Stealth Carriers Over-Powered?
Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2018 6:11 pm
I've fiddled around a bit with stealth-carriers and they definitely seem overpowered. A simple early design is a Symbiotic hull with cloak, fighter hanger, and two launch bays. Later you can get automatic upgrades from fighter weapons techs, and improved carriers with better cloaking devices, or moving up to larger Protoplasmic, Endosymbiotic or Sentient hulls.
Currently, so long as your stealth level is higher than enemy detection levels, stealth carriers have zero risk in combat -- they can just launch their fighters/bombers and do some free damage, and so long as your stealth carrier begins military occupation of a system first, you count as "blockading" it, so no enemy ships can ever pass through. There are a few drawbacks that are pretty easy to play around. (1) You don't interact at all with planets, so that means you won't wear down planetary defenses to open them for invasion, but it also means you can camp atop a planet without losing fighters, thereby blockading visible enemy ships from ever leaving that planet. (2) You have to go back to your own supply lines to replace lost fighters, meaning that you often need to hover at the edge of your supply, jumping in to launch a swarm of fighters, then jumping back (often with all but one ship to maintain the blockade) to replace fighters, lather rinse repeat... (3) It's hard to fit extra fuel alongside your cloak and hangers, so you're usually restricted to doing this near your own supply areas. Fortunately, parking a stealth carrier in any system, even one with planets, shuts down enemy supply lines, enabling your own supply lines to extend further into enemy territory, so this restriction isn't as great as it seems. With a fleet of these cheap stealth carriers, you can easily lock down enemy movement, disrupt enemy supply lines, and slowly wear down all enemy ships, making enemy ships effectively not even be a part of the game.
Currently the game offers a few potential responses, though unfortunately the AI seems not to use any of them. (1) Often best is just to research the next sensor tech, though that gets expensive, and apparently the AI never thinks to do it. (2) Lighthouses reduce stealth of all ships that start the turn in a system, which can prevent stealth ships from camping in a system, but does little to prevent them from dipping in and out of the system, which is often what they need to do to replace lost fighters anyway. At best, this usually just makes them dip back out on a more convoluted path to avoid getting caught somewhere nearby at a system with their cloaks down. Also, the AI apparently never builds them. (3) Distortion modulators are a ship module with a similar local-decloaking effect to the lighthouse. I haven't tested them, but my understanding of FOCS scripting is again that this will only affect ships that start the turn in the same system, so again it won't do much versus a dip-in-and-out approach, though it probably would open the door to breaking blockades (which require a ship to remain in the system to maintain the blockade, which will be hard to do if that ship gets destealthed). This is also gated behind the very expensive Theory of Everything, making it be too late as well as too little.
I would say that one design goal should be to make ships more interactive and counterable than stealth carriers currently are. Here are a few potential solutions.
(1) The simplest solution would be to view launching fighters as a form of weapons fire that therefore automatically makes a ship be detectable in later rounds. Unfortunately, I think this would require a change to game code, though probably a very simple one, and one that shouldn't require any changes to the AI decision-making. A lighter nerf to stealth carriers would be to make launching fighters cause a decrease in stealth, which could enable a very stealthy carrier to still be invulnerable against low-tech scanners. Another lighter nerf would be to make carriers visible any round after they launch fighters, but then go invisible again if they don't launch fighters the next round.
(2) Another simple/crude solution would be to make launch bays have a stealth-reducing effect on their ships. This would be easily scriptable and would have the effect of making stealth carriers much harder to implement and abuse, especially with multiple bays. Unfortunately this has the effect of removing from the game the possibility of having (most multi-bay) carriers be stealthy *at*all*, thereby reducing the strategic depth of the game, which might be good from the perspective of keeping things simple for the AI, but is bad from the perspective of wanting a strategically rich game with a variety of moves and counter-moves.
(3) Distortion modulators should be available earlier, perhaps gated behind Lighthouses and Force-Field Harmonics, rather than behind Theory of Everything. This is an easily scriptable change, but isn't enough by itself, since distortion modulators only reveal ships after they've already arrived and done their damage, and (unless there are enough survivors to blockade them) will be free to duck out.
