Maybe once you've finished the current to-do list you could make a S.A.M emplacement that functions in conjunction with this, IE it can only engage craft that it has picked up and if the sensor array is destroyed the S.A.M doesn't function either.

Maybe only make it work when an actor is standing at the control panel? That would be nice.

I prefer that idea with satelites or whatever.

I'll make a nice radio tower kind of module that would have a satelite dish at the top, and that dish would be destructible (While the tower itself would just be a BG).

If that dish is destroyed, the map will just show white noise or something, or maybe it would still show actors, but only within a small range.

How about exetremely inaccurate readings.

Like the readings dictate that the Crash Test Armada is five light days away, but in actuality they are on you.

Whatever Grif finds best suiting, its his mod after all...

I actually prefer either a really, REALLY slow and inaccurate actor position update, or very short range with some static ♥♥♥♥ going on screen making you not being able to read the map every couple of seconds.

Then it would just be more practical to use the switch actor buttons to look around.

That is essentially cheating.
As you have a view of the whole map whereas the AI only sees what's close to them.

Thus, this is why the minimap was made.

It's not cheating, because it's basically the only way to order the AI to do something.
It's an intended part of the game.

Yes, I agree it would make it much more interesting if you couldn't see the enemy bunker modules until you got close, and couldn't see their tunnels until you found them, but it's up to the Devs to do that.

Fixed that for you.

Anyway, it's called a satellite scan.

I made 2 radar-y screens, I think they came out OK, if anyone's interested.

This is exactly what I would've sent him if I had made it. Props.



Not sure why they didn't add a fog of war type layer for CC. Each actor would just have his own sight circle of where he could currently see.

Without a fog of war yes a mini map is extra, but still awesome.

Since the game's code is not being broken or altered when a player is viewing the map via actor switch, one can't say it's cheating, though it is rather cheap. I typically try to refrain from doing that but it does propose a dilemma should I want to give an actor a Go To assignment. A real double-edged sword, that is.

Idea. Make a piece of equipment with a small minimap attached. This way you can just carry it with you current actor and only pull it out when it's needed. I was thinking emitters or something...

For a basic terrain check, you could make it a manual player refresh. As in, in order to map current surface levels, you fly a radar/scout plane over, which causes the radar to map height levels directly under it. You would then have a static display of terrain levels. So, if the terrain got modified significantly, you just fly another plane.

So basically, you get the whole surface mapping thing, while making a feature out of a limitation. As far as mapping tunnels and bunkers go; it's a fairly basic scan, and even IRL radar usually won't penetrate that far underground to my knowledge. So yeah, there's and excuse to not go that far, basically.

Then again, I haven't looked at any of the code involved at the moment, so this is just my 2 cents.

As I have been saying, slow FindAltitde calls work.
Due to the fact that the screen has a limited res, the code only needss to check the X axis 66 times to get a surface scan.
To see caves and the like, it would at maximum, take up 2772 scans. On really, really massive laggy maps. On Grasslands, as Grif said earlier, it will take less to a reasonable amount.