Originally posted by hitech
You might wish to consider how the radar range changes would effect overall game play. Im not in anyway saying which way the radar should be, but I would not look at the change as having anything to do with realistic ranges of radar, because our radar simply simulates the complete aircraft tracking systems,including observers, radar, comunication, pilot reports,comand centers ecetera .
Rather I would be interested in how the range change would effect game play.
HiTech
Understood that the current radar system is only simulating aircraft tracking, and understoond that our terrains are not 1:1 with the european or pacific theatres. While we don't have realistic ranges between bases, what we do have is a realistic speed of the incoming aircraft on the attack, so early warning times are either unrealistically low (bombers detected 12 mi out from your CV), or unrealistically high (dar bar shows up 8 sectors away for a mission climbing out across the ocean to your HQ, or dar bar shows the location of an enemy CV long before it gets into radar range).
Increasing CV radar range gets you a more reasonable early warning time, which (hopefully) gets you more interceptions of the single player with his formation of bombers intent on suicide. I think this gives you larger CV air battles as it will be likely take larger groups of bombers coming in higher to get into a position to successfully attack. I think you might also get more people trying to sneak in low with torpedo bombers, which I wouldn't mind seeing either as mass torpedo plane missions are pretty rare.
On land, losing dar bars in favor of strategically placed long range radars that "show it all" in their ranges would tend to vector players to the fighting that much quicker, and again lead to larger air battles. I think you get this effect whether you do "strat" radars of very long range, or if you just increase the range of radars at large airbases only.
Like furballing? You'll still see where the big furball is near a base even if the short-range radar is porked.
Like intercepting bombers? Well, you'll see them coming (at 25, 50, 75 miles?) out, and you'll have a chance to get up, group up, and go do an honest-to-god interception before they get to target. Play your cards right and you might even STOP the raid before they get to target.
Like bombing? Well it'll be a lot more realistic for you since you'll probably want to start winging up in larger formations and taking escorts with you to get to target. You might want to take that tough old B17G instead of the Lancs so you have some defensive guns. In smaller faster buffs you'll have a better chance without escorts, but you won't have that huge bombload. We might see more Mossies, A-20s, or fast buffs like the Ki-67 being used.
Like capturing bases? Well, the equation is basically the same - get a cap on the enemy base, or sneak in under-dar and surprise your enemies in their bunks. You'd have some local strats to target that might mean something to your efforts (the big radar stations / large airbases), and you'll want to defend yours since being blind on one side of your country or the other will put you at a disadvantage.
Radar overlap doesn't bother me in this scenario. Being able to scan into enemy territory a bit just shows you how the air battle is developing. Seeing reinforcements, resupply missions, bombers climbing out behind the lines, etc. just gives you more things to consider in your mission planning.
It might also be interesting to consider terrain effects (radar blindspot behind a mountain anyone?) or aircraft size (larger aircraft detected sooner) as well. Although I don't see that as immediately necessary, it could be implemented later on.
As with anything else, we might not know all the effects on gameplay until a change is implemented. It might be worth giving this a try, or just setting all dars at 25 miles instead of 12 and seeing what that does to gameplay.
Lets not be afraid to experiment for a week here and there - it'll keep the game fresh and we might learn something
EagleDNY
$.02
