Radars are described in the Units/Radar.txt file.

These are not units, but a component of a unit. I.e. each unit can have one or several Radars. Also Radars are not only usual “real world” radars, but actually any mean of detection - can also be, for example, optics or sonar or any other kind of sensor.

To add a new Radar you need to describe it. The radar description format is:


[RADAR] “NAME” starts the radar description. NAME is any unique string defining the internal radar name. This name will be used to add this radar to some units, etc.

Tech “technology” defines the name of technology from the tech description file this radar is based on. This field is obligatory. Note that the display name for this radar will be taken from the name of this technology. It is a good practice to have a separate technology for every radar type and not base any radar on technologies directly listed in the tech tree - use their 0-cost descendants for it.

Range float_value defines the radar range (in km), i.e. how far the radar can see. float_value is any floating point number, like 1, 100, 50.25, 511.2332 and such. Default is 20.

MaxHeight float_value sets what is the maximum altitude (in km) of the unit/missile this radar is still able to detect. The default value is 100.

PreciseTargeting Yes/No - defines if this radar is able to provide the precise target coordinates required by some of the missiles. Default is No.

CanCalculateLaunchPosition Yes/No - defines if the radar has the possibility to reveal a hidden enemy unit by detecting the missile it launched. Default is No.

CanDetect unit_type - defines the type of the unit this radar can see. If this radar can see more than one unit type, add a separate CanDetect for each unit type. Available unit types are:

Ground
• Naval
  
• Subwater // surfaced submarine will return Naval type
  
• Airborne
  
• Satellite
  
• Missile
  
• HighMissile // this is a missile that has MaxElevation > 0
  
• SubwaterMissile // this is a missile that has Subwater property set
  
• City
  
• AbstractPosition // not used for radars

By default no one unit type can be detected.


RadarColor float_r float_g float_b float_a - defines the color of the radar range visible on the map. Each value defines a color component and should be between 0 and 1. Note that the ranges with the same color are usually drawn together, so the lower-range radar with the same color as some higher-range radar will not be visible for the same unit unless the higher-range radar range drawing is switched off. Default value is (0.0, 0.0, 0.15, 0.15)

GlobalShowType show_type - defines in what group the range of this radar will be shown when the “Show Radar Ranges” button is pressed. If you need the radar to be shown in several groups, set GlobalShowType for each separately. Available show types are:

• OVERHORIZONT_RANGES
  
• LW_RANGES
  
• SW_RANGES
  
• SONAR_RANGES
  
• SPACE_RANGES
  
• SATELLITE_RANGES
  
• SAM_RANGES
  
• ABM_RANGES
  
• MRBM_RANGES
  
• ICBM_RANGES

By default, no GlobalShowType is set.

DoNotShow is a property that signals the game to not show the range of this radar by default, so the user must manually switch the range showing on to see it.

The properties MinRange, Sector and Precision can be set but they are not used currently.

Type “defined_type” allows you to use some previously defined types as a template for this radar, see type template description

ImprovedBy and AffectedBy allow modification of values of the radar properties based on the availability of technologies, unit modifiers, etc. For more details see Tech Modifiers. The properties that are allowed to be modified are: Range, MaxHeight

To save on defining the same set of properties for the number of radars.

Do create a type template use


Then you can set the following properties:

• CanDetect
  
• PreciseTargeting
  
• CanCalculateLaunchPosition
  
• GlobalShowType
  
• DoNotShow
  
• Color

Example of the type template description:

Sometimes you do not want to create a new radar type, but to modify the existing one in your mod.
The simple way to do it is to just define it again using the same NAME as the original radar.
However this is not the best solution if you consider compatibility of different mods.

You can also modify the radar more granularly. To unit modification write this:


Then you can change individual properties of the radar as if adding them to the original item.

While numerical properties like Range and single-value properties like Tech are re-defined when you set them again, multi-properties like CanDetect or ImprovedBy are accumulated (added to the already existing ones). So you may need to delete some existing properties.
To do this, add the keyword DELETE before property.

DELETE ImprovedBy “technology” - removes all the Improve-type modifications related to the “technology” tech
DELETE AffectedBy “technology” - removes all the Affect-type modifications related to the “technology” tech
DELETE CanDetect unit_type - removes the possibility to detect unit_type type of units
DELETE GlobalShowType show_type - removes this radar from show_type showing group
DELETE DoNotShow - clears the DoNotShow property

You can also mass-delete several properties using the RESET keyword:

RESET ImprovedBy - removes all the Improve-type modifications
RESET AffectedBy - removes all the Affect-type modifications
RESET CanDetect - removes the possibility to detect any unit type
RESET GlobalShowType - removes this radar from any showing group

Example of the modification: