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.
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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.
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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.
