What cloak/decloak mechanism PA should have?

Cloakable units exist in TA and SupCom, so I guess they will exist in PA too, then there is a question, what cloak/decloak mechanism it should have?

Total Annihilation like mechanism:
All cloaked unit have a decloak radius, if any enemy unit get into that radius, the cloaked unit will be decloaked.
With this passive style mechanism, the cloaking capabilities can be divided more by different decloak radiuses, but all units will be decloaker, and the best decloakers are always the most spammy and fast ones.

Starcraft like mechanism:
Some units will decloak any cloaked unit within a certain range.
Decloaking capabilities can be more specialized and divided with this mechanism, but creating hard "no-go zones" for cloaked units will be easier.

You missed off the SupCom-style counterable with omni radar.

I'm not sure what my opinion is though.

Who knows? Maybe there wont be cloaked units at all.

But that's not quite accurate, there is also a slight issue with how SupCom does it.

In SupCom Stealth and Cloaking are separate;

Cloaking: Hides a unit Visually, still visible on Radar

Stealth: Unit doesn't show up on Radar, still Visible.

And it was only when they overlapped that things got hairy, stealthed units could still be spotted visually, rewarding good scouting, and cloaking was good early game, but once Radar became a bit more common it lost some of it's usefulness.

Mike

weren't there also certain land units in Total Annihilation which were also capable of emitting a radar jamming field that could also conceal other units within its range?

I forgot about radars.
Radars are similar to the starcraft style decloakers to the cloaked units without radar stealth in a TA like game, they usually make cloaking quite useless except for commanders, so I think if the game have both cloaking and radars, cloaked units should be invisible to radars too, this works well in Zero-K and some TA mods.

By definition:

Stealth is broken by line of sight. In this game that may also include satellite line of sight.

Cloak is genuine invisibility but is detectable by radar.

Think that pretty much sums up the topic?

EDIT: Just realised I have basically repeated OrangeKnight. Apologies all. Especially to OrangeKnight.

EDITx2: To elaborate - high value unit like commander has the ability to detect cloaked units at close range to avoid the inevitable cloak commander rush. That said, extreme close proximity to a unit can also break cloak in SC if I remember correctly?

On a side note; I also find it annoying how cloaked units can sit and take pot shots at enemies and still remain cloaked. I'm not sure what other people think about that, but it would render it kind of useless if cloaked units emerged when they fired. Perhaps at close range it would be feasible. I don't know. I suppose if it came from far enough away you wouldn't be able to determine where the shot came from.

I don't really think that SupCom's system worked out. IMO, it's fine to have stealth, but cloak is just pointless, because it's either horrifically overpowered or you have to start introducing Omni and whatnot, which IMO is the bads. There's nothing wrong with just having stealth, unless you can trivially spam scouts like you could in SupCom, or the firing ranges are too short. In that case, you may want to consider cloak/omni.

I say Ta-like though I would still like to see stealth along with cloaking and jamming [not neccesarily all on the same unit though].

Except you didn't, The Stealth and Cloak in SupCom were separate, it's not like cloak was an upgrade to Stealth, also you got them backwards.

EDITED: I was about to agree, but... Now I'm just confused.

I thought Stealth was basically anti-radar - like monkeylord had - obviously broken by line of sight. In fact here is what supcom wikia says about stealth.
Cloak I thought was invisibility to line of sight but detectable by radar?
Here is what supcom wiki says about cloak.

Some units like the commander could detect cloaked units at close range, correct?

Don't recall saying either was an upgrade to the other either.

I say a reduced radar detection range for cloaked units, but otherwise take style. That way cloaking ng isn't completely useless.

You know what, I'm not even sure what I read anymore! xD *headesk*

Mike

We shouldn't have a visual cloak. Instead, there should be radar jammers that are stationary buildings, intended to be for setting up ambushes. There should also be mobile ones, however these would only work within a rather small radius.

The radar should block ships and aircraft from seeing, but land unit should be fine; essentially any scout unit should be able to see them all (since they'd need to get rather close), but a long range cannon shouldn't be able to see them even if it already has a massive line of sight.

This should encourage big ambushes and the such, but it also means we can't micromanage individual stealthy units.

As I said here or here, I'd like to see something more original and interesting than those old on/off detection ranges.

Each unit should have a "detection size", mostly based on its actual size probably.
Each unit should have a detection capability.
A unit with a better detection capability will detect an enemy from further.
A unit with a bigger detection size will be detected from further.

There could be several levels of detection, depending on how close the unit is : just a blob, differentiating the units of a group, giving their exact position, determining the type of unit (tank, bot...), actually identifying the unit...
Sizes (and maybe ranges) themselves should be a few discrete values, to make it easier to manage.

Both visual and radar should work like that. The difference could be that radar is bad as identifying the unit, but has a better range and isn't LoS-dependent. For visual, LoS would be close enough (with the planet curvature) that most units in LoS would be identified already.

Stealth and cloak would work quite naturally there : it simply reduce the unit's detection size, making it harder to detect.


Wargame : European Escalation uses a relatively similar system : you can see that there's a vehicle before identifying it, units with better optics can see further, infantry in buildings is near-invisible for anything far and/or with great optics...
It's a tactical more than a strategic game, but it still shows that the system can be used intuitively and for great effect.
They also use a few discrete values for unit detection (including a few cover levels) and optics quality.


If this isn't how the game itself end up being, it should still be made like that in the engine (but with all units having the same "detection size"), so the mods could use it.

Radars in some spring engine games only show you the approximated positions of enemy units for the most of the time, so shooting at radar dots have a much higher chance to miss, this actually makes cloaking without stealth useful.

I say that having cloaking that can defeat direct line of sight is just bad. It should not be possible to shoot at the enemy from invisibility and have them be powerless to do anything without detection.

Having stealth from long-range sensors, or large scanning systems, is great. These let you keep your troop movements secret, but once you actually get into combat, they are not useful. Certain types of scanners with extremely large area of effect should also be highly imperfect, and easy to hide from. Surveillance satellites, for example, might give you a big-picture view of lots of enemy assets, but you should be aware that there will be much that is hidden from you.

Underground structures, camouflaged units hidden from aircraft and satellites due to terrain (or inside underground buildings), units with stealth from radar, even cloaking from satellite vision, are all good.

However, any unit should be able to see any other unit in its immediate vicinity. Still, it is likely maps will be so large that there will always be holes in your direct visual coverage which stealthy units can slip through.

Wargame: European Escalation does two things better than any game to date- logistics and intelligence warfare. I would recommend it as a source of inspiration second only to Zero K.

Why? If a player has neglected anti cloaking coverage why shouldn't someone be able to exploit that? It's the same as if a player has neglected AA and so you send planes at them. Just another strategic option available in your bag of tricks. Note I'm not actually that sold on offensive cloaking units, I just think if you're gonna debate a point, a reason should consist of more than just assertion.

I think stealth units however are of great importance. The ability to hide stuff to suprise an overconfident opponent is pure greatness. Being attacked by a cloaked enemy in my base would just be annoying, however if the units have to decloak to fire and cannot recloak for a certain amount of time (and this was all automatic) I wouldn't have a problem with it. I also think cloaked intel gather units and defensive units would be great. Again, because laying traps for people is fun. If you always knows what you're walking into then the battle is less dynamic.

I agree with Zordon completely.

We just need to finness TA a little bit if we have these things. For instance, we gave the sniper radar stealth in Uberhack mod, because it was a sniper and it made the unit.

We also had a dragon's tooth with a secret laser inside. With radar stealth people would walk right up to the thing and get their units zapped. After the first bot died the enemy would know which tooth to shoot at or if the LOS was long enough with long ranged weapons you could also deal with it.

I think cloaking is fine as described by Zordon. Stealth and cloaking spy bots with a large sight radius can be very useful and fun espionage unit.

I would be pretty unhappy with a cloaking unit that can remain cloaked after an attack is made. That sort of thing would have to cost a very sizeable energy per second to make it fair and fun in my mind.

I would prefer that omni vision be far more localized like Star Craft detectors, so that cloaking is meaningful. I don't want omni radar. I think it detracts from fun.

All cloaking units must be stealth units as well otherwise they aren't legitimately useful.

In TA cloaking required an upkeep energy cost that was expensive and based on what you cloaked. Your commander was a nuclear reactor's worth of cloaking (too expensive to use until late game).

I like what zordin and bastilean have said. I'm particularly entertained by the idea of a laser hidden in a wall section. Could this be taken to the next level and have you building trees or rocks that pop open to reveal hidden guns? Could be a functional way of including “minefields” in the game without the inherent problems with actual minelayer units.