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Morph is dead, Sonar lives!

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I've grown to think that the sonar mechanic would have been a better candidate for wholesale removal than the late Morph. The poll shows that people like sonar though, so i'm just going to rant.

This thread does not aim to change any policy or to bring about any change. I just want to rage at sonar.

1: Sonar harms land, air, and sea integration.
It makes ground units incapable of seeing submerged foes, and air units that don't carry sonar cannot attack submerged eco even if their weapons allow that. Sonar ignores cloak. Cloaked units passing water as deep as 1 depth, which is insufficient for anything to submerge, and for ships to pass, will be seen by any sonar equipped unit. Aside from that, it also means that seagoing heavies are ulti-proof because ulti that got its feet wet can be seen from whatever range your sonar reaches.

2: It isn't really physical in any regard. Sonar is cylindric, and it ignores terrain.

3: It is not easily discoverable. As bad as ZK (and Spring) fog of war view might be, sonar view is incomparably worse: it does not exist. The only visual representation of sonar you can get is by shift-hovering over an unit to get a blue circle - and even then, there can be multiple blue circles. Oh, and you can't tell which units have sonar before building them.

4: It is inconsistent in the current implementation. Here's a quick litmus test: can you remember off the top of your head which units have sonar and which not? Can you devise a rule that will help you? Here are examples that don't work:
"Amphs units have sonar" - nope.
"Units that can shoot into underwater have sonar" - nope.
"Units that can shoot into underwater and builders have sonar" - nope.

5: Having sonar as a special ability means that half of sea-going units are blind in the sense that they can't see anything underwater. Consider that there's a whole factory of that underwater: it's like every cloakybot had cloak and you needed special detectors to get them and they could attack while cloaked. And as you can see from 4) you can't easily guess which those are. Oh, also radar doesn't do anything. And i don't think increasing sonar range will help here: once you do *that*, you have perfect cloak-piercing sight everywhere in its range. Oh did i mention that you have no good way to see where your sonar reaches, too?

6: It has no counterplay. Sonar sees all and cannot be blocked or jammed. Oh, and shooting the building is pointless because with the short range it provides it's not worth building, lest shooting.

-------------

If you did the suggested test of trying to remember which units have sonar, here's the list. Key highlights:
- Grizzly and Buoy are amph, cannot shoot underwater, do not have sonar.
- Archer and Angler are amph, cannot shoot underwater, and have sonar..
- Scalpel, Leviathan and Skeeter cannot shoot underwater; all have sonar.
- Detriment and Gauss can shoot underwater, but don't have sonar.
- Athena has sonar. Conch has sonar.
- Crane, Quill and Mariner have no sonar.
- Raven does not have sonar. Vulture does, of course.
- Basic radar has no sonar; adv radar has sonar.
- What about Reef? Reef has no sonar.

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What if Sonar didn't exist? Some bad things would happen, of course. Snakes would probably need to be given cloak with large decloak radius; and maybe decloaking for sea would have to be made cylindric. Jammers would exist. Radar would detect underwater units. Ok, that doesn't sound bad yet, really. The bad part is that Reef and Leviathan have antis, and with cloak they could be even harder to find than now with Sonar.

---------

People will of course say that removing sonar is bad because it makes game more flat, less tryhard, less tough, and in general boring. Sure that; but would it make it worse? Would it make it flatter by a different degree than removing morphs did? At least morphs were enjoyable when you got them.
+9 / -0
9 years ago
EErankAdminAnarchid the people want units to be able to sneak underwater.
I suppose the next best thing would be altering the unitdefs of amphib units to automatically be cloaked when in water, with a large decloak radius.
What will be missed is having your amphib units be able to attack invisibly, which adds a layer of [!fun!] to sea.
+0 / -0
quote:
I suppose the next best thing would be altering the unitdefs of amphib units to automatically be cloaked when in water, with a large decloak radius.

I would give (some of) them idle cloak like flea, rather. That is an underused thing and no fully combat-capable units have it: only roach, tick, and flea do.

Others could get full cloak, sure, why not.
+0 / -0

9 years ago
quote:
only roach, tick, and flea do.

Blastwing, Claw
+1 / -0

9 years ago
maybe instead of cloak, the other cloak(radar jam) when in water of fully submersed. Also, can amphs have less disturbed pathing underwater? Hills arbitrarily slow them but not other units down, giving land assaults difficulty.
+0 / -0
Been thinking something similar myself... but I'm for anything that simplifies the sea-game and keeps it with a side-show role.

Yeah, just giving all units sonar range that matches their sight range might be a good start. Then "underwater" just gets you free radar-jamming and immunity to surface weapons.

