Yesterday I noticed how any radar I build shows its correct range using a circle. However when it's built, pressing control shows the entire planet covered. It does not pick up all units though, so its likely a client side issue. I have already tried to find the solution to the problem and found this in the JSON file for every radar: "layer": "orbital",[...]"radius": "4000". I think this causes the game to act as if the whole planet was covered. Does anyone else have that problem?
It is possible to quick-fix it if you remove all the orbital detection information in these JSON files. And I mean really fix because the server doesn't know and still tells you where orbital units are. That way the might be able to fix it temporarily, if the servers don't use the same files.
There are several issues such as this when a unit has intel (sight and/or radar) at different ranges across multiple layers. For example, Frigates experience this also with their sight range on the surface vs underwater. It's not necessarily using the largest value (see http://pa.lennardf1989.com/Tracker/index.php?do=details&task_id=421 - it's using the smaller of the two) - it may be using the last value in the blueprint.
Is this why my advanced radar satellite gave me vision over 100% of the planet? It doesn't make any sense to me that I would get vision on the back half of a planet, no matter how good my satellite is.
Should be at most 40% of the surface on the same side as the satellite, if we want to remain realistic. Beyond that you'd run into serious problems with any signals being deflected by the ionosphere.