Let's Talk: Cloaking Units

Cloaking was confirmed in today's livecast.

I'm talking under the basic assumption of the common idea of cloaking.

A unit turns on an ability and cannot be seen by the enemy. This likely consumes energy.

There's a bunch of additional stipulations to this type of unit. Can it only be seen when a special recon unit is nearby? Or can it be seen while moving? Or can it be seen while it's attacking? Or is it invisible for a period of time before having to recharge?

And then what type of unit will it be? Will there be a bunch of cloaking units? Will it be just one unit? Will it be fast? slow? Long range? short range?

What's everyone's thoughts?

Do you oppose or support cloaking? What type of unit do you want? Just one cloaking units? Or lots of cloaking units?

I'd say no. Cloaking is quite micro heavy, both to use and to detect. It is also quite frustrating if there isn't a good way to detect it, which would invalidate its purpose.

I agree. I'm not a fan of the idea of cloaking in PA. Way too micro intensive.

I guess it kinda depends on how cloaking is implemented... but still. The very nature of cloaking means more micro.

I'm not a huge fan of cloaking. I'm not vehemently opposed to it, but I would prefer that radar stealth and radar jammers be the only stealth in game.

If we do have invisible units they need to remain exposed to radar, and if we have units that can jam radar they need to be visible. I think needing a "detector" unit would be an unpleasant experience, but I would be OK with an advanced radar that breaks through radar cloaking.

Most of all I would hate to have the Starcraft dark templar style unit in my base killing me. I can see his attacks clearly, I know exactly where he's standing, but my units can't target him because he's "invisible".

So long as cloaking is limited to observational units and ambush units, I have no issue with it. There should never be ANY units that are always cloaked. Stealth? Sure. But cloaked? No.

I think that the best way to include cloak is to have units that are stationary automatically become stealth. Units that are cloaked in any other situation makes micro much more important.

As with most people here, not a fan of the idea. But if they do implement this, radars have to be able to detect them.

I'd say no to visual cloak but yes to radar cloak. For instance not seeing a mine field on radar and running your forces through it because you didn't pay attention to your attack force seems fine with me.

Have cloaking work the same way as in TA... Requires vast amounts of energy and is only spotted at close range and by advanced radar. Cannot fire with out breaking cloak.

Woah guys...

Don't throw cloaking under the bus until you at least see how it will be implemented.

I personally like the cloaking that "Dune Battle for the sand planet" and "Red Alert 2". When a unit stopped and hasn't moved, it cloaked. If it moved. It uncloaked. No clicking on and off.

There is another type in Command n Conquer where the stealth tank would only uncloak if it was attacking another unit or bumped into an enemy.

Either of these are none-micro solutions.

I think it would add a good element to the game.

Stealth(as in not on the Radar) should be in.

Cloak(unit magically not there) should not be.

Stealth works with "What you see is what you get."

Cloak makes it a hunt fest and causes people to waste time and resources on making it harder to finish a game.

Also Brian, stealth was confirmed, not cloak.

So basically they've confirmed radar jammers, which I'm in favour of. Really useful for sneak attacks, possibly very important for invading planets too!

Also helps with dodging the Com snipe paradigm so they can hopefully nerf the Coms health and remove the "Tanky all powerful frontline" feel of him.

In today's livestream, they used the word "cloak" – not "stealth"

Although I quite like using the com as a front line unit... That's how I've always played ta and spring (although spring com is actually quite weak so a health nerf probably isn't an issue).

There is a lot of room for cloaking that works without being as game breaking as some of you are assuming.

Mines: kind of need cloaking to not be rendered useless. The question there is how we should detect them at all. I don't know that we should just run into minefields and have absolutely no way to deal with it except plowing through. Maybe mines cloak to vision but NOT radar, meaning you'd better have radar coverage over your enemy's base if you want to reliably raid it. No radar coverage = your units will detect mines by running into them.

Bomb bots: Maybe they should work like I just said mines work. Keeps them useful as a defense but not so useful on the attack against radar.

Commander: Long overdue. Commanders should cloak for a cost of, oh, I dunno, -25000 energy/second if not moving and -50000 energy/second if moving? No cloak if energy is negative. Enemy units within a certain range of him will reveal him. He should probably not show up on radar while cloaked since that mostly defeats the purpose of a commander cloak ("Let's see, which radar blip can I not see....oh that must be the commander!")

Radar jammers: units that project a radar jamming field around them. You can see the units but they don't show up on radar. You will need to setup visual scouting solutions as part of your defense (e.g., air factory patrol paths). This goes well with unit formations. Whether jammers should be able to jam structure signals seems questionable to me.

That's the thing though, in PA your Com is not meant to be a frontline unit. Uber has stated this many times when people were complaining about how fragile he was late game.

But people still treat him as an assault unit. He needs to be treated as a useful, but weak guard. Something to protect the base early game, then later you have to protect him.

I'd like it if cloaked units were always cloaked, and sucking energy, so you can't just spam loads of them, get near a base and then activate it all at once to sneak in.

I'm not exactly for cloaking, but hey, it's better than shields.

i remember a discussion about the usefulness of the skittle - i think it's be ok if he were cloaked to radar when not moving, but visual eyes-on trumps all. if you're in my units' fov, i see you period.

It was?
I wouldn't expect it pre-launch.
Maybe post launch.