Stealth Fundamentals

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Ironmaggot
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Re: Stealth Fundamentals

#16 Post by Ironmaggot »

The way I see it, stealth would just be another layer of complexity to warfare and ship design and nothing else. I'd say that it is easy to add new features to warfare but rather hard to add new features to anything that is not-warfare.

Immertion/Realism:

Stealth has really never been a whole army encompassing thing. Sure, armies don't broadcast the coordinates of their central command, but the general location of army is rarely a secret. Afterall, the point of an army is to project influence over an area. And an army doesn't need to fight the enemy to project influence - suffices if the army is simply present and ready to fight. Sure, there are special stealth sections of the army, called reconnaissance. They infiltrate through the enemy front lines and try to see what goes on behind them. They usually work with in tandem with artillery. For example. the reconnaissance unit finds the enemy command center, relays the coordinates to artillery and artillery bombs those coordinates from a safe distance. Another important function of reconnaissance is to sit at important intersections and watch where and how the enemy moves. Does the enemy bring reinforcements which might indicate an impending attack or does the enemy move the reinforcements away towards another front, which means that its ripe for taking.

However, there are some political entities in our world which can be equated to "stealth empires". We know them as terrorists, drug syndicates or mafia. They usually operate on an existing sovereign territory, hence the need to be very secretive. Once they somehow attain sovereignty, they no longer need to be secretive - see the real life example ISIS.

Game-ifying Stealth:

If the steath was to be somehow implemented then it would create a new way to play the game, which means that AI must be taught how to play this game style and also how to play against it as a non-stealth empire and also how to play stealth vs stealth game. This would be a lot of work for a single gimmick.

According to what I wrote in how real life works, there would be two completely opposite ways to implement it.
  1. Everything is stealthed - In this implementation the fog of war would be everywhere. One would still be able to see monsters and their systems, but one would not be able to see enemy ships moving even in player own system. Fog of war would be revealed only on stars where the player has his ships present or there is a radar installation on one of the planets. Radar detection would be based on a total sum of ship hulls in a system. Idea being that the bigger the hull point sum in a system, the easier it is to detect. This would also be used to detect stuff at a distance. For example a radar can detect a minimum of 20 hull points in its own system, then the minimum detectable hull points by that radar in the star 50 parsecs away would be 100 hull points. That radar would be able to detect ship activity on the other side of the galaxy aswell, but then the minimum detectable hull point sum in a system would have to be like 30 000.

    Then the stealth technologies would unlock modules which would reduce the ship's hull point contributions to the sum of hull points in system. For example a cruiser with 50 hull points and with Emission Reduction module would only contribute 35 hull points to the system hull points sum. Fleets would reveal the exact composition of enemy army only when both are in the same system. There could also be modules called Onboard Scanner, which would take up weapon slots. This would enable to extend a little detection range around a fleet when it is deep inside the enemy territory so that they would not be totally blind.
  2. Stealth units are implied to work behind the curtain - This kind of implementation implies that the empire's army comes with stealth regiments by default and those stealth units are doing their best without needing to be commanded. In other words, there are no such things as stealth units or the possibility of going undercover. Stealth units exist merely as modifiers attached to ships through technologies or doctrines. Modifiers like "Scouting squads - Can see 2 jumps into Fog of War", "Hit&Run Skirmishers - All enemy fleets within 1 jump range suffer 5 damage every turn", "Infiltrators - -10% to enemy defenses" and so on.

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Re: Stealth Fundamentals

#17 Post by ovarwa »

Hi,

I'm not a fan of the current all-or-nothing effect of stealth on the first turn of combat.

I would prefer offensive combat effectiveness to be modified by AttackerDetection/DefenderStealth: It's harder to hit something that's harder to see, and easier to hit something on which you have an easy lock. If desired, it is easy enough to cap the ratio on both sides, or use a more interesting mathematical function instead of a simple ratio (though FO doesn't do this elsewhere, so maybe not.) Even better, on each turn of combat, the ratio can be modified to get closer to 1, say, by taking the square root of the current result, representing the decreased surprise and increased tactical awareness as time goes on.

