Stealth Armor: Unbalanced

[Master Belisarius]

"BUT: Stealth Armor is extremely cheap (and you gat it along with the regular Armor and other benefits), and once you get it you can do stealth attacks, which gives you a huge advantage. Counter-measures? They are rather expensive..."

The counter-measures in the early game, is very cheappy: Mines. I always go for stealth armor and mines in the early game.

[bearclaw]

Personally, I think that the whole issue of mines, cloak, sensors, and sight is off and should be adjusted. IMO, there is the potential for a massive range of different cloaks suspible to different sensors. As it stands, all the sensor types are identical. The only difference will be how someone chooses to research them. If each sensor type had it's own advantage over the others, and the research cost wasn't so high, I think that would add much more to the game.

Example: The Amorkrie have developed Reflective Hull (EM cloak), while the Drushock have developed Gravitic Displacers (Gravitic cloak). Meanwhile, the Terrans, in the middle, have researched Gravitic Sensors because of an ongoing Arms buildup with the Drushock while all the time, unaware of the Amorkrie presence.

[Phoenix-D]

That can be modded in..

Phoenix-D

[Skulky]

Totally agree with bearclaw. Then you could build all inclusive cloak ships that woudl be a must-have in any late game fleets but could also have a balanced early game as the level 1 or maybe even 2 of all cloaks (tehre woudl be more now) would be detectable by any detector. Then as more advances are made you would be able to detect more cloaks. A short reange (2 or 1 square detector that is cheap) would allow early counter to stealth armor without losing the cost.

[Mark Walton]

I agree with Bearclaw - actually I have been testing this, because I wanted to change the way cloaks work. To my mind, Psychic scanners should not be blocked except by psi-shields.
One thing, if you have multiple cloaking components on a ship, hitting the "cloak" order activates all of them at once, so it is possible to seperate out each type of cloaking into a seperate component and combine, mix&match as required.

[geoschmo]

quote:

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Originally posted by Mark Walton:
I agree with Bearclaw - actually I have been testing this, because I wanted to change the way cloaks work. To my mind, Psychic scanners should not be blocked except by psi-shields.

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The only thing is you have to be careful not to make a racial tech cloak that is only defeatable by a racial tech scanner. Otherwise you have an "Uber-weapon". For example if Psychic cloaking device (Doesn't exsist, but easily moddable) is only defeatable by a Psychic scanner, and the only race that can have a pcychic scanner is another psychic race, then they would have an insurmountable advantage over non-psychic races. This would through throw the game totally out of whack.

Geoschmo

[Suicide Junkie]

Note that a Master Computer + cryogenic/stasis storage for any crew could be an excellent normal-tech cloak against psychic races, assuming that your sensor is telepathic, in line with the telekinetic weapons.

[Mark Walton]

I was thinking of putting "psionic training" in as a tech tree for any race - not as powerful as psychics, but making use of any "latent" abilities in the race. (Or creating technological equivalents). This was part of my Intel integrations. So one pside effect would be psi shields.

As for the psychic race sensors, I see these operating using a combination of Telepathy to detect enemy minds, ESP/remote viewing, precognition, and generally lucky guessing. (One of the interesting implications of real-world psychic research; how can you be sure which ability you are testing for, or whose ability you are really testing?)

[Beck]

quote:

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The only thing is you have to be careful not to make a racial tech cloak that is only defeatable by a racial tech scanner. Otherwise you have an "Uber-weapon". For example if Psychic cloaking device (Doesn't exsist, but easily moddable) is only defeatable by a Psychic scanner, and the only race that can have a pcychic scanner is another psychic race, then they would have an insurmountable advantage over non-psychic races. This would through throw the game totally out of whack.

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That is not entirely correct. Balance can be achieved by allowing each race an uber-weapon only defeatable by others of the same race. Then balance is achieved by each having an advantage others cannot defeat verses every weapon or component having a counter available to everyone. It is certainly tougher to set-up which is why you seldom encounter that type of balance. But given what the individual racial traits are supposed to mimic, actually makes more sense. It would certainly add to the depth of strategies in a multi-player game. Who do you ally with and ships with such weapons/components would be a valuable trading commodity.

[Q]

In SE III I always felt that cloaking was unbalanced stong. You had absolutely no possibility to see a cloaked ship. The only thing you could do was to prevent a ship entering a sector, where you had a tachyon scanner. Even minefields could be swept by cloaked minesweepers.
I believe every cloaking should be in principle be defeatable with the only execption may be of the mines. But I agree it should be harder to do: more different sensors needed; sensors that work only in a limited range and not for the entire system.