So this is something that's on my mind lately. I love multi planet games and I love multi planet starts but I feel that the current radar and LOS from orbit cannot be final, because it's kinda of funny. In one respect it's not revealing enough and can prolong games or make some unwanted surprises, but on the other hand it's way too informative and makes orbital scouting (for other orbital units that is) unneeded. I know that sounded strange, I'm having some difficulties getting my point across, bare with me. Basically what I'm suggesting is something along the lines of this: Currently orbital and deep space radar gives you orbital vision across the system. There is no way to hide your numbers or what you are planning. The enemy will see it all without scouting. That seems a bit OP to me, but on the other hand, if enemy has gone a set up a base somewhere on another planet and you aren't zoomed in to see the orbital units (or better, then were careful enough to move their orbital units away) there is not way you can know that they are there unless you send a scout. This can cause things like sudden planet smash which can be a problem if the system has too many smashable planets to scout effectively the other issue that this causes is if both you and your enemy are racing for the same planet for example in an FFA and oyu get there 1 minute sooner your enemy can be sending their commander to their death (like what happened this Friday in an FFA with Mr. @BradNicholson who went for an almost identical strategy to mine, but I was 3-5 minutes faster). So in the interest of avoiding useless deaths but still forcing some scouting I suggest the following system: The orbital and deep space radar only grants orbital LOS above the planet it is build on. But what also does is it tells you if there is any activity above or on other planets in the system. That doesn't mean radar blips, that means that wen you zoom out you see "ripples" coming out of planets that the enemy is on, but you have no LOS on. Additionally the planet pannes in the lower right corner would always say "activity". Additionally to compensate for this T1 orbital radar would offer a globar orbital radar coverage while orbital T2 radar would offer globar orbital LOS. Additionally the umbrella, your commander and any orbital unit would offer small orbital LOS (not radar blips). This would do the following: -It would shorten games: No more hiding on the moons with no orbital units. -It would make orbital scouting relevant (you only know that there is activity on that planet, you have no idea what's there). -It would give advanced warning for a planet smash rather than now where you only get it one the planet is already moving. -It would make orbital game a bit more interesting The following is in conjunction with my other idea of making t2 orbital radar sat stationary - It would make T1 orbital satellites very relevant again.
These are all really good ideas, I especially like the umbrella and commander having orbital LOS, that'd be really cool. Currently the DSOR is kind of overpowered, seeing a balancing of it would be nice. And the advanced radar satellite being stationary would be pretty nice, too.