I'm also not a fan of the current all-or-nothing effect of stealth on the ability to see ships, invade planets, etc. I have a similar preference.

Here's the thing: Stealth is fun only if you have the advantage and you're mopping up. When the situation is reversed, you're getting mopped up and you can't even see it. The only thing you can do is tech quickly enough for enough detection to compensate, which makes stealth/detection the *only* strategy.


Anyway,

Ken

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alleryn
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Re: Stealth Fundamentals

#18 Post by alleryn »

(a):
In this category i would place objects that can be (but not always are) stealthed from the beginning of the game without any technological advance. In my vision that would include ships, but also individuals and in some cases entire populations.

Ships:
-
Vezzra wrote:We need to decide if we just want to make detection harder, so the advance notice an enemy gets of your movements gets cut short (so they learn of our big invasion only when our forces arrive at their systems). Or if we want to actually make it possible for cloaked ships to slip past enemy lines and penetrate into enemy territory undetected.
I would like to see a system in which extremely high stealth differential (stealth-detection) allows penetration behind enemy lines, whereas moderate stealth differential reduces detection range.

This would allow for a typical case where ships with a stealth part cannot simply move into enemy territory entirely unannounced, but a ship with a devoted stealth part (e.g. "Low Emissions Engine": Advances in supercooled semiconductors have allowed for engines which produce almost no gravitational wake. However propulsion using these devices has a drawback. Transit though starlanes can progress at only 1/10 the usual speed) could be created, something like a probe to monitor enemy movements.

-
LGM-Doyle wrote: Consider a stealth penalty for number of allied ships in a fleet, (or in a single system). One stealthy ship is stealthy. One hundred stealthy ships are not. This also fixes the combat issues, because a big fleet no longer gets a first strike advantage.
I like this.

The idea of a stealthed armada to me is un-fun and conceptually dubious. I can see how one asteroid ship can be undetected in an asteroid field, but if that asteroid belt is registering double the mass recorded on the galactic charts, someone is going to get suspicisous.

On the other hand, stealthed lone raiders or small squadrons, appearing only at the last second to destroy scouts, cargo vessels, weakly defended troop carriers, or to cut supply lines, that i find compelling.

Micromanagement would be a concern here. ("Oh i've massed my ships on the enemy's border, now to send them in 3 at a time :/")

-
Oberlus wrote: Note: I don't see this as the last step if ordered by technological difficulty or monumental character, for me (c) is the last one in such cases.)
You don't need to hide whole planets in order to hide an entire empire:
- Supply lines: (idealised) freight and escort ships and orbital docks that implement the supply lines of empires could use the same technology applied to hiding assets and fleets.
I agree with this. Supply in my head is something composed of myriad little ships, which could conceivably be cloaked. I like the idea of being able to apply stealth to an empire's network of internal connections.

- Stealth and espionage seem to go hand in hand, whether it's delivering a spy behind enemy lines to sabotage or assassinate a crtical target, or that same spy attempting to evade capture. (Since this is a vision of the future i feel okay mentioning broad conceptual things that are not in the current realm of stuff).

Populations:
In terms of whole populations, i see this as best suited to a species trait. I can envision a species that is able to mask their own life signatures, and/or whose subsistence isn't dependent on the types of infrastructure that are readily identified as artificial.

I'd imagine an attempt to outpost/colonize a planet inhabited by such a species would result in the demise of the infiltrators, and attempted invasion would prove difficult (both in discerning the number of troops available to the defenders and in overcoming a difficult-to-detect opponent who would likely engage in guerilla warfare) but not impossible.

In particular, one concept for the Laenfa could be as a "pod-people"-style race that waits for another species to try to colonize one of their worlds, ingesting the would-be inhabitants and learning to replicate their dna (maybe it would only work on organic species), regrowing them from seed to colonize new worlds the Laenfa found unappealing for themselves.

(b) I look at as things that could be concealed but only with significant technological advancement. This would include things like infrastructure, planetary defenses, etc. One idea i had was for a "stealth" focus. Turn off all the factories and research labs and the structure on the planet could become more difficult to detect. Perhaps you would lose any "flat" bonuses if you engaged this setting, unless you had some techs researched to offset that penalty.

