Let's Talk: Cloaking Units

Cloaking would help build teleporters on planets where the commander is camping

I've come up with a number of thoughts on the topic:

1) From my experience with starcraft (a very different game, I know), cloaked units are typically used in more "cheesy" strategies. They seemed to serve far more to the purpose of being annoying as a very annoying something more than as a strategic means of buffing up your army. Since the number of detectors in the game for one particular race was relatively low, it frequently resulted in player A nerfing their economy to rush an invisible unit, with the hopes that it would either frustrate the enemy into leaving, or occupy enough time and resources to come in with a small force and clear things out.

Now, the implementations of stealth and cloaking are varied.

On one hand, invisible to radar would be reasonable, but it doesn't really make a unit seem worth it at that point. Conversely, invisible on screen, but visible on radar, does seem viable. I'd argue also that if such an implementation were to be used, then units inside of radar range would be uncloaked.

Still, we haven't arrived at any groundbreaking ideas yet, and all the major concepts I'm aware of have been previously discussed.

Perhaps a unit which would cloak a small area around it would be cool (the unit itself, could not be cloaked??). Or perhaps just in general, a unit which cloaks when not moving. Both implementations sound actually pretty cool to me.

But at any rate, the following line gave me a thought:

Why should it be binary?
It doesn't have to be. Units which are X distance from a radar could have blinking icons when hidden, and when visible, a unit could have a sort of fluctuating semi-transparency. Once again, pulling back to starcraft, when a cloaked unit is moving, a player can see the area around it "bending" and distorting. I'd say it needs to be significantly more obvious than the SC implementation (you can only really see it if you've got very quick eyes and/or aren't moving much). It's not quite easy to describe how it'd be visible without being obvious, but perhaps a slightly colorized version of this light bending idea used by blizzard could be useful. The closer you get to the detector, the easier it is to see until a certain threshold (60% of the radius of detection?) where it becomes plainly visible as normal.

Basically what I'm saying is:

• no unit be 100% invisible to the player, even when 100% cloaked.
  
• That said, it shouldn't be easy. In fact, it should be insanely difficult unless you're specifically looking for the unit/the unit is moving.
• Units should probably be visible to radar even when cloaked
• When a unit is in radar range, the closer it gets to the radar, the easier it is to see with your eyes, and the easier it is for the player's units to shoot it

Now, this addresses player identification of a cloaked target, but what about unit attacks? The answer [could be] relatively simple: accuracy debuff. The less visible it is (eg, the further from the detector), the lower the unit accuracy.

On a final note, cloaking should begin automatically, because micro etc. etc.
All(?) turrets should act as cloaking detectors.
There should be a mobile detector unit that can be built in all T1 factories. This is to dissuade players from using cloakies for early game cheese/micro play. It's annoying and unnecessary. It could be added on to an existing unit (aa, firefly, etc.) or a new unit could be thought up. Probably it'd have to serve that specific purpose for ease of balance (eg, no attack), but I'm sure something could be thought of if you wanted it to be more versatile.

I won't speak as to which units/tiers can produce cloaking or stealth units.


word, yo.

Id rather not have detectors, but have the old CNC/TA method of visual cloak that makes close proximity to enemy units and defences reveal you, as well as the units ability's or weapons.

Making cloaking units great for bypassing long ranged units, or for hit and run attacks, but weak against enemy forces sent out to find you, or a a net of turrets by entrances.

I'm for stealth. I think it could easily fit into a game with such a large scale. I think people don't want to worry about it as a viable strategy though, (out of laziness?) so they denounce it before it's even an option. There's nothing wrong with stealth, it's just another option and it will have counters if implemented. The game shouldn't be limited because players are limited in their abilities to counter multiple things. The game is challenging when there are so many options.

If stealth or cloaking were implemented I would want mines and bomb bots to be invisible to radar.

A unit like the arbiter from starcraft would be a cool way to implement cloaking. They cloak units around them but they themselves are always showing so that they're vulnerable.

I'm for radar stealth/jamming. I liked this feature in SupCom and I want to see it in PA definitely.

like armor values, it might be added either sparsingly, or added unused just to support modders.

however, it don't need to be micro heavy. It could be a toggle. And it could be a permanent passive effect with the balance of the cloaked entity based on that.

Quit dodging my tomatos!

But yeah adding in the support in is really cool for the people who want to mod that in, could make some wikid mods from it.

I oppose cloaking. Stealth on the other hand is a more passive trait for a unit and doesn't lend itself to as much abuse.

Ideally I would like to see a stealth bot that is not seen by radar, and a radar jamming vehicle that can mask the radar signatures of all units or structures with in a certain area.

