PTE build 79270-pte now up

Nice list! I thoroughly approve of the radar changes. makes a lot of sense to me. Now I can astraeus drop without being so fugly obviously

The air scouts certainly have some vision now

Definitely better! I think only same planet orbital and radar of units headed to/from the planet it's built on would be better. I think it's weird that you only need one.

I would like all these ideas to be tested first.

I'm in two minds about whether it should give vision of the entire planet it happens to be on. If you think about it, it is called Deep Space Radar for a reason. I really think it should just show units in Deep Space.

I would prefer they change the Radar Satellites to give additional vision to the Orbital Layer. Maybe the Advanced Sattelite Radar gives full (orbital) vision of the planet it is on and the Arkyd shows half planet vision. I'm talking about the Orbital Vision Range only. The ground radar visibilty for the radar sattelites should stay the same.

You can't build one on the Gas Giant so how would you spot enemy units travelling to the Gas Giant?

I played a game against the Ai on the "Forge" planet.. and spinners didn't seem to want to shoot at gunships. odd
Anyone else seeing this?

This is not in any way better.

It's two steps forward, then one step back.

Can we please separate the Celestial Layer from the Orbital Layer completely? I think I can speak for the devs of OWOM when I say that this completely destroys the original idea of orbital intel. The Celestial Radar is still God-like and must be fixed so it is not.

What I propose is this....

The Orbital Deepspace Radar gives you "sight coverage" of all units in transit between planets. It actually shows you what units are travelling (not just dots), but you only see the units while they are travelling (i.e. while they are in Deep Space). With this behaviour it would be important to have deepspace alerts so that you can switch to the system-wide view to see units travelling from point A to B. Only at this point you would give away your position, unless you have already been scouted by someone using a Radar Satellite sent to your planet (i.e. scouting).

Orbital units that are in the upper atmosphere of your own planet are not in Deep Space so we shouldn't be able to see these units with a Deepspace Radar.

I think it important to see what is travelling between planets (once they are in deepspace) just like we can see the nukes, etc. What we don't like about the Deepspace radar is the fact that it gave away our position so easily (with very little resources or time required to build).

I can understand that change, but I'm still skeptical. I'd like to see more gameplay with the "Celestial Radar Only" change first.

I'd be ok with it, if celestial observer only showed in transit, but they added something else that allows you to see units in orbit around other planets. Purely so I can turn that second bit off for the Orbital Warfare Overhaul Mod. I really don't want them to both be under celestial, or at least not in a way that is irremovable.

I don't see this backed by the game files, so how was this achieved?

Besides, the orbital fabber now lost the ability to reclaim orbital(!) structures.

Nice fabber changes. Any chance on moving buildable_types to build_arm and making some kind of current unit layer/(assist/repair)_layer mapping?

Maybe they can assist to assist_layers+buildable_types?

That it definitively a net gain of one step forward and you know it.

objectively better by definition.

Better than the current deepspace radar? Yes. Better than the one we had last pte? Not even close.

@Planktum

I disagree. It shouldn't be effortless to build up a huge base on a planet undetected. It should require some finesse - as it currently does. If you want to have a planet of your own without anyone knowing, you have to be careful not to leave any radar signatures in the orbital layer. I think that's pretty cool and adds depth to the game by making you decide between a stealthy approach and heavy orbital fortifications.

Besides, the biggest reason why it was a bad idea to remove orbital detection on other planets from the Deepspace Radar is that it just makes it too easy to build a bunch of SXX undetected which can be used to snipe unsuspecting players easily. This COULD have been solved by making SXX visible to everyone like Halleys but it would have been an inelegant solution.

Okay so I can reproduce this every game now and it's definitely annoying.
1. build a bot factory.
2. assign the bot factory to patrol planet.
3. build fabrication bots.
4. The fabber bots won't assist the factory it came out of, or the commander if he's assisting the factory. It seems they won't assist the commander if he's building something either. They used to before the save/load changes!

Is this after a load, or just in general?

But it should still be a separate radar type in the unit files, otherwise it's a massive pain for modders.

Nevermind, reproed it.. good find. Will get someone to take a look at it.

cant repro that one, and its not a loaded game.