(4) Lighthouses and distortion modulators could increase local detection strength rather than decreasing local stealth, enabling them to detect ships that just dipped into a system this turn. Unfortunately, the game currently treats detection strength as a single empire-wide value, so this sort of change would require a change to game code, not just scripting. This solution would probably also require changing the AI to place higher priority on building lighthouses and distortion modulators.
(5) Lighthouses and distortion modulators could decrease stealth over a significant distance, rather than just in-system. This should be easily scriptable, but might seem over-powered. To capture ships that haven't yet dipped in, this would need to reach out far enough to see them on approach. If the range of decloaking field matches the speed of enemy ships they'll have no chance of getting in (though if the modulator is moving, then the combined speed of modulator + cloaked ship could allow it to get in undetected). If the decloaking field has shorter range, it could still decloak ships that approach by certain routes, though not ones that are careful to approach in a way that makes their last step in be longer than the range of the lighthouse/modulator, which could be an interesting layer of strategy, or perhaps just a royal pain in the backside.
(6) Planets should do more against fighters. At the very least, they should shoot their big guns at fighters, if no other target is available. Better yet, planetary defenses should include some flak weapons to help shoot fighters out of the sky and prevent perpetual free blockades by stealthed carriers.
(7) The AI should be triggered by stealth attacks to make appropriate responses, like researching sensor techs. I'm not sure how much ability there is to make AI research priorities be contingent upon triggers, but this response is one that is clearly needed in any sort of rudimentary artificial "intelligence".
(8) The game's "blockade" rules should be loosened to give fleets an opportunity to break a blockade without detecting every last stealth carrier. A simple version of this solution would make blockades last only 1 turn, whereas fancier versions might take fleet size or power into account in determining who, if anyone, gets to count as blockading the other(s) in drawn-out conflicts. A complementary solution would require that a carrier actually have surviving fighters in its hangers to maintain a blockade (something that's not even currently required), making blockades a bit harder to impose, and offering an option to break them by flakking away the fighters.
[Updated to clarify hull options, note role of blockades, add a couple more options, and improve discussion of others.]
Currently, so long as your stealth level is higher than enemy detection levels, stealth carriers have zero risk in combat -- they can just launch their fighters/bombers and do some free damage, and so long as your stealth carrier begins military occupation of a system first, you count as "blockading" it, so no enemy ships can ever pass through. There are a few drawbacks that are pretty easy to play around. (1) You don't interact at all with planets, so that means you won't wear down planetary defenses to open them for invasion, but it also means you can camp atop a planet without losing fighters, thereby blockading visible enemy ships from ever leaving that planet. (2) You have to go back to your own supply lines to replace lost fighters, meaning that you often need to hover at the edge of your supply, jumping in to launch a swarm of fighters, then jumping back (often with all but one ship to maintain the blockade) to replace fighters, lather rinse repeat... (3) It's hard to fit extra fuel alongside your cloak and hangers, so you're usually restricted to doing this near your own supply areas. Fortunately, parking a stealth carrier in any system, even one with planets, shuts down enemy supply lines, enabling your own supply lines to extend further into enemy territory, so this restriction isn't as great as it seems. With a fleet of these cheap stealth carriers, you can easily lock down enemy movement, disrupt enemy supply lines, and slowly wear down all enemy ships, making enemy ships effectively not even be a part of the game.
Currently the game offers a few potential responses, though unfortunately the AI seems not to use any of them. (1) Often best is just to research the next sensor tech, though that gets expensive, and apparently the AI never thinks to do it. (2) Lighthouses reduce stealth of all ships that start the turn in a system, which can prevent stealth ships from camping in a system, but does little to prevent them from dipping in and out of the system, which is often what they need to do to replace lost fighters anyway. At best, this usually just makes them dip back out on a more convoluted path to avoid getting caught somewhere nearby at a system with their cloaks down. Also, the AI apparently never builds them. (3) Distortion modulators are a ship module with a similar local-decloaking effect to the lighthouse. I haven't tested them, but my understanding of FOCS scripting is again that this will only affect ships that start the turn in the same system, so again it won't do much versus a dip-in-and-out approach, though it probably would open the door to breaking blockades (which require a ship to remain in the system to maintain the blockade, which will be hard to do if that ship gets destealthed). This is also gated behind the very expensive Theory of Everything, making it be too late as well as too little.
