New Special/ability idea - False warp signature

posted on October 1st, 2011, 11:38 am

In star trek we have come across ships emitting false warp signatures.

These vessels would not be properly identified until a vessel came into visual range.
It would open a can of possibilities if vessels could emit false warp signatures.

A scout posing as a hostile vessel, miners posing as defensive vessels and so forth.

A special or an ability to project a false signature based upon the special from the incursion class.

Your opinions?

posted on October 1st, 2011, 11:50 am

If implemented correctly it would be a great feature. 

posted on October 1st, 2011, 12:14 pm

Combine it with hiding the build cue in the yard from opponent and i think it could lead to a whole new range of strategies.

Cloaking races could have an edge since they can "simply" put a scout near a yard, but many strategies revolve around countering the vessels your opponent brings in. With the false signature feature this could become a lot more dangerous.

New strategies and more fun. I don't see a downside.

posted on October 1st, 2011, 12:25 pm

something similar is actually floating through my head for quite some time we will see to it

[Tyler]

posted on October 1st, 2011, 12:27 pm

Last edited by Tyler on October 1st, 2011, 12:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Projecting a false signature already existed on the Shadow Class.

posted on October 1st, 2011, 1:36 pm

Projecting a false signature already existed on the Shadow Class.

That's a 2nd option to make it work. Delivery in 1 week?

posted on October 1st, 2011, 4:48 pm

The Shadow holo weapon has all sorts of problems associated with it however, and is not controllable either.

posted on October 1st, 2011, 5:07 pm

Awesome idea.

In particular, I think two ships would really benefit from this. Scouts and Constructors.

Like stated, this could make moons always appear more defended.

Perhaps a list of ships to choose from, so constructor can choose to make itself look like what it wants. Something along the lines of a qawduj/kbeajq, or intrepid/monsoon to start with (as nothing else is really buildable early on, to later choices as research stations and chassis levels are created. Eventually a couple choices of battleships sovereign and defiant, neghvar or vorcha, warbird or norexan etc. As all races seemed to possess this ability throughout the series.

I define visual range as weapons range. If you are within sensor range, obviously the point is to pick up the fake signature, so it isn't until you can actually fire upon the ship that you see it's really just a constructor or scout. If the scout is pretending to be defiant, this is pretty ideal match as they are both quick, but if it is pretending to be a slower ship might tip the enemy into seeing it's a sham.

Although, other ships like destroyers pretending to be larger tier vessels might be fun too. At a certain point though... it might be useless. We want a defiant to pretend to be a e2, a sovereign a defiant? Unless we could shield them in reverse. Make a group of ten battleships look like ten intrepids, monsoons, and akiras intermixed. Then when they get into weapons range, surprise!!! we're battleships! not destroyers!

[Tryptic]

posted on October 1st, 2011, 7:24 pm

Last edited by Tryptic on October 1st, 2011, 7:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

We had an interesting thread about this earlier, and it really came down to Radar.  When you have a radar mechanic it can be fooled, but there's a big difference between radar jamming and actual visual trickery.

There are a lot of ways to do false images.  StarCraft II has gone as far as making it so if you create hallucinations when enemy units are watching, they will automatically know which one is the real one and ignore the illusions.  Other games like DotA have the images take extra damage, so a good player can quickly find the real one by watching their health go down.  For a game like Fleet Ops, where ships autotarget the lowest defense ship around, this could have a huge effect on battles or no effect at all.  It concerns me.

There is ONE ability, however, that I would love to see.  It's called "Doppelwalk" in DotA.  The unit uses this ability and turns invisible while simultaneously creating a false image of itself in the same place and moving in the same direction.  Mechanically, it actually turns the unit into an illusion and creates a new copy that is the real one, which means that any enemies firing on the old unit won't have their orders reset.  I don't know if you can implement that in Fleet Ops, but the "Decoy Cloak" option would be sweet.  The Doppelganger only lasts a few seconds, but since it starts out with the same speed as the original and can receive orders, it's really good at diverting the enemy's attention while your ship slips away.

Going back to the original idea, I suppose you could create a false contact on the enemy's minimap that doesn't exist if they look at it.  Or a fake unit that disappears if it takes any damage, that way they can be used to misdirect but you don't have to figure out fancy combat rules.

