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At this moment radar feels a bit.. how to put it... unnecessary, weak.
It's relatively expensive in terms of power consumption and all it does is reveal map at a veeeery slow rate. Basically I could do it myself and it would take 0kW and few minutes of running which is rly not a big deal.

Now how it could be improved - there are few things which potentially would be nice to know like:
1) info that a new base was formed somewhere inside the radar range
2) info of the path/direction the biters took to get to you (at least partial, to give you rough idea)

It could also allow for new/additional options on your map (otherwise locked) like the ability to filter stuff (like show/hide soil type/trees/ores etc).

Filters of ores would be particularly nice. In vanilla, where you have 4 resource types, it's easy to differentiate them looking at the map. In modded factorio.. well.. it's almost impossible. You have like 20 colors and no idea which one is what and on top of that those colors are frequently very similar to each other.
Basically it means that this info is completely useless and you have to run around to find what you need.

It does have several uses. For instance, it does after a while reveal new bases. That is always useful.
Also, it perma-reveals a small area around itself, so when you want to stay updated on a far-away location because you want to watch changes in ressources, that can come in handy.

Qcor wrote:At this moment radar feels a bit.. how to put it... unnecessary, weak.
It's relatively expensive in terms of power consumption and all it does is reveal map at a veeeery slow rate. Basically I could do it myself and it would take 0kW and few minutes of running which is rly not a big deal.

You miss the big point that it the same revealing radius as your character.
A radar on a mining outpost, an one look at the map every now and then tells you roughly how much ore theres left.
Serval littel scouting outposts around your base wich after you've solar are easy to setup and you can hold trainstations in sight that pron to jam up and much more.

And with serval lasers its an nice decoy for the bugs.

idk, seems quit useful to me, and are what was it 300kw really that much?
If i look on my power consuption, my radars aren't that much extra.

But the idea of adding a filter Like hide/show ore enemys trees and so on is a relly good idea.

Well, yes it has its uses, I agree.

What I meant is that it COULD do more useful stuff beside just revealing a bit of terrain.

But at the same time it doesn't have to be done by radar. It could also be done by a new building type sth more like motion sensor to inform you of biter movements.. just an idea which could be done by radar to raise its importance.

The main point however are map filters. Ofc could be added anyway without tying it up to any building at all. Radar just looked like a good choice IF you would want to connect this functionality to a building.