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Some thoughts on stealth ships..


SgtToothpaste

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As Joker said : "Nobody will notice us as long as you don't start chanting the Russian national anthem" , a clever hommage to the Red OComber book by Tom Clancy.

i think someone mentioned something about not looking out the window as well. hence why its so effective against the geth 

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i think someone mentioned something about not looking out the window as well. hence why its so effective against the geth 

When they board the RaaverGeth ship, while flying in stealth. :V

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I really like the passive idea for stealth!

For the active idea I would just say have a straight up invisibility generator / cloak / whatever you want to call it, it makes you 100% invisible, but I would make it so its power usage is directly related to your ship/object size.

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I would love some stealth tech thats mostly what i did in eve! Here are some other threads on the subject as well.

 

Piracy, Smuggling, & Bounty Hunting.. Oh My...

Beware of the afk cloaker

 

And what Nyzaltar had to say:

We plan stealth technology in Dual Universe (even if it's not planned soon).

 

Afk cloaking is indeed a problem in EVE.

Psychological warfare is interesting, as long as it involves activity from the player wanting to do it.

 

From what we have analyzed, afk cloaking has been possible because of a few things:

- the fact that all players in the solar system are displayed on the local chat. If you see someone you don't know, it migh be a spy, or someone planning an ambush.

- the fact that a player can leave from a safe area (space stations) from a unique point (easy to ambush). 

- the fact that a player wanting to leave the solar system generally needs to use a stargate (also an easy place to ambush).

 

As Dual Universe won't work "solar system by solar system" and there won't be only one point of entry/exit for a safe area, this kind of abuse should have a lot less impact in Dual Universe. And if it still does... well, we keep your suggestions in our papers as possible ways to handle it  ;)

 

Thanks for the feedback!

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Tried to skim through everything to see if it had been mentioned, but I couldn't see it anywhere; I'd also like to see stealth in the game. It'd make life outside of the safe zone, well, safer.

Some ideas I'd like to NOT see regarding stealth tech is that you'd have no shields. Sure, they should be weaker but considering stealth ships would be known to exist what's to stop players from just randomly fiering their weapons into space as they fly around? Sure you'd look pretty paranoid. That is until you hit a sneaky stealth ship and kill it because it had no shields up.

 

I'd much rather see a trade off in size and weapons, as in you get either stealth or you get to arm yourself, not both. At least not until you find a super rare schematic that enables both (or engineering skill levels, possibly). If this was the reality you'd still be able to survive a stray shot or two, and possibly remain stealthed (or un-stealthed momentarily) which would likely reduce people shooting randomly into the void (which would be way more pleasant if you ask me).

 

Also without weapons you can't really do much more than espionage and sabotage, or simply scouting/exploring.

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  • 5 months later...

For anyone who has read orion fleet, maybe something along the lines of that universe's stealth system. The ship itself uses a system that puts it partly out of regular space. The stealth system has high energy drain, meaning no shields while in use. Stealth in that universe also works both ways. While it is engaged a ship is more or less blind to the outside world except for detecting gravity disturbances (large artificial sources, asteroids, planets, anything big really). You would be unable to track small ships, tell if another ship has shields/weapons armed, or even aimed at you. Stealth units and FTL (which both use wormhole like physics to function) both require mass and energy to be used efficiently in Orion Fleet as well, so small ships can't really fit the system but huge ships cannot either since the power drain is like being in constant FTL (so no super big cloaked ships). This means stealth ships would be in a middle ground, not fast but not heavily armored and generally with a few heavy hitting weapons only. (Sorry this is a little messy, short on time)

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As a side note, only large ships tend use FTL successfully in Orion Fleet. Medium to small ships, including stealth ones, would have to tag along in FTL in order to travel out of a system. If there is a stealth ship in system then there is also a larger ship there that brought it too.

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As a side note, only large ships tend use FTL successfully in Orion Fleet. Medium to small ships, including stealth ones, would have to tag along in FTL in order to travel out of a system. If there is a stealth ship in system then there is also a larger ship there that brought it too.

Interesting idea mate. I could definitely see small ships relying on larger ships. Not sure about the medium ones. It would be nice to be able to make jumps and then stealth without needing a large ship. Although to balance that maybe make it so that power can go to either the FTL drive or the stealth system. So if you want to recharge and use your ftl then you cant have stealth on or the other way around. This means that as soon as you get into a system you can either be unstealthed and let your drive recharge. Or you can go stealthed right away and then when your leaving you can go unstealthed and wait. Each has its pros and cons.