(c) This realm is where i would reserve things that can only be stealthed in some near-end-game fantasy where our species has gained significant mastery over the universe. Perhaps even an entire planet which houses some incredibly rare galactic wonder (planetary special) or massive construction (megalith, et al), which would otherwise be a primary target for potential invaders, could be hidden from view or moved to a pocket dimension for a brief time at great expense.

(d) These are things which i think should never be allowed to be stealthed. Actual stars, for instance. I mean hey that's why we have black holes. Stars are way too pretty and fun to be around, who would want to stealth them?
Atarlost wrote:I'm worried that stealth empires won't be fun to play against. If stealth doesn't neutralize the threat of conventional empires they aren't working and if they are they'll be untouchable and horribly frustrating to play against.
I agree with this. While i find the idea of a stealthed empire interesting and i enjoy the fantasy of running one, i don't feel like it really fits right into this type of game or into this game.

For a stealthed empire to work the game has to really be all about them. Difference and variety are good, but when you have seven empires battling it out until "magically" (phew it's a good thing we researched that even though we had no idea it would be useful to see anything) eons into the struggle, an eighth empire appears, it feels a little messianic. Plus it's just not that fun to play that long with very little interaction, if you're the stealthed empire, imo.

Thank you for hearing my opinions and may we all sneak around without each other noticing,
alleryn

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Oberlus
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Re: Stealth Fundamentals

#19 Post by Oberlus »

alleryn wrote:For a stealthed empire to work the game has to really be all about them. Difference and variety are good, but when you have seven empires battling it out until "magically" (phew it's a good thing we researched that even though we had no idea it would be useful to see anything) eons into the struggle, an eighth empire appears, it feels a little messianic.
I really like the idea. That's actually what I'm doing while testint Sly. All of a sudden, when the other 11-13 empires are fighting each other with plasma techs, hundreds of scattered hulls with maxed out weapons, shields and bombs pops out here and there to delete entire planets and disapear again, until whole universe is cold and quiet, and the Sly can get back to their paceful lives again.
alleryn wrote:Plus it's just not that fun to play that long with very little interaction, if you're the stealthed empire, imo.
Well... I like it. I guess some could use the stealth strategy until mid game from time to time to get some fun.

Related to this thread, I have this dislike for how planet stealth is represented now. Say there is this replicon colony ship traversing the galaxy towards unknow space. You are the pilot. Interesting enough, you get to this new solar system, with a nice blue star and one planet. You turn left and gets an stable orbit around this... radiated planet?. You keep looking at the planets surface, unaffected by the visceral hatred that the invisible Trith in the planet are telepathically projecting towards you: "Boooo, fuck off!". You check again the weird lectures you get from the sensors, and think to yourself 01100011101. Maybe the planet is not really radiated and good for you, maybe it is even some hostile terran world, ewww. But, what the heck, you already got xenological hybrids, you can colonise a damn flurry, flesh-made planet if you want to, so why not try to colonise this one too? However, you can even try to land in that planet, it seems you can't hit it with your ship! Damn it... You need to see it better. You send a message to the empires matrix: "Give me more detection!".

Could it be that a planet which has never been detected is not shown in the solar system?

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Re: Stealth Fundamentals

#20 Post by Dilvish »

Oberlus wrote:Could it be that a planet which has never been detected is not shown in the solar system?
That is already the case. If your scout was in a nearby system and had visibility into the system with the stealthed planet, but not enough detection strength to detect the stealthed planet, then it would not see that planet in the system at all. Visiting the system, though, gives at least Basic Visibility of all planets in the system (i.e., they are detected, just not well).
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Re: Stealth Fundamentals

#21 Post by Oberlus »

Brought from the online chat meeting of november 30th 2020:
Ophiuchus wrote: Mon Nov 30, 2020 11:26 pm Stealth/Distributed empire recap:

Vezzra found that distributed hidden empire was not in the vision from the start so we should have a look at the basics/if we need to change something so distributed hidden empire. Like allowing multiple empires to be on a planet (regions).

