Off/On Stealth

Caydr · Post by **Caydr** » 05 Mar 2005, 05:20

Would be handy from a modding perspective to be able to switch on/off stealth ingame the same way you can do with cloaking.

(ooh, an, first post that wasn't about bullsh*t)

maverick256 · Post by **maverick256** » 05 Mar 2005, 05:23

hmmm. I can't really think of a use for it. after all, stealth doesn't cost anything, and to you and your allies they appear on the radar screen same as non-stealth anyways...

Caydr · Post by **Caydr** » 05 Mar 2005, 05:42

Well, yes, obviously stealth would be made to cost something in this case.

Benito · Post by **Benito** » 05 Mar 2005, 11:46

Caydr wrote:Well, yes, obviously stealth would be made to cost something in this case.

Hey, you could have something that was stealth when stationary, but not when moving.

aGorm · Post by **aGorm** » 05 Mar 2005, 11:49

And the point in stelth when not moving? The handy thing about stelth is you can creep you on a base... However, like clocking it could cost less when not moving.

aGrom

Min3mat · Post by **Min3mat** » 05 Mar 2005, 11:51

or 10-20% of what it would cost moving after all stationary camo is easy we can do it without all the gadgets the bots have!

AF · Post by AF » 05 Mar 2005, 23:36

Or rather you could run into a maze and stop moving and make the enemy search for you, obviously moving objects are easier to detect than stationary units.

What about an aircraft thats stealthed? If it's the sort that can open it's wings for extra weapons or has sustained damage then obviously radar will catch it where it wouldnt before.

Warlord Zsinj · Post by **Warlord Zsinj** » 06 Mar 2005, 10:59

I don't think that stealth is appropriate for being turned on by an immobile unit (the idea being to generate ambushes). I think cloak is more appropriate in this instance.

However, there is no reason why an on/off shouldn't be included. May as well make everything as flexible as possible. Also, unit scripting for Spring is probably going to be far more user friendly and logical than TA scripting, meaning that an on/off in this case was probably going to be likely anyway.

Speaking of which, I'd like to put forward the idea that certain terrain stealths units on/near it (radar jams them). This is more or less to simulate the ability for units to hide in dense trees or snow, or the difficulty for radars to detect units in low vallies, or dense fog, or other terrain conditions.

The basic idea here is to create more unit-terrain interaction in order to give the game more strategic depth, so that players don't necesserily have to use stealthed units in order to launch sneak attacks or ambushes, as well as giving map makers more breadth in creating maps.

Redfish · Post by **Redfish** » 06 Mar 2005, 14:23

A stealth fighter is just stealthy. It's not as if they press a button. So for realism it's not very good. I don't know maybe the unit format should allow for this option. However I don't particularly like it. Agree that you should always turn it on.

AF · Post by AF » 06 Mar 2005, 21:05

Stealth fighters are stealthed because of their shape and paint coatings/colour. If you fire a missile at them they'll be damaged of course btu that means that they arent as stealthya s before. If you hit a piece of metal hard no matterhow hard yu hit ti it will change shape, and stealth si very closely linked with the curvatuyre or angles of the shape. Also a moving object si more detectable than a stationary one. Set your screen tot h max res and bring up a picture fo hundreds of mosue pointers and stick your mouse somewhere and ask soemone to find it, they cant. but if you move the pointer then it jumps out at them. Otherwise why doesnt the military carve sculptures of aircraft and helicopters into stone walls to fool radar into thinking that aircraft have landed?

And what about units that generate stealth in the same way as cloaking btu for nearby units aswell? Or are cloaked and stealthed when stationary?

Warlord Zsinj · Post by **Warlord Zsinj** » 07 Mar 2005, 01:30

You mean, like a radar jammer?

AF · Post by AF » 07 Mar 2005, 01:35

Neuralize · Post by **Neuralize** » 07 Mar 2005, 06:14

Alantai Firestar,
There is no doubt in my mind that I will never get you to leave, so could you please review your posts before submitting them, I don't mind little spellling mistakes, or typographical errors, but If can't read your posts in a reasonable amount of time with utter ease, it's not worth reading. Please do this, people will like you more, and your ideas will be conveyed better, besides, it's not like you have a lack of freetime.

Doomweaver · Post by **Doomweaver** » 07 Mar 2005, 07:02

I had a good idea. We change the nature of cloaking to be highly strategical.

A unit that is cloaked is invisible to radar. Each second it has a chance (based on it metal cost maybe?) of about 0.01% to be given away. If it is, and its in range of your opponents radar, a dot appears in the opponents minimap/fog of war area identifying it as an uncovered unit. The dot lasts for ten seconds.

If the unit is moving, it gets its chance of being revealed multiplied by 10.

Radar jammers would work similarly, but they cover an area and are less reliable than cloaking.

Something will have to be done about mines though, maybe they are undergound?

Warlord Zsinj · Post by **Warlord Zsinj** » 07 Mar 2005, 12:04

By cloak, you mean stealth?

Stealth units are invisible on Radar, Cloak units are invisible in LOS, unless a unit comes within its "decloak radius"

While I think that cloak and stealth are so tentative in TA that it isn't worth adding an extra detractor to them (cloaked units are usually unarmed, and relying on a units ability to stealth is fundamental to planning covert operations). However, I do think such an ability should be easily doable in Spring's scripting commands, so that should any designer wish to institute such a limitation very easily. (I believe it is currently impossible within TA's engine)

aGorm · Post by **aGorm** » 07 Mar 2005, 13:13

I had a good idea. We change the nature of cloaking to be highly strategical.

A unit that is cloaked is invisible to radar....

I realy hope you ment stealth, makeing cloked units also invisible on radar would be stupid. It would make the game less strategical! However, the idea of stealth failing randomly, and for that matter clocking failing randomly would be a cool additon to the game. Like in predator (ok i know that its not that great a film...) when it moves you can just about see it sometimes... that wouldn't be so bad. Although i suspect that can be done in scripting already...

As for being able to turn stealth off, it should be an option availble to new units people create, but you should still have tradional stealth for other units.

aGorm

zwzsg · Post by **zwzsg** » 07 Mar 2005, 20:50

- In plain old TA, simply create a radar jammer with a very small radius if you want an on/off -able stealth unit.

- Some says that no unit should be both cloackable and stealth.

- I'm also firmly against all randomness in games. And even more against against complex unclear rules involving randomness.

AF · Post by AF » 07 Mar 2005, 20:51

Yah, with cloaking lets give units the same effect as a mishapen piece fo glass might have, if they mvoe you can see the distortions but you have to look carefully, or they're 99% transparent

PauloMorfeo · Post by **PauloMorfeo** » 07 Mar 2005, 21:47

Well, i seem to remember that in the CC expansion, the Arm had a submarine that jammed sonar. Since it was a sub, that made it almost(?) invisible by all means.

I hated that unit! In a game of total elimination (not just comm kill), that could be really a pain. Or even with Comm Kill, if you get to hide the comm underwater near that sub...

Triaxx2 · Post by **Triaxx2** » 07 Mar 2005, 22:02

That was the ARM Fibber. I always use Sonar Seaplanes on stationary patrol to find them.

Spring RTS Engine

Off/On Stealth

Off/On Stealth