the plus is the cap, any radar above 3 doesnt add any more. its nice and simple dont you think? also bc you complain that noone explained to you where you failed reading, it wasnt obvious until this post i replied to.
yeah but, again I dont understand what that means if research time is 180 seconds and the cap is 3+ does this mean it can never go below 90 seconds? Or does it mean every radar halfs the research time.
Build Radar #1: Normal research time Build Radar #2: Reduced research time Build Radar #3: further reduced research time Build Radar #4: research time does not reduce more. The benefits end after Radar #3. right?
Okay, so I don't want to dump on this idea, but I want to point out something pretty obvious that I feel has been overlooked. This suggestion is just a way to make research cost again, but is in the same way that we put costs on the other end like we did with tanks. You're basically shifting the costs to radars, and sure they're optional, but as was said before most research times were increased to compensate for the lack of cost now. Or...is that a good thing? Restoring the slope in a way slanted towards winning teams, but not preventing research (like costs can) for the losing team? I dunno, I feel like we keep moving around where we want all the costs to come from, and instead of taking an overview of the game, we keep throwing ideas at it until it makes sense. But we don't actually add any interesting systems to the gameplay side, just things that pretty much only matter to the comm. Radars aren't really playerside, because people aren't that concerned about res any more. And yeah it might be cool for the other team to have ancillary targets to hurt the enemy team, but that used to be refs. And it's kinda cancelled by the fact that if you can hit a radar, most of the time outside of a competitive game, it's as easy to hit the CV instead.
I didn't know my explanation was so terrifyingly complicated. If you build a 4th radar you will still have 0.5x radar research. If one gets destroyed, you still have 3 radars to keep researching at 0.5x pace. Basicly, 3+ radars, you are capped. About the slope, like I said it is a double edged sword, it has negatives, you have a 1800 resources disadvantage, you either have 1-2 refineries/3 radars/lots of research OR 5-6 refineries/1 radar/barely research. I suggested this as a purpose for more radars being useful. It would also increase complexity of commanding itself (more decisions on how to go with research itself) but that can also be taken negatively.
And why would you be lacking in refineries? The cost of refineries are almost trivial. Anyways this would give the team with more building space a supreme advantage.
Basicly, if one team decides to go for more radars instead of going for any other option, like VFs, vehicles or more barracks, they will have that resource disadvantage stuck on themselvs until the enemy team gets more aswell. More resources => more capabilities => more ground => more refineries This only applies if both teams have equal strength, which is where this suggestion falls apart, if you have a less experienced team you will definitely be punished if you do one fatal mistake. Another reason this suggestion isn't great is chokepoint maps, they basicly force both teams going for the turtle strategy (3+ radars) since you cannot move around as freely as you can on open maps. Space-wise I am not sure, I can't remember a map where you have less space than the other team, I really would like to know though. TBH, maybe this isn't the best way to give multiple radars more purpose afterall. Seems like too much effort to balance this. Canceling radar research on destruction doesn't sound too bad though, although it doesn't help increasing importance of more radars by much.
I have a good way of increasing radar importance. Fix building spotting. Autospot wasn't bad in and of itself, it wasn't balanced properly. If the radar can detect enemies in a larger radius than other buildings, then it becomes an early warning system to otherwise quite vulnerable bases.
Preset radar locations? That sounds really nice actually. Putting them on base spots so taking other people their bases for another radar spot or, radars can only be put on ref nodes. edit: add another node to main base
destroyer meant spotting like in people showing up on the minimap, not spots where you can place radars. i do think the freedom of building placement is a essential part of empires and a major selling point. why its different for refinaries is obvious (though certainly doesnt have to be, but lets not start arguing about that aswell) also im no big fan of auto spotting if its a huge building where punching doesnt help.
or I duno.. you could implement pay rez for faster research. Like, wtf can radars actually download at the same time as acting as radar dish? Anyways if you want something faster PAY for it at X rez per second decrease in download time. I am not talking about knocking off download times with an upfront cost, just hit a button and rez drains and the download timer counts down faster. Run out of rez and it defaults to standard speed. You might even be able to keep this from being a slippery slope by increasing rez cost the more research you already have.
It would be neat if Radar locations = research. Would have to hold different parts of the map to research. Or get a speed boost in certain spots. So placing a Radar on front lines = 2 x the research speed.