Or hidden supply lanes. We had overlapping supply lanes once. These are considered an UI desaster. Even if only 2 empires are involved (as in the hidden supply lanes case). Geoff does not want to go there.

Ophiuchus recapped that stealth is currently broken for all stealthy empires. The lighthouse basically is a way to easily and cheaply remove the stealth if there is another planet in the system. In current master, multiple policies allow for easier detection so stealth is sorely in need of balance/changes.
Also we have different independent systems of stealth right now. Stealth in combat, fleet stealth on the map, and planetary stealth.

Geoff suggested a vision, where a hidden empires needs to change it ways. In the beginning hidden planets, then hidden colonies, then ship-based colonies. For a normal supply connected empire it is usually the other way round, first barely connected systems, then colonies are common and then they are everywhere (taking the distributed hidden empire niches away).

Hidden planets would really be hidden, one would not see that the planet is there. This is mostly an option if no enemy has seen the planet before.

(note one could also add more native hidden planets for hidden distributed empires to take over in mid game)

Geoff decided we wont go for multi-empire planets. But there could be still hidden colonies.
Hidden colonies would be revealed if an empire tries to colonize there.

(note probably the colonisation would fail but the colony ship would be used up regardless, so one cant simply probe everything cheaply)

Geoff also suggested stealth to be more progressive/have more levels.
Unique stealth options one can do when being sneaky - like stealing research, mining from orbit... which make the game more interesting as well strategically viable.

Also large fleets should be easier to detect.

We agreed that for having hidden distributed empires to work, occupy-all-planets should be way costly/be very late game/not be viable. There has to be some space/a niche for the hidden empire to colonize inbetween a foreign empire.
Three suggestions so only a fraction of planets gets colonized: influence cost should makes occupy-all-planets economically prohibitive (so we should implement bad effects for having negative influence balance), adding something besides environment to the colonisability of a planet (e.g. planet size),

Some more things to think about:
Distributed hidden empires miss on a lot of benefits (all supply-connected ones like industry center/growth specials).
One could build special buildings/have specific policies which are not supply-connection based or have a policy which makes it possible to ignore supply-connectedness for some buildings.
Or one could change the definition of supply-networks (making supply-networks possible without supply-lines ~ e.g. by stargates).

The main species (which should be) able to start a hidden (partly) distributed empire are currently: Sly, Laenfa (great stealth, stockpile), and Scylior (great research, bad supply), Chato (great research).

One problem with distributed empires is that if you have colonies in a foreign empire, your supply lines disrupts the foreign supply network. That usually cant be tolerated. Sly has the bad supply trait (+gas giants) for that and there is also a no supply policy.
On the other hand, if you do not have supply there, you cant refuel/resupply. There should be done something about this.
It is said some people would oppose allowing resupply from planets in the same system if you do not own the supply line. Else you could simply drop an outpost/colony in heartland and resupply your fleet from there - i think that is mostly because of fighters(?).
For a partly fix, Sly could get better gas giant refuel and Laenfa could get some phototrophic refueling (based on star brightness). Vezzra said he would like to have that rather tied in to some policies (e.g. a policy allowing phototrophic refueling for phototrophic crews). Geoff said having some unique species traits is fine.

Ophiuchus mentioned that supply lines are a dead giveaway for many things, so having some way of declaring/having hidden (non-overlapping) supply lines would be good. Those would probably be weaker than all non-hidden ones and be triggered by a policy.

Vezzra also mentioned that it should be possible to incorporate more than one species in your hidden empire. Following the species-is-not-empire principle.

Stealth+Ranges recap: agreed not to make it a general thing, but add e.g. a weapon type which starts shooting from third bout on. Easy thing to implement, only weapon damage estimation is a bigger thing.
Maybe bout number should be not less than three. Or at least a hint should be left in the UI that a lower setting breaks part of the content.

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Re: Stealth Fundamentals

#22 Post by Oberlus »

Ophiuchus wrote: Mon Nov 30, 2020 11:26 pm ship-based colonies
Very interesting. Ships can yield PP, RP and IP. Can ships have population? (i.e. are they PopulationCenter?)

