Radar

Radar is a power-consuming building that expands map visibility both locally and over long distance. It charts the area around itself continuously, revealing terrain and entities on the map, and it also performs periodic long-range scans that uncover additional chunks far beyond its immediate vicinity.

A radar continuously charts a 7×7 chunk area, centered on the chunk it occupies, which is 224×224 tiles. This nearby scan is updated as a single pulse roughly once per second at full power. If power is reduced, the pulse interval becomes longer and the map can briefly blink as the area is refreshed more slowly. At 20% power, the radar pulses about once every 4 seconds; this still keeps the nearby area visible on the map, but with reduced detail. A single solar panel can provide that level of power, or one isolating accumulator can be used for every five radars. The roboport also provides local charting, but only over a 5×5 area.

For long-range survey scanning, each radar charts one distant chunk whenever its sector scanning progress bar fills. With full power, this takes 33.333 seconds per chunk, and each chunk requires 10 MJ of energy to scan. Long-range scanning covers an area of 29×29 chunks around the radar, excluding the nearby 7×7 area, for a total of 792 chunks in range. If all chunks are already explored, the radar keeps re-scanning the chunk that was scanned least recently. Multiple radars share long-range chunks, which reduces the time needed to complete the survey; they also avoid scanning chunks that are already being scanned by another radar. Unexplored chunks are scanned first, and if a chunk was not generated yet, scanning it generates it.

Radar charting affects the map in several ways. Scanned chunks are copied into the map for the player’s force, and charting makes it possible to zoom from the map into normal world view and to interact with blueprints and deconstruction planners. Once a chunk is scanned, it remains actively charted for 10 seconds; if it is not scanned again during that time, it fades into fog of war and keeps only its last charted image. Because charting updates moving entities as well, frequent changes across many chunks can affect performance.

Radars also connect to the circuit network. Every radar on the same surface is connected to every other radar on that surface, and any circuit signal sent into one radar is output from all the others. This connection is lost if the radar loses power, and the signal can only be observed through connected objects such as electric poles, since the radar itself has no GUI.

• Tanks and spidertrons cannot be entered when they are outside radar range, but they can still be controlled and exited.
• A new enemy nest can appear in a chunk that was previously scanned, so a revealed map does not guarantee that the area is still clear.
• Long-range scans are visible on the map as a chunk lighting up for several seconds before slowly darkening again.