I would say that one design goal should be to make ships more interactive and counterable than stealth carriers currently are. Here are a few potential solutions.
(1) The simplest solution would be to view launching fighters as a form of weapons fire that therefore automatically makes a ship be detectable in later rounds. Unfortunately, I think this would require a change to game code, though probably a very simple one, and one that shouldn't require any changes to the AI decision-making. A lighter nerf to stealth carriers would be to make launching fighters cause a decrease in stealth, which could enable a very stealthy carrier to still be invulnerable against low-tech scanners. Another lighter nerf would be to make carriers visible any round after they launch fighters, but then go invisible again if they don't launch fighters the next round.
(2) Another simple/crude solution would be to make launch bays have a stealth-reducing effect on their ships. This would be easily scriptable and would have the effect of making stealth carriers much harder to implement and abuse, especially with multiple bays. Unfortunately this has the effect of removing from the game the possibility of having (most multi-bay) carriers be stealthy *at*all*, thereby reducing the strategic depth of the game, which might be good from the perspective of keeping things simple for the AI, but is bad from the perspective of wanting a strategically rich game with a variety of moves and counter-moves.
(3) Distortion modulators should be available earlier, perhaps gated behind Lighthouses and Force-Field Harmonics, rather than behind Theory of Everything. This is an easily scriptable change, but isn't enough by itself, since distortion modulators only reveal ships after they've already arrived and done their damage, and (unless there are enough survivors to blockade them) will be free to duck out.
(4) Lighthouses and distortion modulators could increase local detection strength rather than decreasing local stealth, enabling them to detect ships that just dipped into a system this turn. Unfortunately, the game currently treats detection strength as a single empire-wide value, so this sort of change would require a change to game code, not just scripting. This solution would probably also require changing the AI to place higher priority on building lighthouses and distortion modulators.
(5) Lighthouses and distortion modulators could decrease stealth over a significant distance, rather than just in-system. This should be easily scriptable, but might seem over-powered. To capture ships that haven't yet dipped in, this would need to reach out far enough to see them on approach. If the range of decloaking field matches the speed of enemy ships they'll have no chance of getting in (though if the modulator is moving, then the combined speed of modulator + cloaked ship could allow it to get in undetected). If the decloaking field has shorter range, it could still decloak ships that approach by certain routes, though not ones that are careful to approach in a way that makes their last step in be longer than the range of the lighthouse/modulator, which could be an interesting layer of strategy, or perhaps just a royal pain in the backside.
(6) Planets should do more against fighters. At the very least, they should shoot their big guns at fighters, if no other target is available. Better yet, planetary defenses should include some flak weapons to help shoot fighters out of the sky and prevent perpetual free blockades by stealthed carriers.
(7) The AI should be triggered by stealth attacks to make appropriate responses, like researching sensor techs. I'm not sure how much ability there is to make AI research priorities be contingent upon triggers, but this response is one that is clearly needed in any sort of rudimentary artificial "intelligence".
(8) The game's "blockade" rules should be loosened to give fleets an opportunity to break a blockade without detecting every last stealth carrier. A simple version of this solution would make blockades last only 1 turn, whereas fancier versions might take fleet size or power into account in determining who, if anyone, gets to count as blockading the other(s) in drawn-out conflicts. A complementary solution would require that a carrier actually have surviving fighters in its hangers to maintain a blockade (something that's not even currently required), making blockades a bit harder to impose, and offering an option to break them by flakking away the fighters.
[Updated to clarify hull options, note role of blockades, add a couple more options, and improve discussion of others.]