Radar, Jamming, Stealth, Cloak in PA

You could also make satellites mobile, I mean not geo-stationary. planets are kinda small so you could make them orbit with a certain speed so they would provide intelligence depending on their location, but agreed also a limited intelligence. In that way you could play the course of your attack depending on enemy's satellite and his movement. simple UI add-on could time before enemy's satellites emerge on horizon on given location for example.
But I also think satellites should be discuses a bit more in areas on anti-satellite mechanics, or making them really expensive to prevent spamming of same. Perhaps you could add a special structure that would serve as control building for a small number of satellites (or even one) and it would be costly and big so you would need to build more of these if you wanted more satellites. You would have to trade more resources and base space for your incredible intelligence, that way you would need to balance, just a quick thought.

Sure, if they don't cover a whole planet each, then mobile is a must-have. Not so sure about putting them in a non-geostationary orbit though, could look cool, but could also make them quite difficult to handle and thereby reducing the use. Especially if you put them on non-equatorial orbits.

Base space for satellites did work in SC, well except for the fact that the satellite wasn't worth it. At least it ensures, that the satellite can be taken down by taking down the ground station. Although one could also allow multiple satellites per ground center, only increasing the upkeep and allowing for fall-over if one ground center is destroyed. Base space doesn't seem so expensive in PA due to the lack of shields and wide areas, but it would make things cluttered.

More than one satellite? Can't really tell what would be the best, either one satellite which covers the whole planet (no LoS), the need for up to 4 satellites for 100% coverage (LoS with simulated realistic orbits) or even limited area for each satellite only.

Thats something which must be tested in the alpha, though the second option sounds best to me. I don't like the first option, it's a kind of "must have" building, but not an actual option since you can't afford not to build it. On the other hand, it eliminates the need to position the satellite which seems unintuitive since it is in orbit which doesn't really mix with the regular planet view.

As for the grade of intel, I don't think that satellites should be able to detect regular units. It's more for keeping track of your enemies base without the need of constant scouting (send in a scout once to identify all the buildings and use the satellite just to keep them locked). It shouldn't replace regular scouting, and neither should big radar stations.

As neat as individual detection behavior would be, it's a nightmare to understand. When are your units in range, and when aren't they? Is one unit type betraying your army by revealing the attack? It's impossible to know.

If you want good intel wars, it's important to provide as LITTLE vision as possible. These requirements definitely change for major unit types. You don't need to worry about small units too much, but you want to see a huge unit from far off. You need to see air units from further away, simply because they move faster and breach perimeters more easily. Can these things be done in an intel system? Of course. It's just a matter of how many moving bits you want to put in the system.

I mentioned a system a while back, and I'll repeat it here:
- Most units use LoS vision with limited (short) range. Vision is also blocked by horizon/stuff.
- Radar is tall and has higher max vision range.
- Stealth blocks radar, like in TA and supcom.
- Cloak uses reverse LoS. When a cloak gets too close to an enemy, it is revealed. In addition, it is fragile and broken by most actions, like the TA cloak.

What this does is:
- Taller units can potentially see further.
- Taller units can be seen from far away.
- Air units are vastly easier to spot due to their high altitude.
- Vision scales somewhat with planet size. Really small planets will cause vision to become cramped.

Unfortunately, LoS vision can get pretty expensive to work with. But if a unit is spotted once, it doesn't need to be spotted again.

Stealth as a complete blocker will not work in PA. The curvature of the planet has an even greater effect than you imagine. For direct fire units, having LoS means being in firing range, even with the not-to-scale firing ranges seen in the last livestream! For indirect fire units, firing range is even OUTSIDE the LoS on small to medium planets.

So if you give a unit hard stealth, it will be broken by design. And even if the curvature didn't have so much of an impact (e.g. on larger planets), you still had an issue with the individual biomes as they have many, many LoS blockers in them.

Thats not a bad thing. You only need to understand, that both sides are affected by imperfect information. The attacker will never know if he has been scouted and the defender will never know if his scouts have detected all threats.

It's also not about giving as little information as possible, but about giving imperfect information and sufficient tools to both sides, to increase or decrease the amount and quality of information or even to create false informations.

Yes, it is quite expensive, but on the other hand you can say that LoS range is abysmal on spheric maps so you don't even need to test for LoS for every unit which is out of normal weapon range....

... and thats just why i even propose to remove vision all together. Contrary to Spring, you will not gain any useful informations on typical PA maps. Even with larger units, vision range is still very limited and the demand for maps with tactical options leads to situation where vision is blocked even more often because that also means blocking movement and direct fire.

It's simpler than you think. If you allow for an system which defines individual visibility for each unit, then you don't need any additional tricks. A plane has just a longer tracking range, but still a low identification range so it can be spotted at long range (to make up for hight of flight and speed), but still needs to be scouted if you want to know what type it exactly is.

There is not much point in making a radar "taller". It can't use "real" LoS anyway, let me just give you an example. On a sphere with mere 10km diameter (small / lower medium sized planet) and a radar tower hight of 200 meters (which is giant!) you would need over 80(!!!) radar towers to cover a FLAT sphere with LoS. Thats right, a flat sphere without any hills, forest or anything else.
Not even planes with a height of flight of about 500 meters (which is far more than they are going to have, thats about the height of satellites in SupCom...) you would still need 30 planes to cover the sphere, a flat sphere that is again.

As nice as radar shadows and all that stuff would be, mathematics are not in your favor.

Ever thought of using signal jamming service? Jammers beneficial for all if used properly at the right place. Conference room, school examination, class, military camp... It is accepted to distinguish several types of jammers: mobile phone jammer, Wi-Fi jammer, Bluetooth， 4G, gps jammer etc. Each designed specifically to enable certain kind of mobile communication devices if needed.

No, that's really not a good enough reason. Stealth lets a unit approach enemy encampments and protects against long range weaponry. There's nothing inherently broken about that. It's just a different type of advantage if you use it right.

Stealth Units would be fun, i would love to start a sneak attack, or hide my artillery with a mobile stealthfield.
Jamming could also be very funny to use.
Cloak could be cool on some immobile units like scouts or sniper bots, or without the stealth-combo, so that you have a way to "see" it. The system that bobucles described could be fun.
Omni? please no, Anti-Anti stuff is stupid :s

The thing i hated it FA was the Stealth-Building. Once your enemy has discovered it, the buildings were marked on his map all the time. Useless building. If we get something like this, i hope it will work better. Erasing the marks on the map when he has no "line of sight" to it.

I think jamming and stealth could be fun! I always liked the dreadful feeling of not knowing what was happening when I was being jammed.

Stealth would be nice just because I like to be sneaky and lead people on. "I really think that this attack is a diversion, but I cant see anything else on my radar!"

Cloaking isn't necessary. Cloaking didn't ever really serve a purpose. It was only for hiding HVTs which is unimportant when you can just planet hop HVTs