements one will do the job. Repeat engagement not a war

Fyi predator drone is beyond that of a mere scout. They can drop the hammer with a diverse array of weaponry. They are responsible for an extremely large number of kills in the current conflicts we are engaged in, not to mention the the unseen.....

Also I liked your post meaning in in agreement with you.......smh

Perhaps the radar aspect should be removed from it and it become solely a los sat. I feel the plain radar sat is more than adequate.

Making a spy satellite an expensive source of a very limited amount of intelligence that is very hard to deny makes it a lot more interesting than just giving it a huge range.

The spy satellite would give you the ability to get eyes on any target area on the entire map. So it is incredibly powerful even if its sight range on the surface is tiny. But you don't have an asset anywhere close to the target area that might die, and it is impossible to stop, which is very neat. Recon units can be destroyed, meaning scouting deep behind enemy lines is actually very difficult and dangerous.


And the Predator isn't that fantastic. Its major advantage is that it is unmanned, which is done for political reasons. Scout helicopters have been doing its job for decades, and even carry more weapons. For example, the Kiowa carries Hellfires as well. Weapons on scouts are completely standard, not the exception.

Even before the invention of helicopters there were still planes, and even before that there were balloons. And that's just for airborne observation.

I'm inclined to agree.

I think the vision is super powerful and could be looked at.

There's a few other problems with advanced radars too, specifically that there is no way to stop players from seeing everything:

1. Adv radars are interchangeable with orbits, you don't need to establish a base on the planet you want to look at.
2. There is no way to stop a radar from entering orbit and once it's there the damage is done. I've killed a lot of poor bastards on moons just be suiciding a radar into orbit then nuking the bajebus out of their base as I know exactly how many nukes I need to overwhelm their defenses and exactly where the good buildings are.
3. The vision is instant! You can destroy their radar but it pays for itself as soon as it's launched!

The guys at Uber must be aware of this and we'll just wait and see what they think about radars. The omni-sensors was in Supreme Commander, so I'm sure they've had to consider just how powerful radar & vision is.

Exactly. Perhaps I come late on this topic, I apologize if I speak the obvious.

Weapons' range may not need to change, 'cos they are likely appropriate for a wide range of planets' sizes.

But knowing how to acquire the target's location is a great part of a war game. It is actually where the real fun is.

Perhaps the Advanced Radar Satellite could give you a deep vision of only a third of the surface on a planet. In real you would need at least five satellites to properly cover the entire surface, right? Because you need two for each pole.

http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110421141914AAL5sKL

Or perhaps an Orbital Satellite could give you a deep view of the static structures, buildings, factories, etc. But only dots of the smaller units, so that you can't be sure about what's crawling down there.

Well, I'm not saying this *is* the solution. But if you are up for a try, I'm game

This is really true. War games are about having a certain limited set of tools to destroy targets, and needing to make choices about how to use them to maximum effectiveness.

In the best wargames, those tools are actually extremely effective when used intelligently. Such as an air strike being a very reliable way to eliminate an enemy unit. But each tool has advantages and disadvantages, benefits and risks, compared to other tools you might use. Such as artillery, missile strike, raiding, direct assault, and so on. And using them with imperfect information carries risks because of the unknown. So scouting is hugely important in order to make intelligent decisions.

And in order to use any of your forces or weapons, you have to know where the enemy is first. Having eyes on a target then presents you with the choice of what you want to do about it. If you can see it, you can kill it. Move in? Bombard it? Missiles? Airstrike? Nukes? You have options for how to go about attacking things when you know where they are. Otherwise, firing blind has a very high chance of wasting assets, and exposing your forces to needless risk. Or, at least, waste time.

In PA, resources and production are also critical factors, as well as forces and intelligence. So you get to choose which tools you want, and in what relative amounts and positions, as well as decide how to use them once they are out on the board.

Hopefully with the New early orbital we get some form of mobile anti orbital at T1 making all orbital a precarious well thought out decision instead if careless and immediate.

Once again I'm for your ideas ledarsi. More smaller land and air mobile los units does make for better gameplay. I'd love to see the return of the parasite spy bot from TA I loved that thing many people underestimated its value.

Maybe the advanced sat really has no place at all even if the los is extremely nerfed Idk time will tell.

Another option to reducing the effectiveness of los units like the advanced sat would be that static units don't remain visible when los is no longer obtained. I understand it makes sense that they do since they are immobile. But for the sake of gameplay a marker is placed in the area of scouted enemy buildings representing their team color......

Or another aspect would be to implement something knight suggested long ago in a giant discussion we had over the orbital layer. It was that advanced orbital sats are forced to actually orbit the planet. Making them more vulnerable to enemy fire as well as only providing glimpses into enemy territory, this coupled with no permanent structure vision would add a lot more interesting aspects to gameplay.

Oh, that was the strongest unit type in the arm advanced kbot factory, easily, even without a weapon. You need some main combat units and some artillery first, but once you have a large army of basic bots as well as the other core advanced units, spreading spy bots everywhere was such an incredibly unfair advantage against an opponent who hasn't got a clue where your units are.

Jeffies were also criminally underused. Their vision is phenomenal in TA, and they significantly extend the effective range of many other units because of their sight range. Not to mention the advantage of scouting enemy unit positions and planning more efficient attacks to kill mexes, avoid enemies, and to arrange for enemy attacks to hit your army instead of undefended areas. I think the main reason is because there were no infinite queues in OTA, so people would just spam-queue 100 of whatever unit they wanted because of the UI.

Um my only response to this is two words...radar jammer.

Can't share you optimism. SC hasn't changed in ages, and it certainly hasn't changed while PA was being developed. Considering that counter-intel measures, like counter-radar aka SC's stealth, (not to be mistaken with invisibility aka SC's cloak), and SC's radar jamming aka feeding fake information, aren't supposed to be release features (or at least they weren't the last time I took a look at confirmed feature list), I'd wager (figuratively speaking) that their examination of SC's intel system didn't lead them to conclusion that all intel gathering methods have to have weak points or counters. To me it look like ether they are clueless, or they have decided towards Intel supremacy.

But than again, I'm not exactly well informed when it comes down to PA and it's future...