...So really all I talked about were illusions.  I dunno how you could handle one ship looking like another, I don't see how the opponent could reveal its true form.  Maybe just give the ability a high energy cost so it can only remain active for 30 seconds or less and leave it like that.  You can't have something like "your ship can see things more clearly when they're in weapons range than when they're just in vision range"

posted on October 1st, 2011, 8:16 pm

Decoy Cloak sounds cool but also kinda redundant.

romulans have a 2 second cloak and a klingon have a 4 second cloak. so shouldn't it be come obvious when they cloak and make an illusion? 

posted on October 1st, 2011, 9:15 pm

When we get sensors that can detect ships beyond their visual (i.e. you can zoom in and see every damn detail on the hull) range, this will probably be pretty useful.

[Tryptic]

posted on October 1st, 2011, 11:29 pm

Last edited by Tryptic on October 1st, 2011, 11:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well the thing is, there would be no indication to the enemy player that you used it.  I'm thinking something like this:

The Romulans get a new ship, either the Generix Spectre (My apologies to the devs, but I just can't stop thinking of the current Generix upgrade as the Frigate branch instead) or a new Romulan Warbird.  This ship requires the TalShiar Academy and has a passive similar to the Descent's:  "The shield and cloaking systems of a Romulan ship are closely tied together.  Given the experimental nature of this ship's cloaking device, it carries an unusually powerful reactor for a ship of its class and as a result the shields are stronger as well."  All this really means is that the shield/hull ratio is higher than normal, maybe 70/30 like the feds.  The spectre had the balance problem that it was insanely hard to kill, so they were easy to build up in numbers.  Having a weak hull will make the new ship easier to kill when it isn't using its special, hopefully making it very difficult to mass them.

The special ability Decoy Cloak is relatively cheap to research, but has a high energy cost and a 45-second cooldown that makes it difficult to spam even with singularity generators.  When it is activated, the ship begins a special cloak cycle with different rules.  First, there is no audio or visual indication of the cloak.  Second, the ship's shields do not go down; instead they have their hitpoint value halved.  The ship's defensive value stays the same so it doesn't affect targeting.  The cycle takes 3 seconds, possibly even 4 if if proves to be overpowered.  At the end of the cycle, the ship is cloaked and a doppelganger is created with stats, health, and speed identical to the original ship except that its weapons deal no damage.  Since it has no orders, it will by default turn and start firing on the enemy but it can be given commands like any other unit.  The doppelganger will last 10 seconds or until it takes a hit to the hull, at which point it will go poof.  Finally, the illusory ship is instantly destroyed by any cloak detect ping or borg EM ability.  Manual targeting will simply continue to fire on the cloaked ship and ignore the newcomer.

The mechanics of this would be interesting but not overpowered.  The poor hull strength would mean the ship has to be careful when using its normal cloak to escape.  Even if it uses Decoy Cloak under fire and survives, its shields will have taken double damage which will make it difficult to continue attacking behind enemy lines, it'll probably need to go back to a friendly yard.  Also, to keep up with the high energy cost of this ability the player will need to either keep the ship visible most of the time or use singularities well.  Finally, since the doppelganger has the same health as the original, if the ship loses all of its shields before it cloaks the doppelganger will disappear with a single shot.  This makes the ability rather weak in situations where the enemy has lots of firepower or good cloak detect.  And to be honest, if a player doesn't have one of those two things against a Romulan player then it makes sense that he should lose.


There it is, my ideanought.  I'm very proud of it, I hope you have fun tearing it to pieces. 

posted on October 2nd, 2011, 9:35 am

ok what is the difference between... fighting an enemy and then cloaking when being butt hurt and fighting an ememy cloaking out and making a dobbelganger while being butt hurt?

they both need you to micro specifically when you are getting low on health. The only difference is one use energy and the other one doesn't

posted on October 2nd, 2011, 4:07 pm

...this is true.  But it's the trickery that counts.  For example, the illusion could tank turret fire while your real ship decloaks again and keeps firing.  Or you could use it to initiate fights, while your real fleet moves behind the enemy for their attack.  Remember you have to think of every ability in 2 ways: first if a single ship used it and then if an entire fleet of that ship used it simultaneously.

Perhaps there could be 2 options, one does the Decoy-Cloak and the other creates an illusion without cloaking.  This would make the ability more flexible, but remember a single cloak-detect ping would remove all the illusions so I don't think it's overpowered.

posted on October 2nd, 2011, 7:14 pm

Don't the Romulans have enough sneaky stuff already? Also the whole concept seems overly complicated.