Honestly, just give it slightly bigger omni radar as compensation for lack of sonar.
Give UEF and Aeon t3 scouts sonar
How much larger?
Because I don't think that a slighter larger Omni radius would help solve the lack of sonar situation.
It would have to be a considerably larger radius. 15 - 20% or larger, I imagine.
~ Stryker
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The issue is actually quite simple - intel ranges are spherical - and you need to account for the altitude of the air unit - and the depth of the naval units. This has always been the case, which is why the attempt was made to implement something like sonar buoys - unfortunately, it littered the game with many more entities, which choked performance, so it was never revisited.
To properly utilize sonar, on the air scouts - the sonar range would need to take the above mentioned values into account - and it would look very wrong, as far as the range rings are concerned. The best implementation I have seen, comes from BrewLAN, which creates an invisible appendage attached to the air unit, but simply hanging well below - and a sonar entity is attached to that.
It would be really cool to see if these buoys could make a return, but it seems unlikely, as @Jip mentioned.
In hindsight, however...
I don't think it'll actually be as useful as having the sonar on the unit itself, as the plane can move much faster and therefore be able to cover a larger area quickly.
That is, unless the Spy plane is dropping a buoy that covers the size of a 10 x 10 km area or even just multiple buoys.
Nevertheless, if this ability is ever brought back to life somehow - obviously with some tweaking and all - I'm sure it'll make a great addition to FAF.
~ Stryker
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If we want it as a community then it is possible. But it requires to determine how it should function.
A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned
It should function as intended -
I imagine it is just like placing down a temporary T1 Sonar, no?
~ Stryker
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@jip said in Give UEF and Aeon t3 scouts sonar:
If we want it as a community then it is possible.
Where can I throw in my vote?!
Count mine in!
@mach said in Give UEF and Aeon t3 scouts sonar:
for temporary part, it could use fuel passively and destroy itself once it runs out, like mercies
Sounds like a really neat idea.
Though, I imagine they should be destroyable by units, too - unless it's a completely passive thing like T1 Walls?
(Where enemies can't auto-attack but can manually target, perhaps?)
~ Stryker
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