Although scouting and radars are considered as a very basics of an RTS game, some people simply forget this fact and miss an important aspect of the game. Through this guide you can refresh your memory and maybe learn some new tricks. In this guide I’ll be explaining why scouts and radars are essential for good gameplay. This stuff really helps in 1 vs 1 gameplay so if you’re looking to improve your one on one skills, this guide will help.

Scouting

In Spring mods there are usually four kind of scouting types: Vehicle scouts, Kbot scouts, Naval scouts and last but not least, Air scouts (In some mods also Hovercrafts includes scouts or fast attack vehicles). Despite what type the scout is, they all serve same main role which is providing a small peak to the enemy. However every unit type has it’s own little specialties for example scout boats with anti-air ability and bots with invisibility.

The main reason to scout is, that it’s the cheapest and fastest way to learn what your enemy is doing. For the winning game you should, from time to time, remember to send scouts.

It’s especially important to scout in the beginning of the game, when you want to know what strategy your enemy is going to use. It’s also good start of aggression, since most of the mods has scouting units with guns. You should keep in mind that scouting also reveals your strategy, so you might think if you really want to scout with air, unless its an intentional way to bluff your opponent.

Well “micro-managed” scouting always turns the pressure to the opponent and gives him less time to concentrate on his actions. It can, succesfully lead to massive damages!

Sometimes in the middle of the game, you might face the dilemma where the enemy has built heavily fortified static defense and you want to siege it. This is when the scouts most likely will be useful again. Whether you build heavy plasma guns or decide to siege enemy fortress with long range units like mobile artillery or rocket launchers (Diplomats, snipers, Penetrators, Tremors, Dominators etc) It’s necessary to send scouts to see where defenses are located. This is because shots based on radar view usually leads to many miss shots and meanwhile you might be counter-attacked.

Scouts are also very useful to support pure assaults because they are fast and serves as a cannon fodders while heavy assault units can come to the battle zone untouched. This can be also demonstrated by comparing dps – rps rates (damage per second and rounds per second). Basically it  means how much the weapon does damage with one shot and how much time it takes to reload and shoot again. Turrets like Annihilator and HLT(heavy laser tower) makes a lot of damage but reloads really slow. Therefore you might consider whether to send your heaviest units or handle the problem with cheap and fast units.

Scout spam is sometimes efficient and cheap way to kill lonely heavy static defense and also good support attack against heavily “porced” defenses.

Distracting the attention is also one key aspects of scouting especially in air-scouting. Heavily air-dominated defense(fighter screen) can be distracted by sending multiple bunches of radar planes to the opposite direction where your bombers are going to attack.

Radars

Radar is the next important structure to build after your plant and resource facilities. It is the key element of detecting enemy movements and enemy location. There are static radars and mobile radars, where static radars are usually two kinds: Basic early-warning radars and Advanced radars with better attributes. Water has its own radars: Floating Radar Towers and underwater detection system which is sonar. So far you shouldn’t forget to build them both.

Never Forget to build a Radar!

Radar view is determined as a “LOS” (line of sight). Radars usually have two attributes: sight distance and radar distance, where radar distances determines the area where enemy units are seen on the radar map and sight distance where the units are identified. Radar’s LOS can be viewed by pressing “L” key when radar unit is selected. This view shows the radar coverage, the area that radar has its radar distance. It also indicates so called dead angles, usually areas behind hills and mountains that cannot be seen by radar. Therefore you should always try to find place for the radar that gives you the best LOS.

Hilltops and cliff edges are usually the best places for radars. From there, the structure is hard for enemy to reach and in same time, you can have the best possible radar view. This issue also must remind you the fact that by spotting the enemy radar and destroying it, you improve your own success on the battlefield where enemy gets constantly surprised.

Radar Can’t see through a mountain…

Radar Jamming is the counter-attack of radaring. It’s main and only purpose is to “jam” or hide a certain areas from radar view. It’s very useful tactic and can be used throughout the game. Most common uses are when you want to hide a siege or from a siege, however mobile jammers are made to hide assaults too, so if you have time to micro-manage it properly, you will definitely surprise your enemy. Radar Jamming can be pretty annoying tactic and it can easily lead you to a passive role on the battlefield and giving more and more time for your enemy. There is a certain building called Arm Juno, which has unlimited range to destroy enemy radars and jammers. However better way is just to scout!

Best way to counter Radar Jammers are scouts!

In Addition, there are some minor things you should also take into consideration. You should always keep in mind that the radar view seen on the map doesn’t necessarily tell that the unit/object is in that exact location. Therefore your long range units miss a lot of shots, because they doesn’t detect the exact locations. Jammer can make this even more complicated, but this of course wont prevent you manually attacking. You also might be interested of setting Radar AI which gives you some nice attributes like intruding warning messages on the map and ghosted units for the units that have been in the LOS.

Author: Sir Atturi