FreeOrion

Note that if you use GiveEmpireTech with no activation condition, it will work on any empire that controls an object with that species, on any turn. If you only want it to work on the first turn, you'd need to add an activation (or scope, I suppose) condition to control that.

A semi-plausible explanation could be made for species-specific stealth bonuses by saying that the species is particularly talented at understanding and manipulating detectable signals emanating from their objects, and minimizing their detectability.

The way the tech tree is set up now, at least, stealth techs aren't dependent on each other, so an empire that gets EM Damper for free at the start of the game isn't going to have any advantage getting to Absorption Field over a player who didn't get the free tech (and since I'm still leaning towards tech mutual exclusivity, I'm not at all keen to have each stealth tech be dependent on the previous).

Regardless of all that, I like the idea of species-specific stealth bonuses because it sounds like fun. In other words, species with stealth bonuses should have a wider range of options that take advantage of their stealth. For instance, as its set up now, an empire using an average species, assuming it has stealth one level higher than all its enemies, can effectively hide from all its average detection enemies. However, it still can be detected by species with Great Detection or Ultimate Detection, which limits its options for exploration and expansion if it wants to stay hidden. If that empire is using a species with Great Stealth, it can now hide from a species with Great Detection, giving it more options, and if it likewise has Ultimate Stealth, it can remain hidden from everyone and do whatever it wants, unless the other empires take deliberate measures to find it, using an Interstellar Lighthouse, for example.

Or suppose blockading a system decreases a ship's stealth by 50. Even if a ship is equipped with stealth that's one level higher than all the enemies' detection levels, if the ship is manned by an average species, it will become visible while blockading. If the ship was crewed by a species with Ultimate Stealth, they would be able to pull of stealthy blockades against enemies using species of average detection or lower.

And then there are tactical advantages to having greater stealth, etc...

Point being, I think that species stealth bonuses open up strategic options for players focused on stealth, and will be a good addition.

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Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

These specials are described as representing cloud cover, volcanic ash, "dim rift", and "void". Should there be some visual means of displaying the presence of these specials to players who know they are present? And perhaps, should players also be able to see these specials even if they can't see the rest of the details of the planet? If "cloud cover" is preventing a player from seeing what's on a planet, presumably the player would be able to see the clouds...

There could be a flag for specials to indicate whether they are normal, obvious, or hidden. Normal would be, as now, visible when a player has partial or better visibility of a planet. Obvious would be visible if the planet is known at all, and hidden would never be visible to players, or perhaps only visible once a planet is colonized. The use of this for cloud cover would be that a player would be sent information by the server about all specials the player's empire can see, which would include obvious specials of stealthy planets (for which the player doesn't have partial visibility due to the stealthiness). Knowing the special is present would allow an effect of the special that sets the texture of the planet to something cloudy to function client-side for players who can see the planet exists and that it's cloudy, but don't know its full details (eg. that there is another empire's colony on it).
What's the motivation for time-based incremental upgrades of these specials?

Alternatively, these specials could randomly / occasionally upgrade or downgrade themselves, or change in response to galactic or local system events, or appear or disappear entirely.

Any why not make these specials function even if a species is present on a planet (player-controlled or otherwise)? Presumably they should also come with some penalties for food / growth or perhaps other resource output.

There could also be a way for players to add these sorts of specials to their own planets. If they randomly appear or can randomly change their type, then a planet gaining or changing a special wouldn't also be an obvious indication of inhabitation.

I was, in the back of my mind, hoping for something like this when I created these specials. However, it would defeat the purpose of the special if there was a difference between a planet with one of these specials, and a planet inhabited by a stealthy empire. Perhaps the benefit of stealth techs could be to add a particular stealth special to a planet, though this might cause complications when the planet changes hands or is abandoned...?

That sounds good and probably useful to have even regardless of these stealth specials.

The motivation for incremental upgrades is to imitate the behaviour of an empire. When an empire increases its stealth tech, all of its planets are going to increase in stealth, so it's convincing for planets with these specials to exhibit the same behaviour. I changed the time-based behaviour based on your suggestion - they now upgrade when any empire researches the next stealth tech. If empires use these specials as well though, something about that will have to change.

If these specials were the main way empires increased the stealth of planets, then it will be necessary for them to function when they're owned by an empire. I'm dubious about making them randomly change to a different type though - even if there was a predictable cycle of alteration, it would be up to random chance if an enemy empire happened by when the stealth was low.

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Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

I don't see how it would cause trouble. Buildings normally change hands when a planet is captured. I don't see why the capturer shouldn't also gain any stealth specials that might be there. Or if everybody dies, why can't the special stay-- since it would be at that point just like any other "natural" stealth special.

Sounds OK, as long as the use it totally intuitive, and the player doesn't need to know these three categories. Which will depend on how it is implemented.

IMHO this is going too far. There's no good in-game reason that all extra cloudy planets should transition on cue through the specials to ultimately having a dimensional rift. This makes the galaxy silly to give stealth planets the last bit of "cover".

I say have all the stealth specials present from the start. Allow a monster or other random force to occasionally give another planet one of these specials. And then if a player has some planets under so close an observation that he notices the new stealth special appear, consider that he earned that bit of insight.


Also orbital structures could/should quite plausibly be exempted from the stealthy effect of a planetary stealth special.


P.S. if we have planets now that you can't see the contents of, then you should be able to send ground troops down blind anyway to "explore" or fight if anyone's down there.