But would you make it dependent on the cloaked unit's size or just a flat distance from any target? Shouldn't that 'de-cloak' distance be in line with the power level of the respective unit? How do you deal with units vanishing completely after firing - shouldn't there be a residual signature, a 'ghost' so to speak to enable the attacked player to inquire the origin of an attack? And no, Chronocam in and of itself is not sufficient for that.
You get to a point at which you are better off revising the intelligence system as whole instead of tacking on feature after feature, vainly trying to keep the semblance of balance. So why not redesign the whole thing in such a way that all those traits and mechanics come naturally from the system itself? It is not like the notion of big units that are easily spotted from afar while small units can come a lot closer undetected is such a hard one to grasp. Or that groups of units are more easily made out than single ones.
Since that redesign will not happen I am opposed to extending the simple vision system with stealth or cloak.

Ok, I will go through each of your points:

A flat distance, as no large unit should have a cloak anyway, it's ridiculous that some games suggest that is a good idea just because the unit CAN be detected.

Power drain should also be a major concern of the cloaker.

Usually the hole in your base is a good indication, much like with other kinds of raiding attacks.

I am not sure how this is a tacked on feature when it uses the games current detection systems to work, don't get too close and you effectively half the enemy's effective vision range.

That isn't tacked on, that uses the vision radii as the base for it's mechanic and builds off of it.

That what I am suggesting it is.

It's the same with cloaked units as I have suggested.

So because the redesign won't happen, you are against the redesign?

That doesn't make any sense.

Because almost all of your points can't be disproven but rather constitute a different approach to the same problem I will let them stand as they are.
I will only address the last one: I am of the opinion that the vision system will not be re-designed in a way to accommodate stealth/cloak to emerge organically. Since the way to implement them would then be a mix of the TA and Supreme Commander ones and I strongly oppose those in the context of PA I am against implementing unit stealth/cloak altogether.
I hope that made things a bit more clear.

edit: Good lord is quoting hard...

Ahh a man of do it right or not at all?

I can respect that.

Thanks you for seeing my points for what they are: Merely points. I see the allure in cloak/stealth and the options it brings and hope Uber implements that feature in a meaningful way, is all.

Got to ask why? They worked extremely well in both games and SupCom was for its time the Big scale game, and many/all of the suggested overhauls are needlessly complicated when there's nothing inherently wrong with the system we've got, it can do stealth and cloak with practically if not actually zero fuss. Making radar complicated so it naturally creates stealth for any unit approaching in a certain way (or small units are stealth and big ones aren't) is not at all a good idea because it is A: very difficult to show at a glance to both the sneaking and detecting player(s) and B: not at all simple and simple is always best. And while that idea sounds good on paper, it (approaching radar covered zones in a way that mitigates detection) has been a non-factor in war for decades, and as stealth units are finding their way into modern arsenals it seems ludicrous to omit them from a hyper-future war of the robots.

edit: I may have been reading too much into comments/posts/threads... but the point (well some of it) stands.

I refer you to @exterminans ' unified intelligence system I linked to earlier in the thread. It is quite different in nature from the sharp-edge vision and radar circles that are commonly used. The gist of it is that units can not only be visible or not but also partially visible. To which part they are would be dependent of the unit's signature size (not necessarily real size - stealth units having a lower signature than other units of the same size, e.g.) and how far they are from your units (with radar equipped units being able to see 'farther'). It also merges radar and vision to keep things easy and accessible. Do yourself a favour and read it - even if you don't agree with it it is an interesting read in the least!
The system is nice because it is very easy to grasp and visualize - and more intuitive than the circle-vision, too. Which makes it superior in my opinion, hence my advocation.

I'm against cloaking, but only because we already have a stealth system in place in the form of fog of war.

Information gathering should be a two way battle, and cloaking forces counterplay. Normally I would consider this a good thing.

Currently we have fog of war. It puts a large emphasis on the information gathering of the gatherer, and very little in the way of pressure on the person trying to prevent such gathering. It is a giant passive sight/radar jammer, worldwide, for free. There is no decision making in the utilization of it, just in getting rid of it.

No matter what, as long as fog of war exists there will be a barrier on the amount of information a person can have that has nothing to do with anything their opponent has done.

Now add in the ability for a person to actively deny information via cloaking. You now have two layers of information gathering that need to be met, one you will always be fighting, and one you can't tell that you are fighting and can only rely on prediction or reaction to combat. That is not counterplay, that is tedium.

I would be in favor of cloaking/stealth if there weren't fog of war because it's a significantly more interesting layer of the information gathering game. It's just that with the already all-pervasive system in place it would only add frustration.