Factorio Forums

TL;DR

I think it would be cool to have research that increased the effectiveness of radars.

What ?

A new infinite research branching off of radar technology. Mostly this would increase the scan speed, but perhaps the final non-infinite level could increased the always-revealed radius by one as well.

Why ?

You mentioned in FFF #376 that you wanted to add more infinite research, and to me, radars feel a little neglected. They're certainly important, but they're an early game item which never gets improved on. And for the most part, it seems like the long range scan feature is too slow to be useful. So why not give us a way to beef that up?

Radar scan speed can already be increased with more radars and unlike a global increase, this can be targeted. An infinite technology might become a performance problem. I don't think technologies (infinite or not) to increase scan speed would add much to the game.

With the expansion, visibility range can be increased with higher quality radars (see FFF-375) so I don't think it would make sense to add another mechanism to the base game. There are of course mods such as Long Range Radar Balanced.