Cloaking, Blocking, and Storms
 

Some questions for the experts, just to get things clear:

1. Will a ship/fleet (cloaked or uncloaked) block a foreign cloaked ship/fleet from passing through the Inside warp point (both ships are in the same system, and the foreign ships are trying to exit)? What if a storm nebula is involved?

2. Will a ship/fleet (cloaked or uncloaked) block a foreign cloaked ship/fleet from passing through the Outside warp point (your ships are sitting on the exit side of the warp point that the foreign ships are trying to pass through)? What if a storm nebula is involved on your side?

3. If I know my foe is (cloaked) hiding in a Red Storm, how can I engage them, since the storm blocks all sensors? Will sending an attack force into the storm instigate combat under any circumstances?

4. From what I understand, there is no way to "see" through a red storm. What is the sensor level needed to "see" through all other storms and storm nebulas? Is it sensor level 1, or is it different for each type?

Thanks!
Stone Mill

[ April 09, 2003, 21:26: Message edited by: Stone Mill ]

Re: Cloaking, Blocking, and Storms
 

Combat will occur if and only if either side can see ANY of the other's ships.

Red nebulae are level 5, and the only way to engage an enemy hiding in there is to Stellar manipulate the system, and destroy the nebula.

The other nebulae / storm systems have varying levels of cloaking, from 1 to 4. It is colour dependent in the unmodded game, check systemtypes.txt for details.
(Storm X.bmp corresponds to a storm with level X cloaking)

Re: Cloaking, Blocking, and Storms
 

Note that units, even if they can see the enemy, won't initiate combat if they themselves are all cloaked.

Also, combat does not block strategic movement - the results of combat may slow/stop/destroy units, of course.

Finally, damaging storms do seem to be able to stop ships, either by destroying means of propulsion, or by simply clearing orders, although I'm not entirely sure what the criteria are for this to happen. Storm damage is like mine damage, though - it only occurs when entering, so units already present in the storm or minefield won't be hurt if they just remain there.

PvK

Re: Cloaking, Blocking, and Storms
 

Ah... thanks. But will their path be blocked or will they pass through the point if combat does not occcur?

I have seen mixed things in simultaneous games; sometimes it appears that a ship's path is denied when there is a cloaked ship on a point (that they can't see).

[ April 10, 2003, 00:17: Message edited by: Stone Mill ]

Re: Cloaking, Blocking, and Storms
 

A cloaked and unseen ship should never block a path.

If during simultaneous movement, ships/units of an empire you don't have non-aggression or better with move onto a warp point, and your ships are following orders to move to a destination on the other side of the warp point, then your ships will stop or try to use another path. You can get around that by giving specific orders to move through the warp point in question, in which case they will try to move through no matter what is in the way.

PvK

Re: Cloaking, Blocking, and Storms
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Unfortunately, this is not true for ships - or is there a way to prevent cloaked ships from engaging everything they see?

Re: Cloaking, Blocking, and Storms
 

I'm pretty sure it is still true. The only case they will fight is if something else causes a combat in the sector.

PvK

Re: Cloaking, Blocking, and Storms
 

Strange. I had a cloaked Scoutship flying into a quadrant and it attacked the sattelites on the other side of the warp point. I'm pretty sure the AI opponent I was scouting didn't have any detection technology then.
Thought it was a normal bug-feature that I attacked and didn't investigate further. Will check it out more next time.

Re: Cloaking, Blocking, and Storms
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Unfortunately, this is not true for ships - or is there a way to prevent cloaked ships from engaging everything they see?</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Did this change in a recent patch? An entirely cloaked fleet did not used to initiate combat. I'm pretty sure you had to uncloak at least one ship for combat to occur.

Re: Cloaking, Blocking, and Storms
 

I think it may also happen if you have the Cloaking minister turned on--he likes to decloak at the worst times. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif