Advanced radar new feature proposal

I'd have said nuke/tacmissile was already owled badly enough by Funnelweb. Also, hitting mobiles with tacmissiles is pretty hard as it is.

You're probably right. Still I wanted to entertain the thought.

Radar wobble reduction was removed with no other added benefit.

Let see, Advanced Radar costs 500 metal, while Radar tower is 55 metal.
Advanced Radar tower has 4000 Elmo range, while normal one has 2100 Elmo range radar coverage. This means that 4 Radar towers (=220 metal) can cover roughtly the same area as single advanced radar.

Technically Advanced radar has the advantage of being possible to be twice as far from the frontline compared to the radar tower due to its increased range to cover the same area as Radar tower would, but that is hardly worth the price difference.

In conclusion, advanced radar could definitely use additional abities or price decrease as it is at least 50% less metal effective than just building bunch of radar towers.


Possible ability suggestions:
1.)Activable ability to reveal the fog of war in a small area within its radar radius. But this might trivialize scouting too much.
2.)Bring back more accurate radar wobbles.
3.)Give it also a radar jammer radius that is much smaller than its radar radius, but still able to cover itself and nearby units from enemy radars.

Make it give your enemy more radar wobble serious answer. It'd be like an investment going into the late game to reduce your opponents dps and come out on top in an attrition war

For reference, here are the patch notes on the last adv. radar change: http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/23162

or, it could just ignore terrain and see through mountains wobbling dots?

I'm happy I succeeded in sparking discussion about dead feature which advanced radar almost is :)

The ideas I liked so far:

- idea that the advanced radar would ignore terrain LoS, but it has the drawback that currently the cloaker field has - it could be buried and it would make little sense for it to be that way. Maybe cloaker should require LoS as well?
- reducing cost by ~40% (boring but fitting, increase energy usage also to discourage early game usage)
- precise localization of other radar sources within its range, no matter if the object is jammed - for that vision warfare extra tools.

I kind of like the idea of adding safe long distance scouting tools like mojj's suggestion, but I don't think it should be undestructable or that advanced radar should be equipped with it. I rather prefer idea of extra rocket in silo costing ~250 that is a Rocket Propelled Radar Deployment Device that deploys basic radar on empty terrain ignoring the terrain shape.

Also another idea: make it remove radar wobble completely, but only on the static structures - or to make it more consistent make it average out positions from measures over time so stationary units/buildings return precise location after a while.

mojjj: That is what I was trying to suggest.

Fair point about the adv radar burial nonsense. Is it possible to implement partial mountain piercing sight, I wonder? Something like "radar can see units through mountains up to 1000 elmos, if the mountain is thicker than that it won't see". So if you buried your adv radar it wouldn't see shit.

Adv radar that can break dots down into different types depending on unit type would also be cool, but I fear it might make artillery even more OP. Then again assaults are punished by lack of intel more than artillery is. Maybe classify the statics into "sizes" as well? Would help an assault push a lot to know in advance if those statics are llts and pickets or lucifers and desolators.

Make it so if you hook it up to a 500E grid it explodes enemy radars in range