See my previous post laying out the idea.



No, why would you? You are already at war. "Sneak" attacks are by definition off the table.



No. Altough an initial attack on such a planet without a declaration of war might trigger sneak attack penalties. In effect, the planet has an influence zone that only reaches its own orbit.



No, by definition if they are in your influence space, they were not in positions that the rest of the galaxy would view as "sneak attack" positions. In game mechanic terms, they are outside of the attacked party's influence zone so they would not get flagged.

drrider

The idea of cloaking was just a random thought, brainstorming.

However, as I understand it, even that should be simple enough with the expansion. As is, they will likely be creating some sort of command ship, to travel along with a fleet. As I recall, some of the new items were ship components that affected the entire fleet. You wouldn't put these on every ship, just one ship in the fleet. The way I would do it, is make my basic fighting ships as the core of the fleet, and then make one command ship which would have all those fleet bonus components. If they are already adjusting the AI to deal with these fleet wide bonus things, then it wouldn't be more work to just toss in the cloaking detector (sensor) component onto that command ship also.

As for effectively "using" cloaking, as opposed to "detecting" it, they just apply a priority to the cloaking device. Probably somewhat low priority, putting engines and weps as a higher priority. But, if the space is available on the ship, one gets added after the higher priority items. And then, with this method, different races can have different priorities and may rate a cloak higher then defenses, or higher then weps. You would have races that use it a lot, and races that use it much less, or only after everything else if it still fits.

I don't see any really extreme difficulties implementing this. However, it was just a random thought, not something I expect. But it should be feasible without too much work, if they wanted to do it.

I would then add to the two components, another planet based cloaking detector to help cover planets better. Then again, you could just argue that a defender around a planet has that task and we shouldn't take up another slot on the planet itself. Either works. In fact, you could even make the cloak a device that affects the fleet and goes on that command ship, if you wanted. Or you could have cloaks and/or cloak sensors as a device on star bases. There are loads of options here, really.

I don't think they have to actually program the AI to launch massive sneak attacks or actually do anything special just because they have cloaks. They still interact and act the exact same way, except you, the player, may only be able to see half of their ships. Or perhaps you can't really see more then about 5%, depending on what priority a given race puts towards using that cloaking device. Nothing else spectacular needs to be coded.

Perhaps stronger cloaks are needed to block out a sensor. I have a level four cloak detector, but wont be able to see your ships with a level 5 cloak. Or perhaps its the range with which you can see them. Higher level cloaks make it so you have to be right up close before you can finally see them. Of course, if you accidentally move onto the space of a cloaked ship, you should get a pop up with 1) attack, 2) cancel, and it would reveal the cloaked vessels. Seriously, this isn't outrageously difficult to code.

drrider:

Mainly I was responding to Jasamcar's reply #155

Sneak attacks can be detected without a war declaration. If you take a planet within one or two turns of a war declaration by either side, you have committed a sneak attack. A small rules change to hold allies responsible for the behavior of the war starter would handle issue two.

All of the issues I brought up would be possible sneak attacks if this suggestion were to be followed

One potential definition

A ship that

a) Is not a freighter or scout

Is detectable by planetary sensors

c) Is closer to the defender's planet then the attacker's nearest planet

d) Is not within one turn's move of the home planet

I think those would false positives and not be that exploitable (but still semi-exploitable)

Eloryn, you're well thought-out as always. Though planetary tiles are premium real estate. With the coming additions of fleet-wide bonuses via new ship modules, i think it's an interesting point to reevaluate the way ships in orbit behave. complaints abound the Orbital Fleet Manager, but without re-hashing old suggestions (some of which were indeed good), one thing that's always bugged me is that ships in orbit lose their sensors on main map. perhaps an interesting addition to the OFM would be if it additionally added the ability for ships to use their unique components in orbit (beyond just sensors, assuming there would be other applicable modules).

The Atlas and Fortitude modules could apply here.

Wait, you mean I can no longer cripple an entire civillization in a single turn by parking my ships in striking distance the turn before? I might actually have to learn how to play the game then...boo!


Of course, as loathe as I am to bring up one of the few subjects that makes the devs put their fingers in their ears and go "La la la...I can't hear you!" (Multiplayer, Carriers, planetary bombardment, and...), if youre going to close of this manifestation off the "sneak attack" concept, it begs the question on whether youre going to introduce a legitimate "sneak attack" concept...*cough* stealth/cloaking *cough*.

It's not like the concept of "sneak attacks" is so wrong...I would say its actually a viable strategic concept that now no longer exists in the game(with this suggestion)..it's just that the way everyone was doing it before was cheesy and required no effort or earned technology to pull off. How about a researchable ship technology that allowed ships to get that sneak attack in...such ships are not removed from space upon war declaration, and are able to traverse in space owned by another without incuring any negative diplomatic effects. By genre convention make the tech incompatible with ship defenses (have to drop your shields to fire), and make it opposed or detectable by superior sensor technology, giving sensors something else to do and making them a more desrirable item to both research, and place on warships, instead of the typical "sensor web" of a few dedicated sensor ships.

I personally can't stand the OFM. To me, its just a gamey thing. Someone, no disrespect meant here, was brainstorming and said, "how about we add this..." I don't really know. But ultimately, its design on paper may have sounded good. But in actual implementation, we often find that things sounded cool but just didn't turn out that way once put in use. I'm guilty of it. And I just have to say, the OFM is one of those that in implementation, is just gamey and lame.

I mean, really, my ships can work as a fleet on their own. But put them near a planet and they become stupid for some reason. There's a planet, someone jetison the IQ points so we can't function like we normally would, and require someone else on the planet to use a device to beam us some IQ points while we are here. We'll pick them back up when we leave orbit, but for now, hurry up and get stupid so we can rely on the OFM. Oh, and don't forget to turn off the sensors. Bah.

That thing just has to go, if you ask me. I very definately agree with adjusting this. All of this talk might not help though. Feature creep has to be stopped at some point and they just have to draw the line on what they are willing to do or it will never get done. But I do hope some things are adjusted for the better.

If they need more items for planets, to make our job as the player more interesting with tuff choices, then I vote for the cloaking sensors over the OFM. Of course, I don't seriously expect that to happen.

The Arceans will need buildings on planets just to make them go faster than Impulse Drive. What's the weird logic behind this? Are they too stupid to develop Warp Drive?

However, the Hyperion Fleet Defense does make some sense. Chuck out the concept of logistics points and make everything in orbit come together as one fleet - but this only works on one planet! Maybe the Hyperion Fleet Defense should be converted into a normal one-per-planet building like the OFM is, and the current OFM should be scrapped.

Actually, if you want my opinion this really isn't necessary.
How about improving the AI so that it will be able to better predict sneak attacks and more intelligently retaliate.

Right of Passage is not something that I think would be "annoying" though I won't resort to judging a book by its cover. Reduced to one turn per week? The first suggestion isn't realistic. I really would like to see an option to turn this off. Isolationist is bad enough.

Or maybe they looked outside the box and found that it was possible to make their ships faster without having to waste space on each individual ship. Or maybe they never even contemplated putting engines on all their ships in the first place and laugh at all the other races who haven't quite figured it out yet. It certainly hoses the 'disable enemy engines' tactical strategy.

Creativity is the logic here.

The main logic, as Glideslope suggested, is that the Arceans should now have a bit more space for weapons, defenses, and modules on their ships.

Cari, yes it’s a bit of an older thread, but wanted to put my 2bc in, hopefully you are still looking at it and if folks like it, perhaps pass it on.

Firstly, the AI does a good job of making sure that “border” planets are guarded with ships in orbit, however, since they defend one at a time unless the AI still has room for the fleet manager, which more often then not it doesn’t build, it becomes a somewhat trivial matter of picking them off.

I suggest that all planets should start with F_logistics 1.0, and with improvements, move up from there.

ROP quick adjustment could just set fleets to ½ their base move instead of 1 per turn.. however I would prefer to see a larger over-all change to the mechanics of warpdrive.

Warp drive mechanics could be separated into two seamless subsets which are sci-fi standards, impulse drive and warpdrive. This division basically assumes that going into and out of Warp drive takes time.

Implementation of this concept offers a plethora of options, a few of which iv’e been mulling over for a while.

a) Any move that requires greater than ½ a ship/fleet’s total move (if used, could create an interesting tech tree subset related to sensors) precludes an attack for that turn.- i.e., if you attack, then move, you only move ½ total available points, or move then attack, it can only be within that Half range – basically anything greater then ½ your move requires the use of your actual “warp” engines, and it takes time to go in and out of warp. However, if there is multiple targets that are within “ Impulse Range ” – you can continue to attack until out of movement points.

Or, each and every attack cuts available move points by ½

c) Or, as a above with regards to impulse range, but any move over your sensor range points completely negates the ability to attack for that turn. (drop out of warp, use sensors to make sure you are not in the middle of a star, come back into the “real” universe etc.)

Gravity Wells

Planets, and Stars especially create gravity wells around them, quite literally bending space. To reflect this, and to add another level of complexity/strategy, allow the star an “influence” range aka what a starbase does now. The primary effect is once a ship reaches the border of an enemies solar system, it stops for the remainder of that turn to “drop out” of warp, and proceeds the next turn “on impulse”. This option also could allow for planetary improvements that augment the whole system! Consider an improvement to the current Fleet manager that once an enemy attacks a planet, all of your defending ships (to the planetary-holding max) in that system are transferred over “instantly” to defend.



Sensors, Scanners, light up your life.

The above posted ideas about limiting knowledge of enemy ship load-outs is a good one, however id like to take that further by offering the idea that currently, scanners/sensors/survey modules or whatever you want to call them are being under utilized. I’m sure all of us can name various sci-fi show’s that when encountering a planet or a ship, the captain asks …” what does the sensors/scanners say?”

Again, a division is needed, Long Range, and Short Range scanners. Long range scanners should be just that, long range. The current scanner cap for a gigantic galaxy is 15- this should be raised at least to 25.. with the corresponding caveat.


“Captain, our long range scanners are picking up a fleet of Plingon ships, make up unknown”

Yep, anything over ½ sensor range precludes intimate information of an enemy ships load-out. – spies can tell us what has been researched, what a planet looks like, but a spy on each individual ship of the enemy’s navy is a bit much. – granted the idea is that the spy actually has just penetrated the security data base, but still, you get the idea.

In conjunction with this, sensors, or presumably just survey modules, should allow for viewing a planet’s surface regardless of espionage level or current habitation. (“captain, our scanners are showing a high concentration of byrlecream under that volcano, just what our barbers need to keep the ship running’) – again, only at ½ range.

Starbases could have their own versions of these scanners – perhaps with a built in bonus to range/knowledge to reflect the size differentials.

Finally, as to the suicide too easy stuff that made its way to the thread, I think just a tweak in the attack ship to transport ship ratios of the AI might very well make a huge difference, I agree that at just about every AI level ive tried or even cheesed through, the AI’s lack of effective transport usage is its downfall.

anyhow, thanks for the time in reading this, have a few more idea’s but as per usual I seem to have written a durn book.

PS - if you are able to have a ship "warp" instantly anywhere, is there any chance of gifted/surrendered ships being moved to the new owners space? - more often then not, it seems the best use of these ships is to simply detsroy for the cash, if they were moved into your own system, it would prove much more useful.