Scouts in "Stealth Mode"

posted on February 10th, 2010, 11:10 pm

Now I can't recall if this has been brought up before.  I feel as though "Stealth Mode" is not my idea necessarily ...


  Scouts that cannot cloak get killed.  That's the law.

  Dominion and Federation Scouts are rarely used/ beyond the first.  Every once in a while if a player knows that they could really use that extra line of sight they will make one or two extras, but really only the Klingon and Romulan scouts get used because you can set them somewhere and forget about them while you do more important things.

  They are by nature so frail that they use high speed an excellent maneuverability to escape, but really if you don't move to your scout immediately upon being attacked it's dead and there goes the one scout you'll use.

  I'd like to propose a feature that can be toggled on for the non-cloakable scouts:

STEALTH MODE or SILENT RUNNING:
  I think it would be great to have the scouts not be automatically targeted by weapons fire if they are on green alert.  They would still be visible, show up on radar, and be manually targetable if the opponent happens to catch it, but it won't simply be blasted away willy nilly.  This way hiding a scout in a strategic place (like in an accessible part of an asteroid field) would be a smart and tactical thing to do as it would take an opponent visually seeing it on the mini or on his/her screen to get rid of it.

 
  As long as the Scout is on Green Alert (you power up your weapons and someone's gonna spot you ) I think this would be a great way for races to stay informed and scouts to stay useful throughout the game.

posted on February 10th, 2010, 11:19 pm

Another excellent idea 

posted on February 10th, 2010, 11:20 pm

Works for me, Ventures are frail.

posted on February 10th, 2010, 11:23 pm

Not a bad idea at all.  It would be easy to make a fed_scoutM odf and make that one low on the targeting priority.  Lasts 30 seconds or whatever.  We've seen runabouts or whatever power down systems to be less detectable.  Another use for fed and dom scouts could be dom's tachyon ping idea, where a few ships get that ability.  That would make scouts useful as well.

Or something else that would be good is they this replaceweapon scout gets slower, but gets a major sensor increase like the nebula's, so that it can scout better.  Knowing what defenses a base has could prove useful.

[Boggz]

posted on February 10th, 2010, 11:27 pm

Last edited by Boggz on February 10th, 2010, 11:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Or something else that would be good is they this replaceweapon scout gets slower, but gets a major sensor increase like the nebula's, so that it can scout better.  Knowing what defenses a base has could prove useful.

Aye I like that. 

  Just a simple change to have a scout not be immediately targeted and destroyed would finally make it plausible for Feds and Dominion (Borg too) to station scouts in certain key areas without the imminent loss of those ships as soon as ANYTHING goes by it.  If you could "leave it and forget" like you can with the cloaked scouts it would be a better use for them if you ask me.  They can still be killed, you just have to look for them  .

  Also it would help bring terrain into the picture more: something I've always wanted to see.  Hiding a stealth mode scout in the unblocked edge of an asteroid field would obscure it's signature both in the main screen and on the minimap (assuming you didn't pick RED ) ... a very Trek thing if you ask me .

posted on February 11th, 2010, 12:33 am

Maybe make it so that the scout has to be half way within the enemy's range to be automatically attacked rather than requiring manual targeting by the player so that the feature is still useful against the AI.

[mimesot]

posted on February 13th, 2010, 10:36 am

Last edited by mimesot on February 13th, 2010, 10:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

Further to that great idea i'd recommend i'd recommend enlarged sensor-ranges for uncloaked scouts.

A feature i really promote is a "retreat on ..." to a specific point that's being set like the production-output. A scout  which is set to "retreat when ememy closes in" would do the job perfectly.

posted on February 13th, 2010, 3:45 pm

By 'Stealth Mode', I'm assuming you're reffering to Grey Mode?

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Grey_mode

posted on February 13th, 2010, 5:45 pm

By 'Stealth Mode', I'm assuming you're reffering to Grey Mode?

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Grey_mode

  Not really.  That's a power conservation mode it seems.  I'm talking about a mode (or even just a state of always-being) where the scouts would not be automatically targeted.  That way they could be placed in certain areas and not simply be destroyed by passers-by before you can do anything.

  I dunno... Grey mode sounds fine.  Maybe the "Stealth Mode" could be a toggle that cuts engines and such but allows them to be not targeted automatically.

posted on February 14th, 2010, 12:23 am

Should work, grey mode is also used to avoid detection by reducing your energy output.

posted on February 14th, 2010, 12:46 am

yep, we have some similar ideas

posted on February 14th, 2010, 12:49 am

yep, we have some similar ideas

Yay!  I love hearing that.

  Would be great for Dominion and Fed Scouts to finally be practical to use later in the game.  Right now the Klingons and Rommies can always know where you are and what you're doing.

posted on February 14th, 2010, 2:29 pm

A grey mode ship is more difficult to detect, but not impossible to dedect. The time and efforts to detect such a vessel depends on the environment and distance to the enemy.

Far away from stars and other sources of light the only way of detecting such a vessel is comparing the star charts to the current view of the surrounding space (indirect proportional to the angular area of the ship to be dedected, which falls with the squared distance), or tachyon scan, which a normal ship is not capable of. In an enlighted environment grey mode is no great protection from detection, as the optical/infrared/...-scanners can most easily detect the reflected radiation.

Nevertheless you can possibly paint a scout pitchblack over next to all frequencies and cool down it's hull to thermal equilibrium with the oter space and make sure that you are not in line of sight with any notable sourve of radiation (esp. light reflected by other objects in the near vicinity).

We could also think about a camouflage for a scout within an asteroid field, which makes grey mode effective in there. 

Could something like a dependency of environment be implemented?

posted on February 14th, 2010, 6:20 pm

It's funny because in all seriousness that's kind of silly.

  If Star Trek scanners can detect tiny particles and blah blah blah, you'd think their scanners could still detect: "Sir, there's a Volkwagon Beetle-sized hunk of metal sitting off our starboard nacelle".

  Is there any power coming from it?

  No.

  Well ... get out the 5-Iron and let's smack it!

posted on February 14th, 2010, 6:36 pm

Pretty -äh-  right.