Counter-Counter Intelligence measures

Would having an anit-radar missile (ala. something that seeks enemy radar) put a limit to the radar-happy farming?

Something I've always been interested in is having active radar and passive radar. Think of it like sonar, but just with radio waves instead. Passive radars would be moderately commonplace, but can only detect active radars (while said radar is running). Active radars will detect everything non-stealth, but give its position away.

Explain to us how they are viable?

What are Energy Emissions, and how do we detect them?

Ignoring the whole argument of what kind of information is best to gather for just a moment, would it not all be amalgamated and displayed the same way in tactical zoom? I dont see how implimenting all of these would affect the gamplay one bit, aside from renaming "radar" towers to "sensor" towers.

Now to add to BulletMagnet's critique:
"Energy emissions" is not helpful. What kind of energy?

Vibration is painfully nonspecific as to size, direction and distance. To detect details on earthquakes (which produce a hell of a lot of vibration data) many sensors spread over a vast area is required. In addition it is a passive sensor system, you need to wait for the enemy to move to generate data, and without knowing how long it took for the vibration to move from origin to sensor you cannot tell distance without having sensors on either side of the source. This becomes further complicated if there are multiple vibration sources dispersed over an area. This is not viable as a sensor system.

Sound - Also passive, same deal, as above, you need to wait for the enemy to do something for there to be any kind of useable data. In addition topography can screw with the way sound moves around, especially if you dont yet know the terrain and cant account for how it impacts on the apparent source of the sound. This makes it difficult to pinpoint both range and direction without a lot of sensors to triangulate position which isn't helpful.

Heat - This one has some merit perhaps, but as I mentioned above, from a gameplay perspective it would be overlayed into tactical data the same way that radar data is. The only thing you might get is a neat visual overlay at closer zoom levels when the player is observing the night time side of the planet (this would actually be pretty cool).

Now contrast this with radar. You only need one sensor tower to throw out a signal and analyse the returning waves. The time delay for returning waves as well as the orientation gives you distance, and direction. Additionally it doesnt require the enemy unit to be giving anything off as it is an active sensor system. It is cheap, reliable, and easily deployable.

There are disadvantages in that radar stealth tech exists but there is any one of a number of countermeasures that could be applied against your suggestions too.

Here are some topics from within the first 15 pages that you may find relevant:
enemy detection - radar alarm or notifications?
Cyber Warfare
Radar LOS
Omni-radar like units are too powerful

EDIT: Came across this one while on my travels: What cloak/decloak mechanism PA should have?

I like the idea of multi-radar, but I agree it would be hard to implement properly.

But since we're on the topic, can we PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE have units not be totally retarded, but instead cuddle the sensor-jammer they're assigned to so it doesn't become a massive micro-fest to get 2 tanks and 1 jammer to the other side of the map?
And to make sensor-jammers spread out to cover all vehicles in the vicinity? And not have scouts drive at top-speed out of the jamming field? And not have jammers out-run the slow battletanks?

You know, all this stuff that any piece of machinery with more then 10 CPU cycles per second should be able to manage on its own? The main reason I gave up on rader jamming in TotalA was because it was too much work to keep units inside the jammer's area. I can forgive them, considering the hardware back then, but that excuse no longer applies. If you want radar jamming to be a part of a thousand unit battle, make it painless to use before you start adding all the cool aspects like multiple-tracking and such.

To be able to discuss "counter counter intelligence" we need to have some "counter intelligence" for starters.

There were a number of counter intelligence and counter counter intelligence measures in supcom, so im hopeing we will see a simular intelligence war in PA (Yes i know, its a spiritual successor of TA and not Supcom, but i doubt they wouldent add things from Supcom that was considered a improvement from TA).

Counter Intelligence:

The list (that i remember) of counter intelligence in supcom is stealth, cloaking and false radar signals. These are used by a number of units in a number of ways.

Counter-Counter Intelligence:

First of, there were a number of ways to receive a visual on things far away to counter some of the counter intelligence effects such as false radar signals and such, for example the UEF tier 1's arty with its shellcam, or aeons quantum mirror building. Not to forget normal scout units.

Then we have the omni radar that can see trough any false signals, cloaking or stealth. The omni is used by structures and units. But omni tends to be have a limited range, be expensive and cost power to run, so counter intelligence is still useable either outside the omni's range or if you do a quick strike at the enemies power before the intended use.

Thats it for Supcom (That i remember), and i hope we will see atleast thus much in PA.

But it would be great if they explored the area of intelligence, counter intelligence and counter-counter ingelligence (Basicly every part of intelligence warfare) further, however i dont want this "counter-counter intelligence" discussed to be to powerfull and make "counter intelligence" unuseable. My favorite faction in Supcom was the Cybrans, they have aloot of cyber warefare and counter intelligence and its fun to play that way.

Well things would serve different purposes.
Energy Emissions could be things along the lines of radiation based detector. Bullet, you spoke of having some sort of geiger counter sound effect when units were detected. Tie this into the detector. The higher the tier of unit the more radiation or excess energy bleeds off. This could be a t2/3 style detection due to the need to possibly put something into the orbital layer for gameplay sake. How are the units powered? Is it some sort of internal fusion or fission engine? Or something even fancier. Once we have more information on that we may be able to pursue this.

Vibration: An example of this could be you have four sensors placed around the far outskirts your base. When vibrations are detected, it places an exclamation mark on the map with the level of disturbance detected. Possible to have a main structure that fires the sensors on rockets to user defined locations where they crash into under the surface of the ground. Building a proper information network should be part of the game imho. I've worked out a few ways in my head on how this could work and provide more immersion to the players. Could also airdrop the sensors if that is a more functional way. The key here is you need to build a net so you can triangulate the position of incoming threats. Balance could be achieved with the multiple detectors by cost. Make siezmic detectors cheap but not extremely accurate in the information delivered with slower information updates and more of a 'shits coming' detector. t0.

Sound: A large army crashing through trees, stomping on rocks and generally making noise with actuators and moving parts should produce a hell of a racket. Granted, this one is pretty gimmicky because the opponent could just stop his army and wait, so you lose contact with the source until he decides to move again, and it would be pretty sketchy with scouting. Thats where the multiple detection types come in. It also allows for enemies to do fake outs with command fired weaponary and other objects not yet even imagined.

Heat: I see this as both ground based and orbital based detection units. And on some planets it would be entirely ineffective due to the surface temps and other factors not yet though of. Would be interesting as an overlay but should require a orbital structure of some sort to get the full picture.

Most of these things would make for a bit more of an exciting early and late game due to the ways you can circumvent certain detection and launch surprise attacks. Be interesting to move past the long ranged 'war of the radar dots' game and introduce a bit more skill than just radar.

I do admit though, the sound and energy types are a little bit gimmicky. But it would be nice to see heat and vibration.

The problem I have with radar, is that in the series its always ignored things like LOS and you can put them below hills and detect crap on the other side. It makes no sense logically and they should put a better effort in keeping things immersive. I don't see the gameplay fun on completely ignoring the proper function of something.

If radar was implemented with the current real world rules of operation it would be much more satisfying. Actually having to secure the high ground for the advantage in information warfare is something I have desperately missed from the Supcom/TA series.

Now that it is defined as radiation detection it makes more sense but I still see a few issues.
1: It is still non specific as to direction and radiation tends to be pretty short range, especially as it would only be small amounts outside of a reactor. By the time radiation is picked up Geiger counter style, odds are the enemy are within sight and right on top of you.
2: How do you differentiate between your units an allies and foe? all would look the same from a radiation perspective. (In saying this I guess the same is true of radar)
3: Wrecks of units and the fall out from nukes would heavily screw with the reliability of such a detection system the longer a game went on.

Given these issues, were it to be implemented I would imagine it as a passive identification rather than t2/t3 due to the lack of specific information. All in all, I'm still not convinced it would be worth having however as it presents no unique data that gives it an edge over existing methods of detection.

Firing/airdropping sensors to build up an information network is an interesting idea but why limit this to vibration data? it still provides such loose information that you would only be able to detect that 'something' was happening in the area. Additionally because the data is so loose in its accuracy it would become rapidly obsolete the moment orbital sensors of any variety was up. The only way that sensors on the ground remain relevant in the latter game is if they are more accurate within their area of influence than orbital sensors.

If you want a novel detection system to triangulate positions of enemies, why not have sensors listen to wireless communications between enemy units? it would be a hell of a lot more accurate than vibration detection. You could come up with reasons why the player cant understand the comm traffic (encryption and the like) but there is no reason why sensors couldn't listen to comm traffic and triangulate enemy positions based on that.

again why bother when radar does a better job? it can pick up enemy signatures while they are not moving, and can pin point more exact locations.

This I have no issue with, satellites today have IR sensors which can pick up acceptable levels of detail on the ground. And yes orbital units should have more range than ground based sensors.

I support this way of implementing radar in PA. LOS and high ground give you better and further coverage at the expense of the sensor being more vulnerable.

Bonus points if it works based on actual enemy orders sent to the units.

The fog of war is a very real thing. Generals base their tactical decisions on the information they get from the field, which can be good, very good, or an outright lie. Filtering out these reports by trust can be a very engaging style of play for a game where the commander's understanding is filtered through a chain of command and thousands of grunts on the field. That's great for a grand strategy game. Not so much for a RTS, and even less so for a game like this.

In TotalA, you are the ultimate authority on the field. The commander carries direct control of his units and can literally see through their eyes with a simple uplink. The idea of cloak+dagger stuff is pretty much blown out of the water as ANYTHING that's out of the ordinary can be attributed to enemy activity. Wall of radar static? Enemy. Warmth on the dark side of the moon? Enemy. Shadowy figure blowing up your base? Enemy. Detect a 0.36 earthquake? Enemy. Squashed bug in the woods? Enemy. Blind spot behind a mountain? Well, that was just a bad setup on your part. Any time any planet deviates from being a completely cold and dead world, it's SUCH a trivial matter to build a $.50 scout and suicide it over the suspicious zone, that it could easily be an automated response.

Intel can add an important aspect to the game, but its involvement should be a 2/10 at best. Players will already be unable to keep track of and intervene on more than a fraction of the galactic battlefield, simply due to the game's scale. The things you can hide you want in your enemy's face, the things you want to hide are too frickin' big, and there's already an inherent "Where's Waldo" game to scour the galaxy for the single target that can actually end the war. Adding layers and layers of intel/counter intel doesn't really add anything more than an e-peen contest for who gets to spend the most money not building their army.

For real cloak+dagger play, you gotta go back to the fog of war's roots. You have a commander, who has immediate access to the world around him, a good understanding of the local sector, and a complete shadow over frontier activities. You might have guys there. They might be dutifully following orders. But at some point, they're so far from home that it's impossible to tell what's happening, who's doing what, and whether they really got ambushed by cougars, or were just talking about a racy night at the bar. That's the fog of war.