Let's Talk: Cloaking Units

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by brianpurkiss, February 28, 2014.

  1. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    Quitch likes this.
  2. AfailingHORSE

    AfailingHORSE Member

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    at least radar jamming is there
  3. ghostflux

    ghostflux Active Member

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    I always loved the way the Mirage Tank and Spy in Red Alert 2 blended in with the environment in order to fool the opponent.
  4. rawrifficus

    rawrifficus Member

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    No I do not want cloaked/stealthed/invisible units in the game. All they add is that you have to build "detectors" to baby sit all your ****. Leave them out. There's already more then they can handle in attempting to make t1 not completely useless when compared to t2.
    zweistein000 likes this.
  5. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    I'm surprised.

    Most people are opposed to the idea of cloaking and stealth.
  6. MrTBSC

    MrTBSC Post Master General

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    i am rather for stealth then cloak .... stealth could be visible on strategic view once spotted visualy but cloak?
    cloak makes not much sense when visible by radar but also would be rather annoying to deal with ...
    i am more for radar stealth the visual/optical cloak ...
    i wouldn´t mind some stealthbombers or bombassasins or a stealth dome unit like the one the cybrans had in Supcom FA ok sure ... i dont think there would be too much micro with stealth it would simply requier propper counter measures against it such as watchtowers or of course scouts .... yeah it simply does make sure that you scout ...
  7. meir22344

    meir22344 Active Member

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    If the cloak worked like the stealth tanks in c&c 3 tiberium wars then i'm all for it but advanced radar has to be-able to detect them and they should be T2 units and expensive.
    Last edited: March 1, 2014
  8. robber364

    robber364 Member

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    I think cloaking is necessary for units like the bomb-bot to work, and it would be nice if you could cloak a commander like in TA to improve late game survivability, but there would need to be a counter. perhaps cloaking units still show up on radar, or something like that.
  9. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    Based on what Mavor said, sounds like cloaking Commanders will be a thing.
    cdrkf likes this.
  10. vackillers

    vackillers Well-Known Member

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    I'm for cloaking abilities... and cloaking commanders is probably the best way to go about doing it next to cloaking a designated area for bases.... like a defense turret so to speak and I think there is a lot of gameplay to be had with cloaking personally
  11. DalekDan

    DalekDan Active Member

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    I struggle to understand why people are so opposed to cloaking and stealth, both of these add strategy and imo not a lot of micro especially when so few of the roster can/do cloak or are stealthy. It really seams like people just don't want to be surprised, but seriously surprise is a big part of war, a really, big part. Perhaps one of the haters can lay it down as to why they hate it so much without the micro argument (its a real lame reason to deny such a critical component), big essays/ rants to follow?
  12. Clopse

    Clopse Post Master General

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    Having the commander cloakable like TA is fine, having cloakable units not so much. Get rid of this sniping nonsense and let the better commander win.
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  13. DalekDan

    DalekDan Active Member

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    Yes but why the hate for stealth tanks or such? It makes no sense to be opposed to such a unit, it opens up sneak attacks (which is the crux of the problem it seems from far too many comments here). Do people actually thing sneak attacks are bad? Really?
  14. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    "Can you explain why you don't like Idea X? Except, explain it without using your primary reason."

    PA is all about macro large scale gameplay. Cloaked units is all about micro.

    When I'm managing three planets and fighting on two at the same time (like what was done several times during yesterday's live cast), it is impossible to look for cloaked units. It would just piss people off, change the nature of the game, and be all around bad for gameplay.
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  15. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    It has nothing to do with sneak attacks. You're missing the entire point.

    PA = large scale macro
    Cloaked armies = small scale micro

    Two different game styles.
    zweistein000 and Clopse like this.
  16. vyolin

    vyolin Well-Known Member

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    I am tempted to link to the environmental stealth thread but I will just reiterate what I said there: No to player-created stealth. It is just to fiddly for all parties involved to be worth it. No matter how awesome the UI will eventually get you are bound to miss out on things that you are not visually focusing on. No need to have you miss out on stuff that you are focusing on, too.
  17. zweistein000

    zweistein000 Post Master General

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    I personally don't like cloaking in this kind of a game. The size of armies are too great for it to make sense and cloaked armies can do way too much damage and are difficult to counter unless they have a specific building that indicates them they are present when scouted. I also consider cloaking a nuisance to deal with as it requires a whole new kind of play to counter and it usually forces people to go on the defensive as you are forced to defend and not move while you set up cloak detection or you risk losing everything. Additionally I don't tend to use cloaking myself, it's not my kind of play. I rend to use large armies that punch through enemy defenses and force the enemies to defend with everything they got, while I tech up and do limited raiding. If it IS actually built into the game I'll deal with it, I might even use it, but I'd rather it isn't.
  18. DalekDan

    DalekDan Active Member

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    nonsense, there is no effort in cloaking an army of units the same way a commander executes his uber-cannon tihs is a poor argument IMO, and the above post proves I'm not missing the point at all. Zweistein, defending against stealth is probably as simple as having scouts in your attack and defensive armies --- no effort at all t defend against but a huge pay off for someone if you forget and another strategy to employ/defend against this can't be a bad thing, just because you prefer to steam roll shouldn't mean that geurllia warfare should be dumped entirely.

    I
  19. vyolin

    vyolin Well-Known Member

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    Which is exactly the problem. Because all the pressure is on the detecting player. Who has a hard enough time seeing your non-cloaked army coming to get him in a multi-planet game.
    It creates a very damaging asymmetry of effort required to pull off and defend against, respectively.
    zweistein000 likes this.
  20. DalekDan

    DalekDan Active Member

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    Shldn't have problems seeing not-cloaked armies - thats the whole pont of radar, pip and if you got it multi-monitor support. Cloaked armies are easily countered with minimal thought but allow other players a chance to crack somthing a different way, on the other hand cloaked units aren't my personal preference anyway I prefer radar-stealth and jammers but its no biggie either way. And IMO pressure should be on the detecting player and everyone should be employing it anyway, like how subs would've/could've been.

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