Oberlus wrote: ↑Thu Jun 13, 2019 4:19 pm
Stealth mechanics proposal to couple with the
weapons rework proposal
(...)
Core mechanics:
- Detection equal(***) or greater than stealth: normal combat, all ships are targettable from start (combat round 1), and are visible in the galaxy map.
- Stealth greater than detection (stealth-detection=H>0): +H combat round before being targettable, ships are not visible in galaxy map.
(...)
Thoughts?
To my dismay I must admit that it's much simpler that what I could propose...
I still think that location-based stealth (being able to hide in an Asteroid Belt, a Gas Giant, behind a Resonant Moon, or whatever) is an important mechanism and should work even at late game.
Apparently you don't include Species' bonuses for Stealth?
With your mechanism I understand why you'd be wary of giving possible 4-points differences between stealth and detection (which would mean indestructible ships as they would never be revealed) but it's still limiting.
Consider too that it means that having 2 points more than your enemy is double the effect of having one more point (two rounds instead of one to destroy the entirety of the enemy fleet before it can fight back) - that's huge for a one-tech difference.
Maybe having wider steps? I.e. with +1 you're not seen in the Galaxy Map, with +2 you have one round of stealthed combat, +4 to have two rounds of stealthed combat, +8 to have three and +16 to have four?
Since FreeOrion is a game with multiple adversaries, intermediate levels (like +3, +5 and so on) which aren't very interesting against one adversary will be +4 and so on against weaker detection enemies...
Note too that ships that get high levels of stealth will do so only in certain locations, so they will be seen while they move and can be forced to combat outside of their high-stealth environment.
There's also the possibility of ship parts adding local detection (this could be prone to micromanagement but not if they detect weapons usage, not ship engines: they'll be useful in combat but not for patrolling regions - and they'll still allow the opponent one turn of stealth).
Another way of achieving a similar but more nuanced result than the "wide steps" may be integrating Geoff's noisiness idea: most weapons will have a exponential noisiness (first shot gives away the general direction where the ship might be, each subsequent shot allows the enemy to narrow its possible origin point up until the firing ship is detected), but a different base value for the exponentiation. Exotic weapons may have different noisiness curves (arithmetic rather than geometric, for example).
With that a ship stays undetected until its stealth has been lowered enough for enemies to detect it (no specific turn where it is detected, it depends on the noisiness and the stealth-detection difference).
In addition to "hide" and "aggressive" stance there would be a "snipe" stance that would make ship fire only their stealthier weapons as long as they are not detected.
To counter those pesky four-turn stealthy ships there could be a new ship part, search-and-destroy missiles : they would be launched in turn 2 and hit in turn 4 (whatever the enemy stealth is) if not destroyed in turn 3.
It's even possible to have missiles that just have detection boni on top of Empire detection, rather than always being to find a target... This way it's possible to have lower-tier techs allowing missiles with a small detection bonus (+1 in your system), leaving better detection-boni-missiles to higher tiers.
Oh, and I really dislike the idea of having asteroid hulls deprived of all stealth parts, by the way.
Ophiuchus wrote: ↑Fri Jun 14, 2019 4:49 pm
Oberlus wrote: ↑Fri Jun 14, 2019 9:43 am
And about careful sneaking:
- If a ship has enough stealth (compared to the blockading fleet detection) and is set to passive, it can cross blockade.
- If it has enough stealth but is set to aggressive, it attacks the ships doing the blockade.
I thought more along a the line of another fleet setting lets call it "slow&hidden" for the moment. The meaning would be: Go careful and never do anything to expose yourself. Technical meaning: you have only half starlane speed for an exchange of a boost to stealth and the fleet will not join in battle as long as the ship is undetected.
For the all-or-nothing I was thinking of different kinds of detection/stealth (e.g. electromagnetic-active (detectable by passive scanning tech), electromagnetic-passive (prone to active scanning tech), gravitonic (hard to detect but almost(?) impossible to hide)); to be undetected you would need to have better stealth than detection for each kind (or taking in your proposal: the worst stealth-detection difference counts). Different ship hulls would have different base stats (huge ships would have bad gravitonic stealth), being active would mostly affect the electromagnetic-active stealth, hiding in asteroid belts would help all hulls in gravitonic stealth, hiding as asteroid in asteroid belt would boost electromagnetic-passive stealth as well and so on. Gravitonic detectors could be expensive (core slot maybe) and hard to research. A battle-scanner could target ships with gravitonic detectors especially (destroy the enemie's detectors using long-range or hidden kamikaze in one turn, next turn advance your main fleet).
Hiding electromagnetic-active emissions on planets is the easiest, good stealth species probably have electromagnetic-passive boost. Gravitonic detection helps find the planet. For the research race the stealthy species would have mostly to research electromagnetic-active stealth tech while a normal one would need also to research electromagnetic-passive tech.
All very interesting ideas (crossing through blockade, slow&hidden setting, multiple kinds of detection stealth - you forgot Psi by the way) but for the later, though having active detection being very efficient at detection but hindering tremendously one's stealth is a very interesting game mechanism, I don't think that multiple kinds of detection would work in a smooth manner the way ships and combat are functioning right now...
It would need a whole redesign from scratch to be enjoyable imho.