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Re: Stealth Fundamentals

#23 Post by Ophiuchus »

Oberlus wrote: Tue Dec 01, 2020 10:19 pm
Ophiuchus wrote: Mon Nov 30, 2020 11:26 pm ship-based colonies
Very interesting. Ships can yield PP, RP and IP. Can ships have population? (i.e. are they PopulationCenter?)
not now, but should not be too hard to do - the code was written with the idea that one day (some?) ships will be population centers AFAIK (and also be able to build ships)
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Re: Stealth Fundamentals

#24 Post by Vezzra »

Oberlus wrote: Tue Dec 01, 2020 10:19 pmVery interesting. Ships can yield PP, RP and IP. Can ships have population? (i.e. are they PopulationCenter?)
As Ophiuchus said, the basics for that are already in the code.

AFAIK the idea that ships can be PopulationCenters has been around for a very long time, I think already right from the beginning. Which means for 15+ years... ;)

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Re: Stealth Fundamentals

#25 Post by Oberlus »

I know, also worldships (the wandering Earth, etc.). I was asking just about current state of the code.

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Re: Stealth Fundamentals

#26 Post by Grummel7 »

After a lot of playing an some thinking, here are my thoughts on stealth and visibility in general:

In my opinion, stealth in Battle is fine as it is (in 4.10 at least), but overall it should be a little less back and white.

Stealthy planets are a bit weird, but game play wise they are okay. With a little change the effect could sound less weird, too: Instead of seeing nothing, potential attackers could see a shield that is preventing them from landing their troops. They see nothing else, especially not where to fire their weapons to disable the shield. For stealthy player races it makes hardly any difference. The change however means that a ion storm alone would no longer stop anyone from landing on a planet. Without further information however it is risky: Landing troops on an empty planet, you'll lose the troops, while you'll lose an outpost landed on a populated planet.

The point that I really think needs some changes is the visibility on the main map. The way it is now, at the etch of your vision radius, you see (unless stealth is involved) all ships, including their design details, pilot race and tank filling. Just a little further away you do not even see the stars. That's insane! Today's scientists can tell more or less the type and position of every star in our galaxy. Planets however are AFAIK only detected indirectly by the gravitational effect they have on their star. Detecting something as small as a space ship in a different solar system is yet another business.

The first and easiest thing to change would be to make all stars visible at the beginning of the game. It won't make too big a difference, but could nevertheless be an option for those who don't like it.

Then I imagine a system where detection strength goes down with the distance from the observer. At the edge of your detection range you have a strength of 1, which is just enough to see the planets and their types, plus possibly some extra big and unstealthy ships (like an unhidden solar hull). At distance zero, i.e. within a system where you have an outpost or a ship with sensor equipment, you have your full detection strength. Ships without sensor could get half the maximum strength. For planets, the strength you have at the beginning of the game is just enough to see population and defense of normal (unstealthy) planets. For ships, what you see depends on the difference between detection strength and stealth value. A simple system could be that you see only the hull type when strength is the same as the stealth value, and all details when the difference is 20 or more.

Such a system would make stealth a more gradual thing. When opponent developed a higher detection strength you won't have a free 'first shot' anymore, but you may still catch him of guard since he sees your ship only when they are quite close. It also makes scouting more important. And to help that, I would give the basic small hull a stealth value that makes it impossible to detect without active radar, so scouts are no longer lost when they encounter enemy frigate in turn 5.