For those who want stealth: we already have that. It's called cloak. I mean, we could switch more amphibs to "surface-to-attack" but that makes underwater behave even more like Cloak (most cloakers have decloak-to-attack).

Random idea: Sonar is like Reverse AirLOS. That is, all aircraft and projectiles are visible (iirc) 1.5X further than normal units. So give all units Sonar at 66% normal sight range. But then we get units whose sight-range exceeds their firing range, and that's always been a pain since it means spotter coverage is a huge force-multiplier.

honestly, sea is just such a mess of conflicting mechanics. Torps hitting hovers was a huge first step in making it sane, but I feel like the changes since then have been a bit random.
+0 / -0
9 years ago
CArankPxtl it feels like undersea (and sea in general) was meant to be another "z-layer" of combat independent of the air war and the land war.
Is this assumption correct, or should it be correct?
+0 / -0


9 years ago
I don't think sea gameplay would change much at all, if all units were able to see underwater. The main asset of underwater units is their immunity to surface weaponry, not the possibility of being sneaky. When there's a bunch of Snakes against Typhoons, the Snakes certainly aren't gonna sneak by, and the Typhoons are screwed whether they can see the Snakes or not.
+2 / -0
Id say remove the confusing sonar mechanic all together. All units should be able to see underwater. It doesn't matter if it can hit it or not.

Imagine if air functioned similar to underwater sea... oh the nightmares...

Ravens in a 10v10 behaving like amphs:

Le you:


your base:


Suddenly!
appears!


you:


[colour=red]Commander lost.

Singularity Reactor destroyed.[/colour]

opponent:
+3 / -0

9 years ago
requirements:
heavy transport can curry surfboards.
heavy transport dont disable secondary cargo.

application:
cloaker walker on surfbord in heavy transport, followed by 9001 ravens.

science needs to be done.
+0 / -0
9 years ago
DErankAdminmojjj just tested your idea; surfboard cannot be transported by valkyrie or vindicator.
+1 / -0
9 years ago
So in essence, what you're saying is that because we've been lazy with implementing sonar it should be removed? And you want all underwater units visible to other units? What's the point of having underwater units then?

It's not that easy to see underwater things IRL, don't you read papers at all, about the submarine in Swedish waters.

Protip: the tag sonarstealth jams sonar.
+0 / -0
I'm not talking about Spring sonar. I'm not saying sonar should be removed from Spring. I'm saying that the way ZK uses the Spring feature called "sonar" is bad.

Underwater units are still completely immune to surface weapons. What is the point of having them for mere invulnerability? No, invulnerability and invisibility must be had. Oh, can we also have noclip, all keys, and infinite ammo, plz.

But sure, if this troubles you of all people for some reason, you can start by implementing a shader that will represent sonar sight nicely. Then i can say less bad things about the mechanic.

Protip: ZK doesn't use sonarstealth on purpose.
+2 / -0
9 years ago
But isn't it natural that underwater objects are not seen?

But I agree that the thing called sonar doesn't work really well, but that's because it doesn't have a separate channel.

Btw it should be the other way around: invisibility but not invulnerability. Well yeah a lot of things are messed up.
+0 / -0

9 years ago
quote:
Btw it should be the other way around: invisibility but not invulnerability.

Why? You are hung up on realism (which should not be the top priority in designing a game) and a rocket or missile that travels through the air is not something that would function when fired at something underwater.

As for invisibility we could say every unit has a sonar detector installed, if we wanted.
+1 / -0

9 years ago
quote:
Btw it should be the other way around: invisibility but not invulnerability.

But ZK unit weapons don't cost money to fire (except nukes 'n stuff). That already changes a lot of things: It would be smarter to have your units fire randomly into the water, they just might hit something and it costs you nothing. Well, currently it would cost you micro, which is why it would be a pretty silly mechanic.
+1 / -0
9 years ago
quote:
You are hung up on realism (which should not be the top priority in designing a game) and a rocket or missile that travels through the air is not something that would function when fired at something underwater.
This sentence begins with telling realism is not a valid arguement and ends with realism as arguement.
+1 / -0

9 years ago
Nah. Turn it the other way round and it makes more sense:
1. "Your realism argument doesn't work for shooting into water".
2. "Realism is not a good game design principle in the first place".

He gave two counterarguments to a statement, they don't base on each other.
+2 / -0
9 years ago
Of course things have sonar detection sensors. But the thing is: how do you distinguish a submarine from an otter?
+0 / -0
9 years ago
quote:

Of course things have sonar detection sensors. But the thing is: how do you distinguish a submarine from an otter?

that would be one big otter
+4 / -0
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