Defence buildings get upgrades, why not radar?Having units to scout while the radar upgrades adds game-play.Having a high end tower creates a nice target for a suicide bombing run before a large attack if not quite defended enough.To me, having the option of multiple radar vs a T2 and T3 radar or a mix for coverage just seems like a better idea than not having it on multiple game-play scenarios.
I like this idea a lot. Radar doesn't seem to be so important in this game at the moment.
I rarely build towers, and when I do, they don't seem to be a huge help.
Maybe the range isn't enough?
Or maybe I just get frustrated that all you can see is a mushy blob.
Seems pointless most of the time.
And because I don't rely on it too much, I almost never do quanta upgrades to radar.
Quanta is just too precious.
So, I agree it might work better as a building upgrade.
To be REALLY useful, I think the functionality of the radar would need to improve as well.
I don't just mean range.
For instance...
T2 radar reveals individual units (individual blobs, but representing the actual size of the units, as opposed to one big mushy mess)
T3 could then provide actual visibility
T4 could give you orbital access... so you could drop orbitals where you have no troops.
Or I don't know... maybe make the building upgrades for range, and the quanta upgrades for the "functional improvements" as described above.
Radar. Meh.
Make other stuff like artillery and AA dependent on it. Then that would be good. (long range missiles triggering as soon as units get in radar range).
Yes, I agree fully here. Depending on how hard it is to change the radar and gameplay systems, I'd even accept:
Upgrade: Provides sight range equal to radar range. (Should be quite expensive, given how much utility this would give it)
Because you're both right, at the moment, the radar tower is incredibly niche in usage - unless you have units or towers that can fire at radar blob, there's no point in using it. But if it could provide sight range, suddenly any unit or tower can attack. On top of that, instead of just knowing "there's at least one enemy out there" you can now see exactly what's coming for you.
I wouldn't be against radar boost to units being tested by the devs. If it was considered balanced they could tie it to the structure radar boost upgrade. I'm ok with how things stand now though.
Btw radar is very useful. It significantly boosts effective range of AA. It is vital when fighting up a hill because the line of sight is blocked so without radar you won't fire but will get fired upon. It does give early warning and it makes artillery and defence buildings much more effective. In a small game I might not boost radar unless there is a specific need but in larger games you make so much quanta and other upgrades get so expensive putting a few points in radar doesn't cost much and can be nice to have. Either way if you are not using radar then you definitely playing below where you could. If you are just playing AI I could see it being less important, only Painful AI or above would really require radar I think for AA needs. But vs humans it gives you more options for sure and is pretty essential.
I definitely haven't noticed radar improving AA or artillery. I'll have to experiment a bit. That would be pretty cool, and would make towers more valuable in my opinion. I 'm just surprised by this, though. I want to see it with my own eyes.
On the other hand, I was definitely aware of the hill effect (although for some reason, it doesn't always seem to trigger consistently). However, to take advantage of this, I tend to just use a radar unit, like the Hermes, instead of building a tower. In this sense, the mobile radar unit seems to make more sense, and is slightly more useful. THAT is definitely a point where I think I would agree.
As for importance during play, I'm still not sure. When I was playing a lot of PvP, the maps were small or medium, and I rarely had extra quanta lying around. I never broke into legendary, because the darn thing was matching me against players like Never, but I was in top 50 for a bit during the second or third season. So I know that I'm not a total slouch when it comes to play vs. other peeps.
If you're right about the AA effect, this is definitely a point for the new tutorial.
Upgrading the Radar building seems a little unnecessary when you can upgrade Radar range via Quantum upgrades, which will be reduced in price to 75 Quanta in 2.4
I think the range of the radar is a bit poor and quantum upgrades give a very small bonus to range.
I guess it's fine for tiny and small maps but in bigger maps I think it's only really useful for letting the AA utilise their full range.
That is fair enough. Unless it is a very drawn out 1v1 with more artillary at play then I likely couldn't justify a radar upgrade in a ranked game either. I have mostly played larger custom games though where you can get snipped by air so the early radar warning with the enemy spending a longer time under fire can be life saving. (assuming I haven't imagined radar helping )
I think the difference is with buildings and units that can't fire at radar contacts (Which is a lot of them), having some kind of upgrade to allow more utility out of radar towers is handy.
Not to constantly bring up Supreme Commander, but the radar buildings in that game added functionality when upgraded (The ability to "see through" radar jamming and stealth in short range). That's more what people are wanting from the upgrades - more information from radar towers.
