stealth carrier

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banduri
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stealth carrier

#1 Post by banduri »

Hi There

i feel like a carrier with high stealth and no short range weapons is overpowered b/c it is not detected during combats but the interceptors/fighters/bombers do attack. Since the carrier was not attacked/in a fight, the destroyed fighters are repaired for the next combat.
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Vezzra
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Re: stealth carrier

#2 Post by Vezzra »

Known issue, I think the current consensus is that this will be dealt with once we get around to revise stealth.

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Dilvish
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Re: stealth carrier

#3 Post by Dilvish »

Somewhat related, it appears to me that the combat system does not set the ships LastTurnActiveInCombat stat for fighter-related events, which seems wrong and to open up exploits. I think that probably the mere launching of fighters should be enough to set LastTurnActiveInCombat (and note, for some reason we have a name change at the scripting level, where it is accessed as LastTurnActiveInBattle), or at least if a fighter attacks anything or is shot down then its home ship should get flagged as active in battle.

Then, one possible easy improvement to stealth-carrier exploits (at least a short term one until something better is put in place), very similar to the part noisiness that Geoff has proposed, could be to have the fighter bays or launch bays impose a notable stealth malus on their ship for a couple of turns after combat.
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Vezzra
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Re: stealth carrier

#4 Post by Vezzra »

Dilvish wrote:Then, one possible easy improvement to stealth-carrier exploits (at least a short term one until something better is put in place), very similar to the part noisiness that Geoff has proposed, could be to have the fighter bays or launch bays impose a notable stealth malus on their ship for a couple of turns after combat.
A couple of turns seems a bit much... I'd say for the turn immediately after combat should be sufficient. That way (unless the carrier has high enough stealth to remain stealthed even with the malus imposed by the use of its launch bays) the carrier would loose its stealth in a second turn of combat (provided some of the enemy forces survived the first turn of combat, or enemy reinforcements arrive).

Otherwise the stealth advantage of a carrier would be impaired far too much. After all, a stealthed carrier is supposed to be a formidable threat, and carriers already have the severe disadvantage that their weapons (the fighters) don't inflict any damage at all in the first round, meaning, the enemy can use their full firepower for two out of three rounds, before they suffer losses.

A mechanic, by the way, that I'd very much like to see removed. It doesn't make sense at all to me. The very idea of long range weapons (which fighters are) is is that you can inflict damage on enemies with short range weapons before you get in range of their weapons, so you can decimate them before they are able to fire on you. With our current implementation, it's exactly the other way round: the ones with the long range weapons suffer damage before they can hit the ones with the short range weapons. That's completely upside down.

Instead, ships with no short range weapons (that includes unarmed ships btw) should be able to avoid getting hit in the first combat round (like stealthed combat ships do). Rationale: unarmed ships and purely long range combat ships try to stay away from enemy ships, opposed to short range combat ships which try to engage the enemy at short range (naturally). So it takes the enemy ships (and fighters) a round to close in on them. Fighters, on the other hand, should be able to participate in combat the same way as normal short range combat ships do the same round they launch.

banduri
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Re: stealth carrier

#5 Post by banduri »

Vezzra wrote:
Dilvish wrote:Then, one possible easy improvement to stealth-carrier exploits (at least a short term one until something better is put in place), very similar to the part noisiness that Geoff has proposed, could be to have the fighter bays or launch bays impose a notable stealth malus on their ship for a couple of turns after combat.
A couple of turns seems a bit much... I'd say for the turn immediately after combat should be sufficient. That way (unless the carrier has high enough stealth to remain stealthed even with the malus imposed by the use of its launch bays) the carrier would loose its stealth in a second turn of combat (provided some of the enemy forces survived the first turn of combat, or enemy reinforcements arrive).
something like this in a macro for all fighterbays?

Code: Select all

        EffectsGroup
            scope = And [
                InSystem
                Turn low = LocalCandidate.System.LastTurnBattleHere high = LocalCandidate.System.LastTurnBattleHere + 1
            ]
            activation = Source
            effects = [
                SetStealth value = Value - 20
            ]
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Oberlus
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Re: stealth carrier

#6 Post by Oberlus »

What about making the launch of interceptors "noisy" in the same way that shooting is: if you "shoot" (ammo or fighters) in round n of a combat, you are detected and can be shot on round n+1.
With default configuration (3 rounds per combat turn) this will mean that stealth carriers that have enough launchbays to "shoot" all their fighters in the first round of combat will only be available as a target in the second round (will be undetected again in last round 3).
If current implementation does not support a ship to become undetected after having been detected in previous rounds, then stealth carrier would be detected from round 2 onwards.

To be detected from the start of combat in turn X because you were detected after launching fighters (or shooting weapons) in turn X-1 seems excesive. Nobody ever complained about stealthy shooters being stealth after the combat of the previous turn, right?

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: stealth carrier

#7 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Oberlus wrote:What about making the launch of interceptors "noisy" in the same way that shooting is: if you "shoot" (ammo or fighters) in round n of a combat, you are detected and can be shot on round n+1.
With default configuration (3 rounds per combat turn) this will mean that stealth carriers that have enough launchbays to "shoot" all their fighters in the first round of combat will only be available as a target in the second round (will be undetected again in last round 3).
That's an interesting tweak to consider on the previously-discussed part-noisiness concept. I had planned to have noisiness always accumulate, so that even if there's not enough noise from a ship to be visible after one round of firing weapons / launching fighters, it might be enough after two rounds, so that in round 3 the ship could be targeted.

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Oberlus
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Re: stealth carrier

#8 Post by Oberlus »

Geoff the Medio wrote:I had planned to have noisiness always accumulate, so that even if there's not enough noise from a ship to be visible after one round of firing weapons / launching fighters, it might be enough after two rounds, so that in round 3 the ship could be targeted.
I'd make it accumulative (growing with each shoot, how much depending on the weapon) with a constant decay based on the stealth tech of the ship and the local modifiers (maybe just the stealth meter of the ship). This would be a meter of visibility or something like that, right? one for each ship or fleet or whatever, that has a minimum (undetectable) and a maximum (can't be hided).
Then you could use that meter in combats to affect the chances of hitting the target. If a ship has a visibility of 50%, then it will be targeted by enemy ships only half of the time than a ship with visibility 100%, and the chances of being hit when targeted would also be modified (considering that even with the minimum visibility a ship should have some chances to be targeted and hit, so the chances to be hit once targeted would be like 0.5+visibility/2).

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