stealth armor not working
 

I set up a game with two human players to experiment with diffent technologies. I created a ship with one unit of Stealth Armor III for one of the human players and sent into the system of the other human player. With cloaking turned on, the second human player could still see the ship.

Is this a bug? Do I need more than one unit of stealth armor? Any help will be appreciated.

Re: stealth armor not working
 

There are a number of issues associated with cloaing when used by the AI (it doesn't work). But for two human players, I never tested this. I assume you did not have the ships combined into fleets with non-cloaked ships.

[This message has been edited by Tampa_Gamer (edited 29 January 2001).]

Re: stealth armor not working
 

Nope, just a single ship. I wonder if there needs to be a certain amount of armor and I just didn't have enough. I was given access to the cloaking buttons and the ship was shown to be cloaked, but the second human player could still see it. Hmmmm.

Re: stealth armor not working
 

Did the other guy have sensors of any type in the sector? That would detect him right quick.
Also, it has been noted that stealth does not seem to work when coming through warp points. Maybe if you moved the ship around a little bit, they would be undetected again.

Re: stealth armor not working
 

Stealth armor only cloaks you in a couple of the 5 areas of visability

(Taken from the SE4 html manual - 'sight' section)

There are 5 sight types in the game called EM Active, EM Passive, Psychic, Gravitic, and Temporal. These are the technologies used to detect other enemy ships. All objects can be seen with these different sight types. Each object starts with a standard rating of 1 in EM Active sight, and zero in everything else. This means that they can detect other objects by sensing their Electro-Magnetic emissions. All objects in the game can be seen with a level 1 in any of the 5 sight types (unless the object is somehow obscured).

Objects can be obscured by natural or technological means. Obscuring is the idea of making something harder to see (sense). A cloaking device adds levels of obscuring to the object in certain areas. Storms and nebulae may also do the same. If an object is obscured, it can only be detected by that level of sight type or better.

For example, if I have a cloaking device which obscures both EM Active and EM Passive to level 3, then this ship cannot be seen by anyone. Unless, however, a player in the system has sensors with EM Active Level 3, EM Passive Level 3, Psychic Level 1, Gravitic Level 1, or Temporal Level 1. A sufficient sight level equal to or greater than the ship's obscuring ability, in any of the 5 areas, will allow you to see that ship

Cloaking is the activity of making your ship harder to detect. Any kind of cloaking will give you levels in different sight areas (obscuring). These levels are only in effect while the ship is cloaked, and are removed when the ship uncloaks. Cloaking can be given through a device, special hull materials, or just a natural part of the ship itself.

Sensors give your ships sight abilities to defeat cloaks. The more advanced your sensors, the more items you can "See" within a solar system. Since sight is always at a system level, you see ships within a system at the level of the best sensors of all of your ships within the system. If you have two different ships, with different sight abilities, you will "see" the system with both of them combined. Basically, if you have one ship in a system which can see cloaked enemy ships, then you can see cloaked enemy ships (of that level) everywhere in the system.


-----did you have ANY sensonrs in the sector? on ANY of your ships?----

Re: stealth armor not working
 

I didn't even create a ship for the second empire. I created the one ship and immediately moved it to the second player's system. Once I entered through the warp point, I moved to couple of spaces from his planet, then cloaked.

Maybe I should report this to Aaron?

Re: stealth armor not working
 

I'm a little confused about this. The first part says:

"All objects in the game can be seen with a level 1 in any of the 5 sight types (unless the object is somehow obscured)."

And later it says:

"For example, if I have a cloaking device which obscures both EM Active and EM Passive to level 3, then this ship cannot be seen by anyone. Unless, however, a player in the system has sensors with EM Active Level 3, EM Passive Level 3, Psychic Level 1, Gravitic Level 1, or Temporal Level 1. "

How do these 2 statements relate? What does it mean that "ALL objects can be seen with a level 1 in ANY of the 5 sight types" unless obscured? Does this mean that if something is cloaked to a level 3 EM that I can see it if I only have level 2 EM sensors BUT have Psychic Level 1?

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Cheers!
Jeff George

Re: stealth armor not working
 

Kimball, Write to Aaron about this immediately.

Aaron wrote to me today and said he is working on the cloaking for the next patch.

Re: stealth armor not working
 

I ran a similar simulation with a ship with 6 units of Stealth Armor III. Player two was still able to see the ships. Player two can even see the circle around the ship showing that it is cloaked.

Re: stealth armor not working
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by JeffG:

How do these 2 statements relate? What does it mean that "ALL objects can be seen with a level 1 in ANY of the 5 sight types" unless obscured? Does this mean that if something is cloaked to a level 3 EM that I can see it if I only have level 2 EM sensors BUT have Psychic Level 1?
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yes, I believe that is correct, JeffG.

The wierd thing is that except for the armor, all the cloaking techs work against all the categories, so there is little to distinguish gravitic sensors from, say, temporal ones.

It would be more interesting if there was more variations, say with some forms of cloaking being cheaper but more easily detectable, and others more expensive but effective.

Re: stealth armor not working
 

Does this happen only between human players? I was wondering since I have sent a ship w/stealth armor I into various AI empire systems and 1st contact wasn't initiated until it ran into a minefield.

[&lt;BOOOM&gt; "First Contact." "I'll say..."]

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--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

Re: stealth armor not working
 

The first simulation I ran I "added existing" human player. I forgot to add another human player, so I just turned a computer into a human. The results were the same either way.

Re: stealth armor not working
 

You need to "fix" stealth armor to make it work... it must be able to cloak in all areas at level 2, with improved cloaking in Active/Passive EM... otherwise it will not work in it's current form (since it can be detected by the default level 1 temp/psy/etc. sensors that all ships/planets have)

Re: stealth armor not working
 

Planets do not have a default psychic, gravitational, or temporal sensor ability unless you have researched the appropriate areas. If this were the case, then stealth armor would not work at all against the AI.
Anyways, I would still like a reason to research the different types of sensors, rather than just one line. Different sensors for different situations would be very nice.

Re: stealth armor not working
 

Unless the Mod Pack 1.0 changed something, here is the behaviour I observed in a couple of my games:

I build frigates with Solar Collector III's and Stealth Armour. I'll turn the cloak on and send them exploring. If they come upon a race I haven't met, I don't make "First Contact" with them until I turn off the cloak.

In one game, I built a cloaked planet destroyer. I moved this ship over an enemy world, uncloaked and destroyed the planet. Despite the huge armada guarding the planet, I didn't engage in battle.

This makes me think cloaking is working at least somewhat against the AI. Unless something in the Mod Pack 1.0 changed a setting to "fix" cloaking.

Re: stealth armor not working
 

We have not altered any settings for cloak or anything else, just the new races. So working or not, we have nothing to do with it. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif