Cloak

posted on January 26th, 2009, 7:35 pm

the fake radar thing sounds interesting, but how exactly do we want to implement it as regards gameplay.
can we please discuss what exactly we would like to see as implementation and result.

Take for example this scenario.
I have 3 griffins cloaked. I am playing the nirvana map that is wormhole based and I have no line of sight or even previously explored map space in enemy territory.

I am interested in knowing how I as rom would be able to use this ability:
1. how is this ability to be made available
2. how is it to impact the enemy as regards which units
3. will it affect Borg and Dom too? since their sensors are more advanced and the Dom/Borg use tetrion scans instead of tachyon to detect cloaked vessels.
4. What will the enemy do to counter the sensor ghost ability - research or ping or sth else?

Would be nice if we could flesh it out.

Any ideas?

posted on January 26th, 2009, 7:42 pm

Maybe an infinite adaption thing going on, at special research stations you can infinitely upgrade cloaks so that they leave ghost images that are picked up by Intel. Report and similar functions, and specialized ships that can launch ghost images in directions and temporarily drown out friendly cloaks form Intel. Report and Detection and such. This can be countered by the same station research, but this countering takes much longer than the cloak upgrades, as it does in canon, UNLESS you capture a ship of their's and decommision it, and it would have the same effect as if you researched. Feel free to build, or tear apart  .

[Anonymous]

posted on January 26th, 2009, 7:48 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on January 26th, 2009, 7:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Maybe an infinite adaption thing going on, at special research stations you can infinitely upgrade cloaks so that they leave ghost images that are picked up by Intel. Report and similar functions, and specialized ships that can launch ghost images in directions and temporarily drown out friendly cloaks form Intel. Report and Detection and such. This can be countered by the same station research, but this countering takes much longer than the cloak upgrades, as it does in canon, UNLESS you capture a ship of their's and decommision it, and it would have the same effect as if you researched. Feel free to build, or tear apart  .

that;s the research aspect. ok.
But what about how sensor ghosts are to appear in game.

so given my scenario how do u envision the sensor ghost working in regards to graphics and gameplay?
how am i going to use it, and how is the other guy going to see it?

posted on January 26th, 2009, 8:10 pm

Maybe they (the victim) will see a regular cloaked ship, yet you (the user) see a cloaked ship either in a different colour or outlined?

posted on January 26th, 2009, 8:47 pm

that;s the research aspect. ok.
But what about how sensor ghosts are to appear in game.

so given my scenario how do u envision the sensor ghost working in regards to graphics and gameplay?
how am i going to use it, and how is the other guy going to see it?

It would just be some easy to program model, with some easy on the drive color. Nothing fancy.

Gameplay wise, you would use it by a) a starship is cloaked, or b) a concentrated amount of tacyons launched from the sensor array of your Base, or scout. Here's a hypothetical situation: a fleet of Tavaras is being sent to a heavily fortified base. If you catch them with their guard down, you win the game. If hey know you're there, you lose. So, you have a scout, or possibly Spectre Refit launch a sensor ghost into their base, foiling their Intel and detection grid by temporarily blinding it long enough to get the Tavaras in. You win. However, you can reasearch a sensor upgrade that makes these useless until the other player figures out they're useless, and researches countermeasures to your countermeasures. That good?

posted on January 26th, 2009, 9:31 pm

As to cloak-ghosts (I'm talking minimap pingable) gameplay, I think an ability to place cloak-ghosts as a sort of mines would be cool.

ie:

"Places a cloak-ghost at designated location. This ghost will last for x seconds"
Where x might increase with ship XP and/or research.
The ship that places it down needs to be near the targeted location.

A slightly stronger version might be
"Sends a cloak-ghost to designated location. Duration: x, range: y",
x and y,again, being balancable variables.

These abilities would of course cost special energy. I'm not sure which ships would be appropriate for this kind of ability.

Two questions:
I) What do you think of this?
II) What kind of ships (in general) would be suited to carrying cloak-ghost tech?

posted on January 26th, 2009, 9:48 pm

the fake radar thing sounds interesting, but how exactly do we want to implement it as regards gameplay.
can we please discuss what exactly we would like to see as implementation and result.

Take for example this scenario.
I have 3 griffins cloaked. I am playing the nirvana map that is wormhole based and I have no line of sight or even previously explored map space in enemy territory.

I am interested in knowing how I as rom would be able to use this ability:
1. how is this ability to be made available
2. how is it to impact the enemy as regards which units
3. will it affect Borg and Dom too? since their sensors are more advanced and the Dom/Borg use tetrion scans instead of tachyon to detect cloaked vessels.
4. What will the enemy do to counter the sensor ghost ability - research or ping or sth else?

