What cloak/decloak mechanism PA should have?

I completely agree with the idea that the ability to hide decisions, assets, movement, etc. is a good thing for gameplay. It facilitates all manner of misdirection and mind games. However I don't think that actually having invisible units does much to accomplish this.

Units that are actually invisible, in the sense that an enemy unit can be standing directly next to them, and not be able to see, or attack it, is really not that interesting. Sure, if you have neglected detection then you can't do anything about it. However this kind of detection is not an intelligence gathering, information-war type of detection. This is simply a "I know that unit is there and want to be able to shoot it" type of asset, which is really quite boring.

What I propose is that we do away with true hard cloaking, and instead make sensors less absolute. Any region of the map where you have direct eyes on, you can be assured that there is nothing lurking there. However, just beyond your line of sight, you have no guarantees. Radar, long range scanners, aerial surveillance, satellites, etc. can all contribute to having a better battlefield picture, but rarely ever a perfect one. Even better, having a poor battlefield picture actually gives the player another type of asset to spend resources on, in order to improve their intelligence, whether they want broad, or detailed intel, and how much they are prepared to pay for how much coverage.

Zordon, I would highly recommend you go play Wargame: European Escalation to get a feel for the type of gameplay I am talking about. The lore of the game is Cold War era units, and so obviously there is no cloaking. However your battlefield picture is actually quite poor, so making intelligent deductions about your opponent's force composition and disposition is both challenging and necessary in order to use your forces effectively. Scouting is mandatory, of course, and there are actually a wide variety of different scout units which give texture to the intelligence board as an entirely different dimension from the main combat unit board. Not only that, you have to be judicious with your use of scouts, and choose which areas need overwatch and which ones you can afford to leave in the fog of war.

Having invisible units is a gimmick, which is rendered unnecessary by having actual fog of war.

Read my post again ledarsi, claiming something is boring is not reasoning, please describe why it is boring to you. Also notice how I was not in favour of a cloaking unit that couldn't attack while cloaked? Yet that's not what you're arguing against.

Merely calling something a gimmick, not interesting and boring is not a reasoned argument.

If you've got nothing to add, you don't need to spend 4 paragraphs stating it.

Agree with Zordon. Cloaking is not a gimmick, it's probably the most powerful form of information denial. It depends how it's worked in though. The starcraft form of "see but can't hit" is a no go right off the bat. I wouldn't mind a shimmering effect that you can see if you look hard, but if you can see it, you should be able to force attack to hit it. Still not the way I'd want to do it though. The problem with cloaking is that it's so powerful that various games have found various ways to nerf it in weird ways.

Basically, just in general, I think radar needs to have less range and require more energy; make it so gaps in coverage are normal and making raids on a radar is the first move in an attack (or a feint). In that case, cloak can just be a visual cloak, and the key to using cloaked units effectively would be to avoid places with radar coverage.

And in games like these you could catch them with forced fire.

I also hope there will be radar jammer units and buildings.

Possibly as unique structures on metal worlds too.

Very well zordon, allow me to restate my claim that pure invisibility is boring.

Pure invisibility, which makes a unit literally invisible in the sense that even if the player knows it is there, or can infer its presence, it is still immune to attack (or requires special methods to attack, such as manual firing of AOE) is boring. This is dark templar invisibility we are talking about- where I as a player know damn well there is an invisible unit there, but due to the rules of the game regarding cloaking, I need a detector to do anything about it. And this kind of invisibility does not create any information warfare dynamics, and is largely useless for strategic maneuvering.

Showing up with an invisible unit when the enemy does not have detection is, in the most direct sense, an arbitrary game-enforced cheap trick. It is not clever, and there is little room for large scale strategy with respect to combat cloaking. It adds only one factor, and it's not even that interesting a factor as it is binary; detection is not present, or detection is present.

Well implemented "cloaking" involves hiding your decisions to encourage your opponent to respond incorrectly. And planning this is advance, and exploiting your enemy's mistake (which you caused them to make). For example, hiding an army in a forest as you retreat a losing force towards it, hoping the enemy pursues, with the intent to counterattack and rout them when they do. Whether these units are literally invisible is completely irrelevant.

Fog of war is best served by having units have small, limited areas where you have solid intel, and large areas out on the map where you don't. Long range sensors, radar, etc. can give you a battlefield picture, but can be defeated by stealth or other countermeasures. This encourages spreading units out to gather intelligence, and the use of scouts. Compromising the integrity of unit vision seems counterproductive, and unnecessary to achieve what you want to do with cloaking units.

Put another way, cloaked units in TA were revealed when other units were some arbitrary distance away, but when they were close. All I propose is that the "decloaking" distance be equal to the unit's normal vision, and sensors beyond that can be stealthed against. This allows you to make strategic moves without the enemy knowing your units are there, protects against long range weapons, etc. However this does away with the arbitrary "too close" provision by simply having normal vision determine that boundary.

So similar to the way stealth works in SC by making a unit invisible to radar but visible to sight?

This can be good for enemy's without proper long sight range scouts and the like.

The cloaking in games like starcraft are more anti-visual counters (Leaving a distortion so players know what the hell is happening). The Commander in TA had one of these, but it required a huge amount of power to operate and he couldn't do much while clocked, which was much more balanced.

Yes ledarsi, but that wasn't what I was advocating. If you read again I think you'll find I wanted cloaking units to decloak when they attack. So they can sneak places, but can be shot back.

Or you know, you could continue having this same argument with yourself, what do I care.

Mostly of interest is how much and how easily can you hide your presence on a foreign bodies. Which by default, when looking at things orbiting a planet you have sensors on, should be pretty easy.

As far as inter-planet cloaking goes, the TA method of having cloaking and radar-jamming is good.