3.1PR - Romulan Cloaking Bug

[Anonymous]

posted on May 14th, 2007, 11:10 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on May 15th, 2007, 8:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

This may be nothing (i checked the forum and couldn't find any mention of it, but if it has been said before then sorry) but I've come to notice that when you use the Cloaking Generator special weapon (allowing your ships to fire while cloaked) and your ship fires on an enemy, all that side's ships and stations seem to suddenly see the cloaked ship and open fire. Worse, from that point on, even if you decloak and then recloak the ship that you used, the enemy will still chase and attack it as if it was decloaked! I checked the area when i was recreating the bug: there were no tachyon-equipped ships/stations nearby and my ship was definetly cloaked (it was on red alert so it opened fire itself but it definetly didn't decloak at any point).

Now I also tested it out on some NPC stations (controlled by an "AI Mission" team) and they didn't fire back, so this might just be a Skirmish AI only bug (i must admit i havent played humans on FO yet! ) but i thought i'd bring it up anyway just in case it was to do with the ship AI (the one that allows the ships to attack enemies themselves etc.) and not the Skirmish AI, as it stops the cloak generator being as powerfull as it was meant to be.

(btw, i vaguely remember this happening on Vanilla A2 aswell, if that's any help).

Thanks
T-Man

posted on May 14th, 2007, 11:28 pm

Its the first ive heard of it

posted on May 15th, 2007, 12:15 pm

This could be but I guess its just the AI that can see you. I noticed a funny phenomenon when playing against an AI. I flew one cloaked fleet into the enemy's base. A little time later the AI placed its fleet right in the middle of my cloaked fleet and waited for me to uncloak it. But i didn't  and just flew some parsecs away beside their base... oh wonder they followed my cloaked fleet to this point and waited for me to uncloak as if they were knowing of my fleet and just were restricted to open fire. try it out

posted on May 15th, 2007, 8:31 pm

better yet lead them into your bases defences

posted on May 15th, 2007, 10:29 pm

better yet lead them into your bases defences

Heh, suppose that always works.

posted on May 15th, 2007, 10:34 pm

you see turrets are the key.  launch a small offensive against the enemy to make him think you have few ships and lure him into your base.  then when his ships get chopped up by your turrets you uncloak your main force and smash his base

posted on May 16th, 2007, 1:09 am

Back to the opening statement... I have noticed as well that the special cloaking generator is completely useless, but only against the computer. I know it normally "sees" your ships, but as soon as you open fire while cloaked, AI ships will counterattack (without decloak) and you have no chance to win as no shields.... Quite irritating to loose around 20 warbirds to a few weak sauce akiras.

posted on May 16th, 2007, 1:17 am

it can be to your advantage.  just keep an armada right outside his base where he cant see and fly in a few cloaked ships.  then fly the cloaked ships back out drawing out his base defences.  then attack!

posted on May 16th, 2007, 1:21 am

Unfortunately I'm too prone using the whole brute force aspect of vanilla Armada (SP), and in FO I really only play with my buddies (Screams LAAAAAAAN part-ay!). But anywho, does this really work? AI must be even supider than I remember. Good thing the teams doing a whole revamp for V3

posted on May 16th, 2007, 1:33 am

It was caught in the nic of time too

posted on May 16th, 2007, 5:43 am

yep, the ai basically ignores cloak, you can see this too by puting a cloaked scout somewhere near the enemy base, soon a few ships will mass near the scout
thats a glitch in the armada2 basic ai routines. we are working to fix it

posted on May 16th, 2007, 9:01 pm

so that works in regular a2 aswell?

posted on May 16th, 2007, 9:33 pm

nttnt  : look what I found

Yeah A2 works the same way; just tested an old saved game. It's sorta like putting your finger against the glass in an aquarium and having the sharks follow it around: they can't bite it, but they sure as hell can see you!

posted on May 17th, 2007, 1:26 am

except you can get rid of the glass by unloaking and shooting the shark in the face...figuratively speaking of course.  thats animal cruelty after all