Would be nice if we could flesh it out.

Any ideas?

I would implement the fake cloak as a new ability, let's say we call the ability: Tachion Countermeasure. You would research it much like the Feds and Klings races would research the Tachion Scan. Once researched it would become available as a special skill for a Romulan space station. Just prior to launching an attack you would move the cursor to a blank part of the map and use the special skill on that location. Then you would move your fleet in. From the enemy perspective, when they use next the Tachion Scan, it will ping a fleet of ships at the location you selected, thereby fooling them to move ships to that location and potentially opening a gap for you to sneak in with your real fleet. After a short while the Tachion Scan would then revert to the true location of the Romulan Fleet. By this time the Romulan Fleet should probably be in a position to decloak and launch an attack before the defenders can regroup. Visually, the defender would see exactly what s/he would see if the Tachion Scan was not countered.

In terms of the Borg: I would say that cloaked attacks could not be countered at all until the Borg assimilate the technology. For the sake of gameplay we could impose a target for the Borg to achieve. So let's say they had to assimilate 35 ships with a cloaking device. Once achieved the Borg would adapt and the cloak would become irrelevant. The Romulans would then have to find another tactic. Whatever the limit is, it would at least promote the Romulan to be a bit careful about how they use their ships against the Borg.

Against the Dominion, you could perhaps have a second ability: Tetrion Countermeasure. It would work much like the Tachion Countermeasure and would be used from the same space station. Since Dominion sensors are better than Federation then you could have a chance of failure attached to the use of the Tetrion Countermeasure. From the Romulan point of view, regardless of whether the scan works or not, it would appear to be successful. Obviously if the countermeasure fails then it hands the advantage back to the Dominion.


To summarise:
As a Romulan, you would have two new countermeasure abilities. Simply activate the one you want to use before you mount an attack by clicking the button and then deploying it to a location on screen. Only one of the two can be activated and there would be a cool down time roughly in time with the Tachion and Tetrion scans of other species.

As Federation or Klingon, when using the Tachion Scan everything would appear as normal until it's too late or a certain amount of time has passed.

As Dominion, it would be the same as Feds and Klings except with the added chance that your own sensors would automatically counter it and give you the true location as normal.

As Borg, no scans! Simply assimilate as certain number of cloakable ships and adapt to the technology.

posted on January 26th, 2009, 9:58 pm

From a countermeasure perspective, it seems more like actual warfare if your countermeasure temporarily flooded space with so much tetrion and tachyon radiation that attempting the anti-cloak scan while the countermeasure was running would just give you a giant blob on the minimap, as though the world's biggest cloaked ship were there.

Like radar-jamming.  Making it useless by confusing the results so badly that it can't be read as anything other than 'there's a contact.  I have no clue what or where.'

posted on January 26th, 2009, 10:57 pm

sounds cool.

Just one minor point to clarify:
if we activated the false signature ability and our real cloaked ships did pass by tachyon enabled sensors would they still be detected or not?

In the case of large fleets, and in the case where our players already know the Roms have this ability, it would end up reducing the effectiveness to nothing more than a boy calling wolf.
In the end the players would know how to discern ships appearing out of no where in places where they havent even placed sensors, compared to cloaked ships being caught near their actual sensor stations.

So i still dont see how this will work from a gameplay tactical standpoint.

posted on January 26th, 2009, 11:24 pm

If I could show you, it would make sense.

posted on January 27th, 2009, 12:52 am

**shrugs**
By what u proposed, the starbase will have the option to create these signatures anywhere on the map.Since i do not know the enemy's layout, Let's say i activate this at point A.
If the other player has no sensors at that end, seeing these queer holos will certainly be clearly the ghosts being generated. He wont even bother with them.
So, in the end it has ot be done near a sensor array. Since the player will not know ehere those are over the fog of war, he will not be able to use this.
especially, if new stations or arrays are built by the enemy in specific places.

Which is why I dont know what showing me is going to change in this implementation that uve suggested.

posted on January 27th, 2009, 10:21 am

I see your point there!

I suppose when you activate the countermeasure then the minimap could show you the LOS of the enemies (but hide facilities, ships and any area not explored by yourself). On the main view you could maybe have a border drawn you show the viewable borders of the enemy (each border colour coded to the enemy colours and viewable only in your own discovered space - outside LOS included but not revealing any other data other than the border of LOS for the enemy). Then when you are selecting a place to launch your countermeasure you now have the option to select a logical region of space that would provoke a response. Obviously this would need to be carefully balanced so that you yourself do not gain too much tactical data about enemy positions since this ability is only meant to dupe the enemy into believing that the incoming assault is coming from somewhere else.