Overall, I'd say that the current "proximity dar" does promote combat. It might be harder to bounce an unsuspecting enemy, but (to me) that isn't combat in a gaming sense.
The radar settings of today makes Aceshigh feel like an arcade game.... not the combat simulation I was promised years ago. We may have easier combat to find, but at what cost? We have no unknowns left in AH... no need of luck or skill anymore.“As a fighter pilot I know from my own experiences how decisive surprise and luck can be for success, which in the long run comes only to the one who combines daring with cool thinking.”— Adolf Galland
Hazmatt the way the dar works now is that anywhere on the map if a team mate is in a plane or a GV and is within a minimum distance of an enemy plane that enemy plane will show up on the clipboard map.