Radar mechanics

I wasn't sure if this would be the same as "Fog of war" but I wanted to open a thread on Intel mechanics. I did a search on this topic but couldn't find any threads, if there are, I apologize for making another one. =P

I am a big fan of TA/supcom but I've never really been fond of how powerful the intel tool's were, I felt the massive radar ranges always made the battlefields feel very small with little room to ambush your enemies. What good is huge tracks of land to manouver if your enemy knows your every move?

It might just be me feeling that way, however, here is a thread for discussing Radar mechanics.

Looking ahead, PA faces the old demons and some new challenges. How will intel gathering work across space/planets? My suggestion is to make radar preformance less accurate the longer range it has. Giving them some distinct roles.

-Short range shows enemy movement/baselayout

-Medium range shows only base areas but not base layout

-Long range shows only presence on a nearby planet but not where the enemy is located or how many

Something along those lines.

If anyone else has other ideas or want to build on or tear my idea a new one please do so.

hello arelepus,

yep intel is really important part of gameplay. Also i think the accuracy decreasing with the range increasing is good idea.

I think to that the intel should work in a total different way than TA cause PA battlegrounds are spheric.
Implies than radar waves should not be abble to detect anything over horizon line, and that sattelits should be used...

What about longer update frequences? Making it harder to determine what direction units are moving.

You could always build radar satellites and get them to aim at the enemy planet. Then you could make variations of them as well to that lowest level has lowest detail/slowest updates/shortest range and the highest has highest detail/fastest updates/longest range.
You could always make relocate satellites as well and if you were getting spied on you could create something like a planetary jammer shield or fire an ICBM at the satellite.

The horizon line isn't a hard edge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-horizon_radar
As we have been able to do it since 1955, I think a highly advanced robot race can do it at least as well as we can now.

I think there can be some update delay or inaccuracy at longer ranges, but I am very much opposed to any system which shows some units but hides others. There can be some stealthed/stealth field units, but I don't want a system where bigger units show earlier than smaller ones.

^ Over-The-Horizon radar works because of the atmosphere (thanks for the wiki page! Fascinating methodology). I think we're going to see some atmospheric effects (lack of atmosphere denotes lack of wind-power, airplanes, that kind of thing), it could also determine if the radar is limited to line-of-sight. This would actually be a pretty good idea: no atmosphere implies a small body, and making radar less effective would be appropriate.

Might be a bit too much science for Uber to expect the average gamer to swallow, but definitely a good idea for a "pure-physics" mod.

the problem is, planets in PA may be quite small (unrealistically small). On those planets the horizon would be a very small area, and both line of sight and radar would be really tiny dots

Radar should be the same length on every planet. Even if it curves around just a little bit. If you're worried that you can't sneak attack, there seems to be a large emphasis on unit cannons, and it's pretty hard to keep an eye on all points of attack when you're on a sphere. Plus adding some stealth units could help.

I like this idea.

Instead of constant updating, making it "ping" outwards from the point of origin, being a satelite or a ground based radar, updating maybe every 30 or 60 seconds.
Upgrading the radar would provide better benefits, like faster update frequency and/or larger radius (could choose between two upgrades).

Or maybe you can choose a fast update frequency but at a low range or a slow update but a large range.
High update frequency but limited at 500 m radius.
Medium update frequency but limited at 1 km radius.
Low update frequency but has highest radius (1.5 km)
Just speculations.

Radar should be powerful, but so should radar jamming. Just like in TA, if you don't want your opponent to know what you're doing you radar jam your units and building.

A strategy that immediately comes to mind is you intensionally allow your opponent to see a lot of radar dots massing somewhere (maybe its a cheap army just designed to look big on radar or its the real deal), then if your opponent moves there forces to defend without scouting it, thats when you flank them with another army that was under radar jam.

Or using your opponent's radar to play mental games with him, making it look like you're going to attack but don't; or train your opponent to expect attacks when he sees a radar scouting pattern you used before. I think there is some great potential for some great mind games, especially at high level of play.

Personally I would love radar jamming, the only problem I would have is that with multiple planets it might be hard to find that one last engineer under a radar jammer.

Radar and vision are two different chunks of the same spectrum.

Radar is nifty because it can do weird tricks such as bouncing off the upper atmosphere for extra range.

This is a universe with ultimate technology, so there's no reason to stick purely with radars. There are plenty of other sci fi mechanics that can be used for searching or hiding.

Being partially blind is a good thing for gameplay. It makes scouting more important and ambush tactics more effective. So detection suites that simply find everything all the time aren't that good of an idea.

This is a universe where the technology is ultimatly refined, but not 'ultimate' technology.

otherwise we can just forget using commanders and just deploy krogaths to wipe the galaxy clean.

I think it would be great to set the time limit of visibility for sighted buildings outside the radar influence (or in the stealth generator's range).

This would make intel more important, destroy cheap tactic of kamikaze scouts and get the game more dynamic.

Different types of radar and radar jamming for sure
Also saying that radar jamming might make it hard to find that last engie won't be true. Radar jamming if implemented would probably show up on radar as an area thats jammed, because you would probably have stealth AND radar jamming.
So if its stealthed chances are its gonna be more important and be more than one engie, cause stealth would be more expensive and harder to mantain.

All guesses and suggestions

I'd like a unit that creates false radar blips until it has been scouted by line of sight. Now that would be awesome :lol:

I'd rather see jamming work supcom style (false blips), but I'd also like to see radar nullification (for lack of a better term; area stealth seems weird). Regardless, I think that you'd never be able to hide your last engineer due to the power usage of these units, which should be a fairly large drain.

Those were fun, but they could be pretty cheesy at times. False radar signatures generated by boats going on land and whatnot.

Man I only played TA. If I had known... maybe SupCom had a few nice features xD

Radar jammers could get funny, especially if you were playing with someone who didn't know how to pick out jamming units from regular ones. They'd see the blob of radar signatures and freak out