Surviving the "Stealthy Stage"

[Aub]

There is a stage in every game (almost every - unless you play full tech) that starts when Stealth Armor is discovered (it's only Armor 4, and Armor is one of the cheaper techs).

At this point, getting scanners that detect cloaked ships is ways ways off. Mines are cheaper to discover, but they, too, cost 100K r.p., and then it takes a lot of time and effort to deploy them. The again, mine warhead I does not go through scattering armor...

So we have a stage of the game when warp point defense is impossible, and fleets are useful only for attacking. In other words, that's when everybody is extremely vulnerable.

Of course things get a little easier if you took a special trait like temp or psychic. But, must I really take one to survive?

Any hints on how to survive this "dark stage"? Is it really unbalanced here (towards offence, reducing the defense to guesswork at best), or do I miss some effective counter-strategies?

Thanks -- Aub

[Deathstalker]

This depends on wether it is a med or low tech start game. If med tech start than stealth armor shows up REAL early, low tech is costs more as Chemestry must be researched first. My own solution is to go for Military Science II as fast as possible, then develop the....the....brain fart, can't remember what it is called but Military Science 2 gives you access to the tech that allows you to do Fleet Training and Ship Training facilities (think it is advanced Military science???ugh 4am, can't think), but Hyper Optics is the 4th level of this, and all you need is Hyper Optics I and you can see stealth armor ships (launch sat with Hyper Optics I component, 1 per system)...This IMO is much cheaper than going for Grav sensors or others, plus you get the Training facilities, wich are necessary to survive.

Otherwise, go for mines as soon as possible.

Other strategies I find good are to have Weapon Platforms and Sat's on planets, or go for Stealth Armor yourself!

ok, time for bed

[geoschmo]

Until you get sensors, concentrate more on defending your planets than the warp points. Keeping a couple ships in orbit around your homeworld is a good idea. You shouldn't be that far behind your opponent economically, so it's not like he's going to come into your home system with a huge fleet of stealth ships. What he could do though is send a couple. And even a couple ships can do a lot of damage against an undefended homeworld. I know from experience on both ends of that equation.

Geoschmo

[golf_prez]

I went to SEIV and created a new game and created a couple of ships with ONE Stealth Armout Lv1.
I moved them into an enemy system and then took control of the enemy to see if I could "see" the ships...

I could!! I am not sure how you contruct a ship to be "cloaked" with armour... do you need a certain number?? certain lvl of armour??

Any comments please? Thanks!

[Aub]

You need to "Cloak" this ship just as you'd cloak a ship with a cloaking device. There are two buttons on the main toolbar, "Cloak" and "Decloak". Cloaked ships appear with a dotted circle around them.

I would assume that with the stealth armor claoking means stopping translating your identification signals, cutting engine emissions etc.

[capnq]

I suspect that having to "turn on" cloaking armor is due to game mechanics. If cloaking armor was always "on", you'd never be able to retrofit those ships, because cloaked ships don't show on the Retrofit/Scrap list.

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Cap'n Q
My first mod! Hypermaze quadrant
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

[Hotfoot]

I was entirely unaware of needing to cloak ships with stealth armor. Most interesting, but then I'm still learning the finer points of the tech tree. I got cloaking devices long before I got upgraded armor. I would imagine that a ship with both stealth armor and a cloaking device would use the higher of the two stealth values...but imagine if it could be modded such so that using both together created a state of cloak between the current maximum for ships and the natural level of minefields.

Of course, you'd have to modify sensors to cope, but that's always the case, isn't it?

I should find out how that techmod is coming along. That and the latest patch should keep me busy for about a year or so.

-Hotfoot
"Okay, so I'm epic scale..."

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L* GdY $? Fr? C--- S* T? Sf* Tcp- A++ M>M+ Mp!>Mp* RHP!>RV Pw Fq ND? Rp+ G++ MM++

[golf_prez]

quote:

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Originally posted by Aub:
You need to "Cloak" this ship just as you'd cloak a ship with a cloaking device. There are two buttons on the main toolbar, "Cloak" and "Decloak". Cloaked ships appear with a dotted circle around them.

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ahhh!!!! I never even thought about using that button (duhh!) thanks!

[Baron Munchausen]

Heh...

This was a problem for me at the very start of beta testing. I didn't know you had to 'activate' the stealth armor either.

Now if there could just be some switch for active EM sensors and they could be made mutually exclusive with cloaking...