Orbital radar is too good

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by Quitch, November 23, 2013.

  1. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

    Messages:
    5,850
    Likes Received:
    6,045
    Seriously, vision of most of if not the whole map? Totally invalidating all scouting and radar?

    It's crying out for a rework.
  2. Gerfand

    Gerfand Active Member

    Messages:
    575
    Likes Received:
    147
    you mean, it is OP?
  3. tbacav

    tbacav Member

    Messages:
    52
    Likes Received:
    27
    If you can build orbital radar you probably had better things to spend resources on.

    See "I could have won this battle 30 minutes ago but I decided to orbital snipe instead".

    Worst case scenario drastically up the energy requirements for orbital radar.
  4. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

    Messages:
    5,850
    Likes Received:
    6,045
    The fact that orbital as a whole isn't reached very often, or used that much, doesn't change the fact that this is a fire and forget replacement for every radar and scout unit in the game. Not only that, but it ruins any chance of surprises on planets. Going off-planet? Send one of these with you and no one lands without you knowing.

    Even in the terribly balanced existing structure, there's a point where it's easier to build one of these than sacrifice another scout wave to find where his commander is. It's more of a FFA issue though where orbital is more likely to appear.
  5. tbacav

    tbacav Member

    Messages:
    52
    Likes Received:
    27
    I personally think this is a premature assumption. Uber has not yet stated whether orbiatal is where they want it, which granted is a pain in the arse for the purpose of these discussions. Gate mechanics are yet to be determined but I suspect they will make radar irrelevant or completely OP.

    Your counter arguments remind me of the radar vs no radar thread. There is a point where too much radar ruins the surprise of the gameplay. Where that is I'm buggered if I know.
  6. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

    Messages:
    5,850
    Likes Received:
    6,045
    Well I can only discuss based on the game as it stands now, I don't want to discuss a theoretical future game, nor abandon all discussion until some undefinied date where we declare things good enough for discussion.

    I'm not sure either, but I feel safe in saying that full planet LOS (not even radar, but LOS) is way over the line.
    drz1 likes this.
  7. igncom1

    igncom1 Post Master General

    Messages:
    7,961
    Likes Received:
    3,132
    Its a supcom problem where the T3 radar covered 80% of the map.

    And so.....you know have relative omnipotence.



    As to the topic, Personally Id like the orbital radar to have a kind of radar cone over the range of the static T2 radar, but of course movable.
  8. tbacav

    tbacav Member

    Messages:
    52
    Likes Received:
    27
    Full planet LOS short of full planet patrol/unit LOS coverage doesn't seem right. But again, I feel this discussion is difficult without knowing Uber's future plans. I wish they'd actually divulge more information so we could base these discussions on relevant facts.

    Agreed but at the scale of warfare that is supposedly the goal of this game, ie. inter-planetary, full radar coverage is a really convenient thing for most players.
  9. igncom1

    igncom1 Post Master General

    Messages:
    7,961
    Likes Received:
    3,132
    I can understand a good radar coverage, but really players should be setting up scout plane patrols.

    Even on larger planets, setting up a good patrol seems to be rather simple.
  10. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

    Messages:
    5,850
    Likes Received:
    6,045
    I think it unlikely that Uber put out the game as it stands, then closed their eyes and stuck their fingers in their ears as they went on to design more units. This is exactly the kind of thing that should be discussed before and not after because you want to shape what the final design looks like.
  11. tbacav

    tbacav Member

    Messages:
    52
    Likes Received:
    27
    I see it more as a AND/OR. There is a metal/energy/player time cost to setting up scout plane patrols. There is a metal/energy/player time cost to setting up radar coverage. I would like to see these both being viable options, with a potential benefit given to scout plane patrols for the extra skill required.
  12. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

    Messages:
    5,850
    Likes Received:
    6,045
    ignore
    igncom1 likes this.
  13. tbacav

    tbacav Member

    Messages:
    52
    Likes Received:
    27
    Huh?
  14. Teod

    Teod Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    483
    Likes Received:
    268
    Orbital radar shouldn't be a king of radars, it should be a king of scouts.
    In my (incompetent) opinion, it should give LoS over area the size of ground radars (somewhere between T1 and T2, depends on accurate balance). It's already better than ground because of mobility, there is no need to give it that much of range advantage.

    And the whole "basic orbital" and "advanced orbital" dichotomy, as it stands now, seems wrong to me. Stuff you launch from the ground should all be basic. Advanced - is something you build already there. And in this true advanced orbital level we can have the king of radars with insane coverage. But it still should be radar, not LoS, and it should be immobile.
  15. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

    Messages:
    5,850
    Likes Received:
    6,045
    I can't delete my own reply AFAIK, so that's the replacement.
  16. zaphodx

    zaphodx Post Master General

    Messages:
    2,350
    Likes Received:
    2,409
    Well maybe if the vision range was smaller you'd actually have to move it to put it in useful places which would have risk.
    brianpurkiss and Quitch like this.
  17. melhem19

    melhem19 Active Member

    Messages:
    592
    Likes Received:
    126
    I think if the planet was very small the orbital radar may be cover all the planet
    but if the planet was huge, the orbital radar may only cover a pertain of the planet
  18. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

    Messages:
    7,879
    Likes Received:
    7,438
    As the game is, the Adv Radar Satellite is OP. I agree.

    But since so few games reach orbital, it isn't a huge deal.

    I'm guessing Uber will balance things out when orbital gets flushed out more.

    We'll see.
  19. exterminans

    exterminans Post Master General

    Messages:
    1,881
    Likes Received:
    986
    It's a flaw in the core mechanics of radar in PA.

    There are only 2 levers for balancing on every radar unit in PA: One is construction cost (including construction cost of pgens for upkeep as well as prerequisites), and the other one is radar range.

    And since the economy grows exponentially for quite a while, radar range just gets larger and lager as the player can afford more expensive units.


    The actual issue is the lack of a third dimension on the effectiveness of the radar unit. There are many possible implementations (e.g.: Incapability to detect smaller units, incapability to distinguish individual units, detection delay, time discrete radar pings (position updates for moving units only every 10 seconds or so), stacking radars for improved effectiveness), but they all have in common that a larger radar range does not necessarily invalidates smaller radar units as long as the larger radar unit gives not the same amount / quality of information, even though covering a much larger area.
  20. nixtempestas

    nixtempestas Post Master General

    Messages:
    1,216
    Likes Received:
    746
    I think adv radar should have LoS, that is, real LoS, it can't see around the curvature of a planet. This means in order to get decent sight, you have to move it around, opening that nice expensive sat up for a fighter snipe.
    brianpurkiss likes this.

Share This Page