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Re: Stealth Fundamentals

#27 Post by Ophiuchus »

Anvil wrote: Tue Feb 02, 2021 9:09 pm Stealthy planets...: Instead of seeing nothing, potential attackers could see a shield that is preventing them from landing their troops. They see nothing else, especially not where to fire their weapons to disable the shield. .... Without further information however it is risky: Landing troops on an empty planet, you'll lose the troops, while you'll lose an outpost landed on a populated planet.
I definitly like the option of landing troops without knowing how many opponents there are. This might also give rise to multi-turn troop landings (because you do not want to send in a huge amount of troops if it is not necessary. We were also thinking of allowing landing troops through shields (with e.g. four times the losses). So with low detection you might send your troops through shields without knowing. At a higher detection you might be able to sense the shields but not know how many troops are waiting for you. Probably you should be able to attack the shields though (or maybe the next gradual detection level). Defense could also be introduced gradually. So maybe you can take the shields out, but not the defense because you cant see it - and in order not to be shot at all the time you land your troops without exactly knowing how much resistence is there.

Stealthed troops should also regenerate undistiburbed (maybe using infrastructure meter)

One more complex idea - if we had stealth levels for (shield) effects you might sense/attack only a part of the shield.
Anvil wrote: Tue Feb 02, 2021 9:09 pm The first and easiest thing to change would be to make all stars visible at the beginning of the game. It won't make too big a difference, but could nevertheless be an option for those who don't like it.
In principle this would be ok if we put it behind a galaxy setup option. It could be a boost to phototrophic species expansion and change the game as black hole location are revealed. In an older version of the game you could not see the star type of unexplored systems which was good UI (you could see at a glance where you did not yet explore), but since we dont have that anymore, it would not hurt UI too much.
Showing a frontier border around explored space might be a good addition.
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Re: Stealth Fundamentals

#28 Post by LienRag »

Anvil wrote: Tue Feb 02, 2021 9:09 pm After a lot of playing an some thinking, here are my thoughts on stealth and visibility in general:

In my opinion, stealth in Battle is fine as it is (in 4.10 at least), but overall it should be a little less back and white.


Such a system would make stealth a more gradual thing. When opponent developed a higher detection strength you won't have a free 'first shot' anymore, but you may still catch him of guard since he sees your ship only when they are quite close. It also makes scouting more important. And to help that, I would give the basic small hull a stealth value that makes it impossible to detect without active radar, so scouts are no longer lost when they encounter enemy frigate in turn 5.
Remember that all the modifications are under the constraint of not creating more micromanagement.
So far nobody was able to propose a "gradual" stealth system (which indeed would be more interesting) that doesn't make micromanaging scouts mandatory (or at least very useful in a game).

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Re: Stealth Fundamentals

#29 Post by Grummel7 »

LienRag wrote: Wed Feb 03, 2021 6:40 pm Remember that all the modifications are under the constraint of not creating more micromanagement.
So far nobody was able to propose a "gradual" stealth system (which indeed would be more interesting) that doesn't make micromanaging scouts mandatory (or at least very useful in a game).
Well, seeing it from that point, I remove the the idea of halving the detection strength of non-sensor ships. It would probably just mean that players will add a sensor ship to every battle fleet anyway.

Well, when does managing scouts become micromanagement? At the moment I build no scouts at all in most games. Especially when I encounter some derelict scouts, the entire exploration phase is finished pretty quickly. Soon it is just: settle/conquer, build scanning facility, repeat.

Of course making vision gradual adds complexity to the game. Some players may like it, others may not, perhaps it could be made into an option, too.

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Re: Stealth Fundamentals

#30 Post by Oberlus »

Anvil wrote: Fri Feb 12, 2021 4:33 pm Well, when does managing scouts become micromanagement?
I don't think they are a source of micromanagement currently.
In multiplayer games, during early-mid game when nobody has late game detection techs, you better invest on scouts and put them forward to see further into your enemy's territory, or you'll be easily catch in a trap, lose a big chunk of your fleet without causing serious loses to your enemy, and start losing planets until you build up your fleet again, if not lost already. AI don't take into account what you can see or not, and so it doesn't play that card in its advantage.


The main problem with gradual detection strength is not micromanagement as LienRag pointed out, but GUI. How do you represent in the galaxy map in which areas of your vision you have this or that detection strength? When detection strength is uniform over all your space, you can just use your color empire to represent the areas under detection range. If detection strength also varies, what do you do? A gradient? Give the player a mouse tool to probe detection strength at a certain point in the map? It becomes cumbersome, confusing or both, for not much gain in gameplay.

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