Radar scanning (and re-scanning) speed

[Koub]

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if the speed of the radars had any chance of being tweaked in some future : I really find extremely long the time it takes for my radars to rescan completely all the area surrounding my base. I mean it's so slow that they never spot new spawns before I discover them myself (Every time I get attacked by biters, I just go and patrol around where the attack came from).

Well I can already hear people telling me "It's really fast you know, just build 500 radars with 2500 solar panels, clic clic two blueprints and it's done in seconds, and you'll discover them fast, you should thing bigger" but I feel that that kind of demesure shouldn't be needed to have reasonably quick update of your surroundings.

I have searched the forum, and only found a 6 months old topic I didn't want to resurrect that spoke from the way radars did work (https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... adar+speed).

Is this "slowness" really intended ?

[bonob]

If I understand correctly the scanners do not 're-scan' their area.
They scan first and discover nests in their big range, but then they don't touch it anymore. They remain active in their small range though, which is highlighted on the map. There you see the biters bases and movements in real time.

[Koub]

Owww now I understand !
Maybe it's just me, maybe it's maybeline XD the description of what the radar actually does is a little misleading.
Anyway, now that I know, radars seem pretty useless once chunks are discovered => foud an efficient way to spare 1.5 MW ^^

[Gammro]

Radar actually does revisit chunks after it's scanned the surroundings. And yes, it takes long. I think this was intended. If you want it different right now, I suggest modding it

Long-term radar behavior: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=5&t=3362

[Koub]

I'm not fond of modding whatever bothers me in a game, especially when it's still in development .
The thing is :
- if the radar does rescan the discovered chunks, but at a such a slow pace, why use a radar ?
- if the radar doesn't rescan the discovered chunks, then well ... why use a radar ?

Either possibility does not justify 300 kW of upkeep per radar imho.

Radar drains much energy for a discutable result, that's why I think it could bet some balancing (but it's just an opinion, feel free to debate ^^).

[Rahjital]

The main use of radars is currently to see what's happening at your remote outposts when you are far away. The scanning and re-scanning functions are still useful, though they take a bit more time. The fastest way to explore is still to drive a car around, but often you have more important things to do and that's when the scanning comes in handy.

I don't really see what's wrong with building multiple radars, though, that's completely in spirit of Factorio. When you want more resources you build more mines, when you want to expand your production you build more assemblers, when you want to research faster you build more labs. I don't really see why radars should be any different. The high energy costs makes you consider how many radars do you really need and how many is just a needless drain on your generators. Of course, the exact scanning time and range is a thing that will need to be balanced, it may be a bit too slow even with multiple radars, but in my opinion, the radars work more or less correctly as of now. If there's anything to add, I think it would be marking re-scanned sector in some way.

[chlue]

Hm I find the initial scanning of the radar actually fast enough (the outermost parts takes a while, but they are not so crucial anyways and may overlap with other radar areas anyway). The rescanning is another topic trough. So maybe with respect to the balancing it would be nice if rescanning would be faster than the initial scan. Btw do we know if the radar is clever enough to scan the oldest map-chunk next or do they work with a fixed pattern (making many radars at the same spot quiet meaningless).

[Rahjital]

Radars do indeed rescan the oldest non-rescanned sectors. Quoting Kovarex here:

Just to clear it, when the radar finishes the sector process, it finds the chunk in the area that wasn't scanned for the longest time and rescan it.
In the start these are the chunks that are not charted at all and they get discovered.
Once the radar discovers all the chunks in the area, he will start updating chunks again.

So it is always possible, to build more radars, to get more frequent update of the surrounding area.

This also seems to indicate that both scanning and re-scanning needs the same amount of time to finish.

[Kazuar]

I think I said this in another thread, but I'll repeat it here (same topic, basically).

The rescanning of sectors "feels" slow, because most of the time, there is no new information gained by "re-revelation". Because of this, and the fact that the "re-revelation" is not communicated to player, it feels like radars do practically nothing after initial reveal.

