Shooting Robots in the Dark

Well the idea is to have a reason to actually scout more then to remain un detected.

Other then the need to find out what the targets are (Whitch is kinda minor) there is little to no reason to actually bother scouting with planes and units.

I think it would be coolto require scouting runs over an enemy base rather then see buildings appear on radar likr in SupCom.

Well im not realy sure that i agree that using scouting "just to know what units the enemy is using" is minor, since knowing what kind of unit may win or lose the war.

But if were talking about making the radar nerfed in a interesting way:

Hmm, my suggestion would be to make the radar be effected by ground + make it more expensive/slower to build/and have a higher run cost.

So if theres a mountain or similar in the way the radar cant pick up ground (or maybe even low flying aircraft) behind it.

The result would be that you would have to build several radar installations on strategic locations for it to be as omni present as the current supcom one (Unless you build your base ontop of a montain with a field around it :roll: , making high ground valuable). The higher build and run cost is to prevent spamming.

Then you can do hit and run attacks on a enemies radar installations, if they also take a while longer to build they wouldent be able to instantly repair a hole in the radar coverage.

The result being a version of Radar that requires some thinking to use both defensivly (You will need to consider terrain when you deploy them and you will likely be forced to have a few outside of your main base) and offensively (The new weaknesses makes the radar much less reliable and opens up a new avenue for intelligence warfare).

I find it acceptable and so support your suggestion.

IRL radar isn't used for land detection, like... at all. There's a reason that under the radar has found so many cultural uses, and it has something to do with the technology at large. Perhaps it's because radar is a Line of Sight tool, which should not come as a big surprise to anyone. If a unit is already directly visible, there's little reason to worry about it being more visible.

Our actual ground detection is done from up above. Something about seeing over hills is very effective for seeing over horizons, as well.

Radar may perhaps be most useful for finding aircraft. The big difference is that aircraft fly fast, meaning that you simply need more vision to find them. High altitude makes them suckers for a LoS tool that can see them coming a hundred miles away. Regular units may lack the ability to see them directly (or not, but it justifies radar at least). This way it creates an explicit anti-air vision tool, which may very well be needed to help keep air play in check.

I am with bobucles. Radar to detect and enable firing at air units at long range, and not ground units, is more interesting. Air units can be used to get line of sight on ground targets and structures for targeting. Air units are obviously well suited to getting vision, and this creates a few additional air scout roles. Such as small, slow scout planes with high loiter capability, and high-speed, high-altitude spy planes which scream over a base for a single quick, relatively safe look. However if there is anti-air, such as area-denying SAM sites, then you may want to use ground recon instead.

On the other hand, i fear that it would make air units allmost a must for every single game, kinda dull to limit someones choices like that (Must build a air factory rather early).

Let me explain: While air scouts has allways been superior to land scouts, the removal of land radar would weaken the land scout much more, since it moves aloot slower and cant cover as much ground as the air scout. My fear is that air scouts would be the only valid option if you wish to win.

If the air scout gets picked off at immense distance by SAM-sites, there'll be a clear role for the ground scout when it comes to base attacking, while the air scout will be better at keeping an eye on large areas of terrain that are supposed to be empty. (With the first sign of them being not empty probably being "unit lost")

The result being that you still have to build a air factory early for air scouts.

Thats just wrong. The problem isent that land scouts wouldent have a function, the problem is that you would have to use air scouts (therefore also a air factory). So no, i vote against said change.

Oh, you mean because radar doesn't pick up ground units so you'd need aircraft for that role. I understand now.

That is a potential problem, yes. Probably a fixable one, though. Perhaps even as simply as making a single scout unit that can both drive and fly and has a toggle feature, and that you can build from both factories.

That could work.

Possibly they could even remove scout units from factories all togheter and have them built at a radar installation or similar instead.

That was a second thing I was thinking yeah, not building scouts in a regular battle factory. Building scouts in an intelligence complex that also serves as a primary radar station might be even better, as it doesn't create units with multiple roles.

There's probably a lot of solutions for the problem available.

Meh. The land scout is a lame role and overdue for an overhaul. There are a lot of things to do in the early game, besides suicide scouting the opponent. There's workers to harass, extractors to deny, wreckage to reclaim, chokes to watch, and an egg just waiting to be abused. You don't even need a gun for half of that stuff.

For persistent land vision, some form of perimeter tower can act as a sentry ward. Jump jet/climbing units can also grab high ground, with the potential for a huge vision advantage. Raiders love that sort of thing, and not a single scout was needed.

