Do the Radars make the aliens attack sooner?

[Peter34]

I usually don't build Radars until mid game or so (about 2 to 3.5 hours in) because I have a sense maybe they cause the aliens to begin attacking sooner. But on the other hand, I'm too busy to explore the map manually, and that means I have zero clue as to where the alien sites are.

What if I'm wrong in my assumption? If the Radars don't caus attacks to happen earlier, or only move them forward in time by a very few percent, then it'd be to my strategic advantage to build one or two Radars ASAP, since then I'll be able to know where the nearest alien camps are, and thus have a better sense of what direction the attacks might be coming from.

Hence this post:

1. Do they make the aliens attack sooner, everything else being equal?
2. Is knowledge of alien camp location actually useful in terms of knowing where attacks are most likely to come from?

[DaveMcW]

1. A radar uses 77% of the power from one boiler, so it indirectly causes pollution and earlier alien attacks.
2. No. You need to defend everywhere.

Map knowledge is useful to know where to expand and where the easiest alien artifacts are.

[User_Name]

By the way, biters avoid making new spawns in the area of radar coverage. The closest I've seen is the new nest at the very edge of the radar LOS square.

Thus, if you want that spawn you just eradicated to never come back, drop an autonomous radar in it's place (maybe a single piece of wall will suffice, never checked that)

I use these to keep biters away (got the design from the forums)

[GewaltSam]

When you press ALT, you see a red layer around your map (on the minimap, or if you hit M for the big map first). This is your pollution. If it reaches a nest, the worms which inhabit it will start to attack periodically. So, yes, a radar tells you where the aliens will attack from.

Like Dave said, radars won't directly attract biters earlier, but they use some energy for which your generators need to work harder; that leads to some more pollution. Two radars shouldn't be too much of a hassle in that regard, though.

[n9103]

Direction of nearest base is useful in determining where to focus defenses, especially in the early game before you've gotten enough walls to fully wall up.

Radar coverage is not required to stop hive expansion, any placed building does. (You can see/check this with the debug overlay.)

Radars do still have a direct attraction effect on biters, similar to how turrets that aren't yet firing do.
I'm pretty sure they won't directly speed up the initial time to attack, but they *might* determine where those early attacks will first head for.

[Xterminator]

One thing to note is that Radars are one of the things that biters specifically will target. They actually have a fairly high priority for the biters. I think somewhere just below laser turrets.