Really, the only chance you're actually seeing your radars work is when suddenly, red blips appear in an empty-ish area - which happens only if a radar re-reveals just the one, right sector (amongst the hundreds within its reach) within the short timeframe you spend on your overview map. Oh, and it must happen in an area that actually is on your map (so zoom/location needs to right as well).

I'll go out on a limb and say these are not often met at the same moment. As a result, the re-revealing done by radars after the initial scanning is basically imperceptible, and therefore difficult to conceive. This, I feel, often screws up peoples assessment of radar viability, in both directions (who didn't went crazy once and plopped down like 30 radars in one spot?).

TL;DR: Re-revealed sectors need to be lighted up shortly, imho, similiar to initial reveals.

[adam123]

Hello!

I just want to know radar scanning Is divided into sectors or it is for the whole world.

[bobingabout]

Hello!

I just want to know radar scanning Is divided into sectors or it is for the whole world.

Is that a question, or a statement? I can't tell.

[Engimage]

Hello!

I just want to know radar scanning Is divided into sectors or it is for the whole world.

Radar has an always active area which is visible all the time. It also does scan around chunk by chunk in an "expanding snail" order up to a radius of near to 2.5 of always active part. When it finishes the pattern it starts over from the most adjacent to active area parts and so on. So the area is not "all world".

Starting over is needed to refresh information on already scanned chunks as they do not update until discovered again and biters do expand

[Jap2.0]

Hmm, perhaps re-scanning could be faster than initial scanning or there could be a research to increase the scanning speed (like the big brother mod and I think a few others do now)?

[Koub]

I still think the scan speed for refreshing the already scanned area is too slow ... btw, this is a 3 year necro.

[Adil]

How, young were we . And the thread still reads as it's from yesterday.

Indeed, I really don't see radars becoming overpowered if their speed is upped.
Even if you double that, it is still equivalent of a pair of current radars, and consumption wise it is on par with a couple of assemblers in a big base. But on the other hand, it'd make them more applicable for exploration. I remember the time I've wanted to use radars for exploring the map: I'd drive the car into a straight line into the wilderness, set up smallish outpost with radar, few solar panels and gun-turrets, and then leave by the same route so as not to discover more than the radar would and not to make it useless by that.

It is true, that you can plop more of them at any given position and can achieve pretty decent monitoring speed, but then most of the time they'll be re-highlighting unchanged pieces of forest. And the radars will just feel like waste. Also, if you build several of them next to each other, that'd be inefficient in regard to their close range view.

Maybe they need some new advantages now. For example, there could be synergy for them: if you build several of them nearby - they connect and can now discover more distant lands.

[Engimage]

They already have new advantages. You can zoom in from map where you have radar coverage which is an awesome feature.

Scannich thos is an ups heavy thing so I don't think increasing speed will be really good to endure ups hit.

And as a possibly new feature it was proposed waay many times to add a circuit connection to radars to output distance to closest enemy/nest, or just proximity sensor.

[Frightning]

I think the 'obvious' solution to this problem would be to have a research line that upgrades Radar scan speed. That way early on, Radar exploration is slow, and energy intensive, but later, you don't need to build a block of 20-30 Radars to have rapid updates on your perimeter around your base/outposts.

[Optera]

If you want area re-scanned faster, place more radars.
Every on_sector_scanned a radar unveils a random chunk not visible to its force.

[Jap2.0]

If you want area re-scanned faster, place more radars.
Every on_sector_scanned a radar unveils a random chunk not visible to its force.

Are you sure? I thought it was initially it scans outward in a square spiral, then re-scans the chunks that have been scanned least recently.

[Frightning]

If you want area re-scanned faster, place more radars.
Every on_sector_scanned a radar unveils a random chunk not visible to its force.

Are you sure? I thought it was initially it scans outward in a square spiral, then re-scans the chunks that have been scanned least recently.

This is the correct behavior, it scans unexplored chunks in range first in order based on distance from the chunk it is in, starting from due NW direction (so square spiral pattern as you described it). Once there are no unexplored chunks in range, it rescans the chunk within it's range that hasn't been in Line-of-Sight of your faction in the longest time (so you can mess with the pattern by, for instance, manual scounting of your previously explored surroundings).