Don't forget that we have orbital mechanics to play with. Spy satellites could be very useful for taking snapshots of a whole world.

Could we also have some kind of advanced spotter for artillery?

Even in SupCom 1 using T1 scouts for T3 and T2 artillery was a god damn mess.

So any way to improve that would be cool.

Everything in existence is a spotter for artillery! In Supcom, you didn't need any type of detection to remember structures and know when they die.

Satellites can chip into this role as well. Fly over a base, take some pics, and shell the hell out of it. Sure, we like to pride ourselves on precision warfare, but if you see an enemy base just shoot in its general direction. Something is going to connect.

High ground.
Fast units.
Sentry wards.
Jump Jets.
And plain ol' having units.

There's seriously no shortage of ways to get vision in any RTS. In PA, a hundred robots equals a hundred scouts. Keep them on the move, stay aggressive, and you'll always have up to date intel on the enemy. If anything, needless battles should be encouraged.

My preferred solution would be that indirect fire is possible (meaning artillery and other long range weapons can fire at targets that have been confirmed by other means than visual). And concnerning you not getting any pretty explosion effects out of that. Maybe have artilleryrounds have a small visual sight radius. From a lore perspective it's not unthinkable that every round has a camera on board. Just gameplay wise there could be problems if artillery fire makes scouting redundant... But we'll have to see.

I personally think the idea of "scouting shells" that can be fired from artillery might be interesting...

Even bullets can scout? What a world!

Do we have any idea how Radar will work in PA? for some reason I got it in my head that it would operate kinda like real word radar, with the curvature of the planet and terrain creating blind spots. I went through the info I could find, and found nothing. So the question is, how hard is it to implement Line-of-Sight radar? How computationally expensive is it to calculate LoS on each unit compared to each tower (that sounds exponentially expensive). Or can one pre-calculate a volume as the radar is being constructed so the game only has to check if the unit is in said detection volume (can that be run in the background as the radar is built? it can it be recalculated on the fly if the terrain deforms, or a radar gets destroyed). I don't have enough background in computer programming to have any real idea if these are possible.

That being said LoS radar would be neat, it would make high ground important, as well knowledge of terrain. It would be interesting if the air units were visible at farther ranges than ground or sea units. Scouting would be very useful and important. It would also help balance out air and ground forces some. I would love to hear from Uber on what their vision of the radar system would be in PA.

I'm going to chalk this up to you thinking your way is the only way to play the game, Riiight. How much time have you actually spent playing TA? I would love to see you try to beat the bot, Running V3.1 Kamikaze AI on Insane Diff, with micro and Tier3 Unit Packs, 500 Unit Hack on normal game speed with no handicaps... I would pay $5 to see you rush that bot good enough to do anything. On any map at any time. That is some damn good AI, and the computer is always faster than you.

I love playing that way, it takes nerves and speed to layout enough defenses both unit and static to buy enough time to figure out your attack. Against that bot, multiple vulcans full auto, with a wall of flak and 6+ anti-nukes at 99que Is the baseline for short term survival. I enjoy epic games that last hours with the balance of power always shifting.

There is a thousand ways to play, I like to play hard bots and try to survive, or play large team-player games. If I wanted to rush because winning fast is uBeR as the only way to feel good about playing I would go play zerg on a Starcraft ladder. NO thank you!

I'm pretty sure your gameplay style is perfectly valid, and will be modded in. But I certainly hope it's not the default option, because I don't have that kind of time and I'd hate to have to drop the game without playing it because games take a minimum of 5 hours to play.

I sure hope the default game also works for people who only have an hour of playing time per day.

Also, comments along the line of "I'd love to see you play this super-super specific modded version of the game I made for myself that nobody else plays" doesn't make the point you think it does, it makes the point ledarsi was making.

My only problem with Radar is its range and thus the range Artillery can rape ground forces at. Yea not knowing what is in that 200 unit blob can be a problem if you plan on engaging at knife fight ranges but when you have loads of artillery pieces that 200 unit blob soon shrinks.

Only 3 things could fix what I see as a problem with Radar

1, T3 Radar should be good but outranged by even T2 Artillery, to make people set scouts on patrol.
2, Radar should have comparable or higher than running the costs of Metal makers in Supcom, if they are going to keep Supcom style ranges (I really hope they don't)
3, Artillery requires the said tech from TA so it can't target radar blips without it (Or at least be wildly inaccurate.

Even if nobody agrees with this something needs doing to the radar because we aren't going to have shields to fall back on so PA will just evolve into who can build and replace artillery faster...