@generalsgentlemen,
Two questions:
1. Can you validate whether radar currently helps AA and artillery?
2. Incidentally, just curious, why is your ID plural? (Royal we?)
Agree with @Romeo here.
I'm going to use the term "frequently not important."
Lowering the cost on something that is "frequently not important" does not make it more attractive and exciting in terms of gameplay.
Radar feels like something that should/could be useful in general, not just on big maps.
It feels like it should be something that contributes genuine strategic value.
(ex. no radar, no strategic zoom -- since radar helps with Situational Awareness)
But right now, just mushy blobs of color... Meh...
I think most people would agree that it would be great if radar could deliver more value and impact gameplay more significantly.
I mean, it is military G2!!!!
We have whole segments of our RW military -- and much of the contracting world -- devoted solely to this (C4ISR/C5ISR) function!!!
Radar should make a difference "most of the time" ... and should not be treated as a quanta giveaway, because it isn't worth more.
I was frankly disappointed when I read the post from GG (but appreciate his involvement/responsiveness all the same).
I was not thrilled to learn that the near term forecast for radar would merely be a reduction in cost.
However, I resolved to leave the issue alone...
But then Romeo posted.
it sounds like at least one other person is on the same page.
@generalsgentlemen,Two questions:1. Can you validate whether radar currently helps AA and artillery?2. Incidentally, just curious, why is your ID plural? (Royal we?)
Radar is currently lacking in the level of precision that you get compared to Supcom, where you can tell if a radar contact is a land, air, naval or building. To make Radar occupy a bigger part of the game and be more of a strategic consideration, it really needs to be reworked to deliver that level of information. This is clearly what would be an amazing improvement to make, but like everything, the issue is developer time and the opportunity cost of it. Lowering the cost of Radar upgrade involves me spending 30 seconds changing a number in a file somewhere. Improving the functionality of Radar is something that would probably take a programmer weeks when we already have a huge list of stuff for the remainder of the 2017 Roadmap. Maybe we can get to it at some point next year.
OK. so this begs the question...
I suspect there are a lot of people out there who would be happy to pay for improvements.
Have you guys considered stuff like kickstarter, or doing the equivalent on your own?
And basically just set it up so that when something funds, you hire the devs and roll?
I mean, I know there are ramping issues... and need to maintain a team with full knowledge of codebase...
But I mean, if we are willing to pay for stuff... in a way that would grow the team and get things released more quickly....
Has anything like this been considered?
To let the community pay for what it wants?
Vote with the wallet and so on?
Hell, I'd pay a monthly subscription, if I could vote on next update.
Restructure roadmap, give option of paying for season passes, which give ability to vote on update sequence?
Wot is the hesitation with doing this, exactly?
Draginol has said, "it's not about the money" to me on more than one occasion...
... and yet then I see statements like this, about dev resources being limited.
Release the kracken, already!
Let us pay for the stuff we want and MAKE IT HAPPEN SOON!
(We'll try not to destroy argus while we're at it.)
Given that the code for "vision" already exists, how much harder would it be to add sight range based on a scale of radar range for an upgrade? If that's confusing, what I mean is linking them:
Radar (No quanta upgrades, level two building) range: 1Sight range: 0.6
Radar (No quanta upgrades, level one building) range: 1Sight range: 0 (Or whatever the default range is)
Radar (One quanta upgrade, level two building) range: 1.1Sight range: 0.66
Radar (One quanta upgrade, level one building) range: 1.1Sight range: 0 (Or whatever the default range is)
Radar (Two quanta upgrades, level two building) range: 1.21Sight range: 0.73
Radar (Two quanta upgrades, level one building) range: 1.21Sight range: 0 (Or whatever the default range is)
And so on and so forth. If the above is too difficult, a "brute force" kind of fix could be changing the radar range quanta upgrade to include sight range at a 5% ratio or something.
I like my radar and radar upgrades!
There is no better feeling then blanketing the map in the safe blue radar coverage and make it easy to see incoming aircraft and keeping a track of large enemy armies.
In the game, Warzone 2100 you have many kinds of sensors. The basic sensor is vital to utilising the full range of your artillery. CB sensors or counter-battery sensors can detect and target enemy artillery at a greater range then the normal sensor and allows your artillery to deliberately target enemy artillery at such ranges. Anti Radar sensors are something I also recall that alloy your artillery to pick out enemy radar units at longer ranges in order to blind the enemy.
Warzone also have VTOL strike towers that act as radar spotters for aircraft in that game, but I feel that might be going a little beyond the topic here.
It could be interesting to see such specialized radar types that can pick out specific important targets from range and relay them to the appropriate defences/the player.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