 

P.S. Im glad this post is still active

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Stealth devices making you blind was already discussed and to me it would be a very good mechanic.

 

But I dnot like the idea of a large ship bringing stealth to smaller ships somehow. That would kill small, fast scouts and infiltrators.

 

It can be balanced via shields, engines, timers, weapons.... plenty to choose from

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My thoughts were along the lines of thee elements required for FTL and stealth to be fairly large and expensive. If they work similarly it terms of lore mechanics both systems would be similar in size and power draw. You could build one with both, but you would need a reactor big enough to run them (not to mention a weapon system big enough to make good use of the stealth). That said though the ship size would keep getting scaled up, making the cloaking less and less effective energy wise. This would force you to design it for a role though, fleet assassin with no FTL but a big gun, paranoid explorer or advanced scout that pops in system to system looking for something interesting but is almost defenseless. And same here Shadow, anything stealth is life. Let me build custom space traps like cloaked mines and I'll give these guys all my money forever.

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Stealth devices making you blind was already discussed and to me it would be a very good mechanic.

But I dnot like the idea of a large ship bringing stealth to smaller ships somehow. That would kill small, fast scouts and infiltrators.

It can be balanced via shields, engines, timers, weapons.... plenty to choose from

. What I meant by bring them is bring them through FTL as a means of transport, the ship that is being cloaked would require its own systems to do so. A large ship providing ECM like an EC-130 is an idea though. Smaller ships could very well be able to field ECM style stealth as well, but visual cloaking should require a lot of weight/energy to keeping it off of a fighter.
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Ok, I think I know what you have in mind but, to me, it would be better to have some sort of small cloak with huge drawbacks (no weapons, needs lot of energy, can't activate shields, something like that) for smaller vessels. Because I think that infiltrating a planet, landing somewhere unseen, is better done by a small and fast vessel than some large ones.

 

The larger the ship - the more drawbacks. You just shouldn't be allowed to cloak up your whole fleet. Such a mechanic would be abused because let's say you have 20 ships - each ship just specializes in one aspect (plus that cloak) and you can roflstomp everyone with that setup - not ideal imho.

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ECM should work fairly well for landing a small ship on a planet as most of the detection avoidance would come down to radar. I fully agree with you that large ships shouldn't be able utilize a visual cloaking system, but from a stand point that something that big would be far too inefficient for the system to do. The cloak style system would ideally factor ship size into energy cost exponentially as it got bigger but there would be a cut off on how small it could be due to the size of the actual cloak component itself. The bigger the ship gets with armor the more power you need to run/cloak it and then even more thrusters to move it. Ships that used something like this would have to be pretty efficient if they want to stay cloaked and have enough energy to run/shoot if they had to. I think we are just having a miscommunication on the assumed scales of ships. To me a fighter is 1-2 man crew, small ship 3-4, medium would be 5-9, and large ships would start getting to 10-20+ crews. I'm thinking the most efficient size for a stealth ship should sit at the lowest end of medium and that moving in either direction on the scale would start adding too many negatives to a ship that should already be pretty specialized. With all this in mind nothing is stopping you from building a super small ship except for the tradeoffs of shrinking the ships scale from its optimal size.

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Also if you have not already done so. Go take a look at the other 4 pages of comments. There is a lot that has been discussed there and definitely helpful in giving you new ideas.

. From what iv seen of this community that seems like the usual for most posts :)
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ECM should work fairly well for landing a small ship on a planet as most of the detection avoidance would come down to radar. I fully agree with you that large ships shouldn't be able utilize a visual cloaking system, but from a stand point that something that big would be far too inefficient for the system to do. The cloak style system would ideally factor ship size into energy cost exponentially as it got bigger but there would be a cut off on how small it could be due to the size of the actual cloak component itself. The bigger the ship gets with armor the more power you need to run/cloak it and then even more thrusters to move it. Ships that used something like this would have to be pretty efficient if they want to stay cloaked and have enough energy to run/shoot if they had to. I think we are just having a miscommunication on the assumed scales of ships. To me a fighter is 1-2 man crew, small ship 3-4, medium would be 5-9, and large ships would start getting to 10-20+ crews. I'm thinking the most efficient size for a stealth ship should sit at the lowest end of medium and that moving in either direction on the scale would start adding too many negatives to a ship that should already be pretty specialized. With all this in mind nothing is stopping you from building a super small ship except for the tradeoffs of shrinking the ships scale from its optimal size.

