Stealth vs. Endless Fog of War

With subs being removed in the last patch, and no word yet on whether it's temporary, I feel that this is an appropriate question to ask;

Are stealth units necessary when there are multiple planets to hide on?

I say this largely because scouting is already a contentious issue. With so many planets to keep track of, plus orbital, plus hunting for commanders, it's hard enough to SEE without adding stealth into the mix. The primary role of stealth units is to sneak past enemy vision, and that's easy enough to do by hiding in the fog-of-war of multiple planets.

Moreover, when late-game planet management often has to be done in a fire-and-forget fashion (as promoted by helpful features like order rallies/area commands and continuous build), do players even have the time to squint and search for stealth units, as it were? The prospect of building a second type of "stealth radar" is also a worrisome one; one of the easiest comparisons is SC2 and its system of "detector" units, but those exist in a smaller playing field where your sight is rarely pulled too far away for too long. On top of that, you can actually see cloaked units moving!

Something like anti-radar to stop artillery/orbital nuke targeting isn't completely off the table, but exotic units like cloaking/burrowing vehicles may be unless Uber says otherwise. What do you think?

Stealth in TA-derivative games usually refers to radar stealth, not being detected by radar but being seen by vision.
Cloak is what usually refers to what you are describing.

Cloak that can be detected visually by watching the unit move as in Starcraft is a big no-no for me. I say, don't strain the players attention even more.

I think stealth could be a good addition.
I'm not sure about cloak though as the usage of it could be very microintensive. Maybe for a select few essential units like the commander which makes it easier to protect him.

I remember many years ago a client of mine produced a dress, covered in some kind of molecular layer of metal, that shielded a person from any electronic/magnetic device. The person became completely invisible to radars. Also the heart beat got concealed as a result.

But if that person would stand in front of you, you could surely see that shiny dress.

I believe they still produce those things for the Nato.

radarstealth maybe ... but absolutely no to cloak of any kind

The primary role of stealth is to sneak past enemy RADAR.

TA didn't use Starcraft's cloak system because it was not appropriate for the genre. Supcom ignored it, and found out that the cloak/detector system doesn't work very well for massive unit battles.

TA used a system where "hiding" units can not take action or stumble into enemies without revealing themselves. It allows a first strike and protection from sniping. Nothing more.

TA's cloak worked perfect imo. Too expensive to use until mid-late game, could be seen on radar, and killing opponents energy making him crash to reveal com was a nice strategy. Doesn't have to be too fancy but will make the gameplay a lot better and reduce a stalemate until one player has critical mass to snipe.

Too few people played Total Annihilation unfortunately. Many people are ignorant of the inspirational source of this game and so, threads like this happen. TA's Cloaking mechanics were simple and nearly flawless when it comes down to how to do individual unit invisibility on a large scale.

This is a little bit of old information, but relevant to the discussion at hand; During the last Vanguard meeting with Jon he mentioned that there is a distinct possibility for cloaking mechanics to not be present in game at release. It's not a priority feature.

Cloaking was not a major feature in TA- the cloaking units were clunky and micro-intensive. Mostly, line of sight was how targets were acquired. In most games stealth was mostly useful for player deception, making it very difficult to determine what stealthy units were doing. Stealth was not primarily a combat feature.

In the late game the radar targeting facility allowed the late game long-range units to fire at radar signatures, making stealth very functional as a combat feature, especially for fast air units like Hawks and Vamps.

I for one would not miss cloak at all if it were completely missing. However, a robust intelligence dimension to the game is very important. But doing it using vision and fog of war is simpler and more powerful than having tons of types of in-game assets (which cost resources) that add complexity just to try and achieve the same effect.


Passive radar stealth could be used to define the radar mechanic, such as making land units radar stealth so radar only works on air/orbital units. This would also justify extending radar's effective range since it doesn't destroy the intelligence dimension of the game, as it only gives you targeting information against air/orbital enemies. Due to the mobility of those units, countermeasures need either similar mobility, or long range in order to be effective. So long range radar detection and targeting, in conjunction with long weapon ranges for anti-air and anti-orbital weapons makes sense. But doing the same for land units would eliminate the need for scouting.

Using this system, it also becomes possible to design specialized stealth aircraft, such as a strategic precision bomber meant for operating deep behind enemy lines by flying between enemy installations. Hitting a target with a fragile stealth bomber doesn't depend on having so much HP it is just an undeniable strike, and thus doesn't carry the same spammability issues. However a stealth bomber would be a fairly micro-intensive unit, since if the enemy sees it, they can destroy it quickly.

Expensive cloak like TA is perfectly fair. I do think that radar stealth needs to be in the game. It opens up some depth.

This would be true if cloak wasn't on the most important unit in the game. By default that makes it a pretty damn important feature. I'll admit that cloak wasn't taken far beyond its initial purpose, though.

Radar wasn't really meant as a cloak killer, considering the difficulty of using radar targeting in TA. The targeting system was added in Core Contingency, as a game ending tool that simply took advantage of cloak's weakness.

That same radar weakness does not translate well into this game. Radar is too easy to get, and attacking against radar is trivial compared to how annoying it was in TA. A different type of weakness is required.

Mines are cloaked?

If they are cloaked then they show no signs of that visually. They appear as fully visible to me.

They are indeed, I believe the have some class that makes them invisible to enemies. They are visible on radar though.