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You can omit these two lines and things should work the same as if they were present.
What do the effects groups like this do? They appear to be adding the various stealth-related specials to the systems that contain objects with those specials... What's the point of doing that? What does it mean for a system to have a cloud cover special?

You also shouldn't need "activation = Source"; if it's not there, things should work the same as if it is.

Could we reduce it to just two types? In particular, volcanic ash seems fairly similar to clouds, and the distinction between "rift" and "void" is unclear. Unless there's a story reason to make them distinct, and a gameplay-evidence-based reason to have 4 rather than 2 levels of stealth-related special, we should start with just 2 of them.
Effects on orbital parts might be a distinction between clouds and more fancy things like "rifts". But yes, I thought that as well.
Presently you can't colonize or invade a planet you can't see. I think the idea is that the lack of detection makes these actions impossible.

If you could discover things by spending a ground troop ship on every stealthy planet, it might make it necessary to have a bunch of cheap ground troop ships flying around dropping ground troops on all stealthy planets periodically, which might be annoying, and somewhat defeat the advantage or importance of having stealthy planets at all...

For this particular feature, I figure it would probably be appropriate to use a "master-slave" configuration for the specials. A "hidden" (or "normal") master special can add an "obvious" slave special to a planet. If the master special is removed, the slave special will remove itself. This way, a tech effect can add the same "obvious" slave special, but without being affected by whatever effects are used to change the unowned specials of the same type. This way players can't distinguish between similarly-named-but-differently-functioning specials by changing the stringtable.

This only applies if the empire has to actually add the special with a special project. If the special is added automatically when an empire with the appropriate tech owns the planet (corresponding to the current situation, where planets are automatically given stealth if their owner has a particular tech), then an empire would be leaving these specials on every planet they've owned. It's not necessary for the special to stick around as long if the empire leaves, though, since the slave special can just remove itself if its "master" is the empire instead of the master special.

They don't all have to, but IMO, the ones spread by monsters to imitate stealthy empires should, and since there are space monsters involved, we can make up pretty much whatever we want as an explanation. We can have static master specials that don't change (perhaps generated on the first turn by gaia/computronium moon/ancient runes specials), which are distinct from the master specials generated by space monsters, which can have a semi-reasonable explanation for upgrading in sync.

I was actually wondering about that.


I'd like to keep the number of stealth special levels the same as the number of stealth tech levels, so that one can be assigned to each. I'm open to reducing the number of stealth techs if you feel like having 4 levels of stealth special is too many, but if the problem is with the conceptual distinctions between ash vs. cloud and rift vs. void being too vague, I'd rather address that problem by making making them more distinct.

Incidentally, does adding stealth to a planet also add stealth to the buildings on the planet?

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Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

It sounds a little forced to claim that you can't land on a planet because it has clouds too thick to see the ground from orbit.

But more to the point, the purpose of stealth is to hide, IMHO. If you want to prevent landings or attacks, shields and orbital defenses already serve that purpose. It's kind of redundant to have stealth do the same thing.

Besides i think it would be cool to send your ground troops down blind. If they don't win, you don't receive any information about what's down there. It might be an empire, or a minor planet, or we could add the possibility of ground based "troop" monsters.

Since ground troops are used up when launched, and you never know how strong your opponents are, it is an interesting, non-trivial decision to decide when and how many troops to send into a stealthed planet.

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Wouldn't you just send down the minimum, or at least a fairly small amount, each turn, in order to ensure you don't waste any by sending more than needed?
No. I think / suspect it would work like systems: if there's a contained ship or planet that's highly visible, the system would be basically visible from any distance. Presumably a very visible building would make a planet basically visible as well, regardless of its stealth (and similar to being in the system, but not having detection to see its details).

I don't know how the numbers crunch currently, but ideally, (at least for these purposes) the greater the numerical advantage one side has the fewer casualties they will take. So sending the minimum against a much larger hidden force might no accomplish anything no matter how long you do it.

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Those are meant to emulate the effects of empire techs, which add stealth to a system as well. As far as what a system having a cloud cover special means, I don't really have an answer for the time being.

Also, can I just leave out the location condition if I don't intend the special to spawn anywhere?

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Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

Why not just add stealth to the system then, instead of adding a special which will add stealth to a system?

Also, there is an Object condition, which takes an object ID parameter, which matches only the object with that ID. For the system containing an object, you can get the ID of the system it's in with .SystemID, so Object id = Source.SystemID would probably be a simpler / faster condition to use.

Yes, that should work.

Revision 4703:

-Implemented "master-slave" configuration for stealth specials
-Changed empire stealth techs to use specials
-Added some temprorary programmer art for the stealth specials

I found that removing the spawnrate and spawnlimit lines caused the specials to spawn at galaxy generation. Removing the location line as well prevented them from spawning.

Also, sometimes the monsters that generate the specials don't make it all the way to the end of the game, even though I'm pretty sure I'm not fighting them...

I've also hacked together a cheap explanation for the stealth specials upgrading over time, and changed the specials to add stealth to the system instead of adding the stealth special to the system.

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Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

Ah, yes. Looking at the code, it defaults to the standard spawn rate (multiplier 1.0 with the galaxy setup setting) and a limit of 9999. And yes, if it doesn't have a location condition, it skips trying to add that special during universe generation.
Start a game as the super testers and watch what happens?

The new special icons you referenced: "dim-rift", & "void"
haven't been committed. I assume you forgot to "add" them.

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