 

To me:

small ships: <10

medium: < 30

large: < 100

capital: >100

 

So yes, as I wrote, keep those penalties high for too small/big ships. But in order to not abuse this, I would only want to see cloaks (read: visual cloaks) on small ships and ECM (like camos, radar cloaks, thermal cloaks,...) on all ships (with a possible penalty)

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Completely up with the idea of offering not only complete 'cloak' as well as various means of reducing ones sensor 'signature.' The former should be penalized somehow, such as large power requirement or a large reduction in sensory functionality. Given that the technology is being developed now should insure it exists in this future setting. I don't know that the energy requirement should increase exponentially given that a meta-material is essentially a skin and the volume being masked is merely 'behind' it. Still, I'm sure an explanation could be found to explain it. 

 

Edited: on the other hand the equation for determining the surface of a sphere is 4(pi)r^2, so it would be exponential. Nevermind :)

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Im the skeptic with multiplayer ships.

 

Sure, you could get 5-6 players to jump in a ship, but I dont believe you will find huge ships with hundreds of players. There are too many egos involved, and nobody wants to fill my open "Janitor" position.

 

Btw... "Cleanup in men's room 1"

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Im the skeptic with multiplayer ships.

 

Sure, you could get 5-6 players to jump in a ship, but I dont believe you will find huge ships with hundreds of players. There are too many egos involved, and nobody wants to fill my open "Janitor" position.

 

Btw... "Cleanup in men's room 1"

There are people in EVE who do the "bring ammo to the front line" job. And let's face it, DU has the potential to be SpaceStation13. Anyone who played SpaceStation13 knows how dope the janitor position is.

 

But in all seriousness, in EVE, a 1000 man fleet, is usualy composed of a Battleship Fleet of 200 a Cruiser Fleet of 300 and an Interceptor Frigate Fleet of 300, with Capital ships thrown in the mix. Now, what does that mean? The Fleet Commander, tells the Battleships to focus down one particular target as support fire to the capital ships, then tells the Cruisers to act as point defense for the Battleships and capitals by taking out Jammers that try to stop the ships from being able to shoot stuff and orders the Interceptors to warp scramble a target the battleships focus fire on, from escaping the battle via warp. Note, some cruisers may be logistics (repair ships), and they work by a watchlist priority assocaited with a group they are appointed to on the fleet - in traditional MMO terms, their "party".

 

That in DU - to me at least - can translate to having 3 Battleships with 100 people crew each, protecting one Carrier with a 400 people crew, of gunners, engineers and - of course - pilots, and 20 ships of 10 people crew on Frigates / Destroyers, that are tactical on their usage (electronic warfare, missile boats, etcetera).

 

You may say "why would anyone want to be an engineer in a game with space battles and starfighters". I ask you this, why do people play healers in any MMO?

 

There are gaming communities out there that are hardcore enough to fill every single ship role, from gunner, to on-board medic, to combat builders, ala builder units for an RTS.

 

And this is where DU will be made into a great game. A ship's crew can be a community on its own and if your organisation / alliance / whatever, is not a community of people who work TOGETHER, the organisation will be a salty drama cesspool, with a paranoid leadership that culls its officers on a regular basis. Good thing in BOO, we got no leadership, as the Cybrex hive rmind is in harmony. We are like the Borg at this point. 

 

That being said, any form of Black Ops that requires invisibility modules, should simply follow an actual Black Ops ruleset. That being said, have as less people as possible that know the plan. I know i sound like a broken record, but that's how people do things in EVE - due to the massive numbers involved in a battle, the ergonomics and the timezone difference - for stealth operations. You know there's an operation going down at X day of the month, but you know little to nothing about the objective itself. Only the leaders of each wing get to know. In DU's case, the captain of the ship is the one who'll be let in the know. It's not irregular in EVE to find out what you will be doing the moment you arrive in a star system by the Fleet Commander themselves. Usually the hint is "we carry a lot of bombs on our fleet, I guess we are demolishing something" only to find out you are actually there to bomb two enemy fleets while they fight each other. Why? Because Black Ops :P

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i like this idea alot, you've put alot of thought into it.i like the idea the ship isn't actually invisible as sapce is fucking huge so seeing the ship would actually be quite hard unless you knew exactly were they are so reducing its signature and making it hard to find fits well with the realism of the game :) having some way of conffusing your opponents sensors could be a fun concept i feel.

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