Stealth Armor: Unbalanced

[Mark Walton]

I was thinking of putting "psionic training" in as a tech tree for any race - not as powerful as psychics, but making use of any "latent" abilities in the race. (Or creating technological equivalents). This was part of my Intel integrations. So one pside effect would be psi shields.

As for the psychic race sensors, I see these operating using a combination of Telepathy to detect enemy minds, ESP/remote viewing, precognition, and generally lucky guessing. (One of the interesting implications of real-world psychic research; how can you be sure which ability you are testing for, or whose ability you are really testing?)

[Beck]

quote:

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The only thing is you have to be careful not to make a racial tech cloak that is only defeatable by a racial tech scanner. Otherwise you have an "Uber-weapon". For example if Psychic cloaking device (Doesn't exsist, but easily moddable) is only defeatable by a Psychic scanner, and the only race that can have a pcychic scanner is another psychic race, then they would have an insurmountable advantage over non-psychic races. This would through throw the game totally out of whack.

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That is not entirely correct. Balance can be achieved by allowing each race an uber-weapon only defeatable by others of the same race. Then balance is achieved by each having an advantage others cannot defeat verses every weapon or component having a counter available to everyone. It is certainly tougher to set-up which is why you seldom encounter that type of balance. But given what the individual racial traits are supposed to mimic, actually makes more sense. It would certainly add to the depth of strategies in a multi-player game. Who do you ally with and ships with such weapons/components would be a valuable trading commodity.

[Q]

In SE III I always felt that cloaking was unbalanced stong. You had absolutely no possibility to see a cloaked ship. The only thing you could do was to prevent a ship entering a sector, where you had a tachyon scanner. Even minefields could be swept by cloaked minesweepers.
I believe every cloaking should be in principle be defeatable with the only execption may be of the mines. But I agree it should be harder to do: more different sensors needed; sensors that work only in a limited range and not for the entire system.

[geoschmo]

quote:

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Originally posted by Beck:


That is not entirely correct. Balance can be achieved by allowing each race an uber-weapon only defeatable by others of the same race. Then balance is achieved by each having an advantage others cannot defeat verses every weapon or component having a counter available to everyone. It is certainly tougher to set-up which is why you seldom encounter that type of balance. But given what the individual racial traits are supposed to mimic, actually makes more sense. It would certainly add to the depth of strategies in a multi-player game. Who do you ally with and ships with such weapons/components would be a valuable trading commodity.

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It sounds like what you are decribing is not a defense, but Mutually Assured Destruction. This makes sense to a point, but what about the players who prefer to play a race with no racial techs?

If the Psychics can build a cloak that you have no possibility of defeating, you cannot attack their ships. And you will be limited to standard cloaking devices which have counters available to everyone. You would reach a point in the game where you have no chance to stop the psychics, because you would not know where their ships were. While they could attack you with impunity.

Also, even if everyone is playing a race with some kind of uber-cloak, it then becomes simply a race to see who gets there first. I know the game is like that now in some respects, but this would appear to make it worse IMHO.

I think the cloaking system could be made much more varied and interesting by allowing different types of cloaks that would require specialized sensors to defeat. All I am saying is make sure that the sensors are available to everyone regardless of racial traits at some point. Make them more expensive to research if you wish, but they have to have some way to get them.

Geoschmo

[geoschmo]

IMHO all races shold be basically equal in tech terms in a high tech start. That is my definition of "balanced". Some races will have slight advantages over others at different points of the game in a non-high tech start, that is what it makes it so interesting. And some races will have advantages in some areas over other races, but be weaker in others. I like to call Space Empires a great big fancy game of "Rock, Paper, Sciccors." Nowhere is that more evident than in the area of cloaking.

What I think would be cool would be something like this. This is not all my idea, I am just trying to tie up some different ideas I have read from others. Each racial trait would have it's own special cloak. This would be defeatable by the same level of that race's sensor, but would require one level higher of a standard cloak sersor, (Hyper optics, Tacheyon sensors.) Once you get to the higest level of racial cloak, a player that doesn't have that racial tech would have to research a new branch that would give them a specialized sensor capable of defeating that specific racial cloak. In this way the racial techs would have an advatage, as they should, they paid a lot in racial points for that trait after all, but that by the end of the game it will have evened out over time and after a lot of research, as it should.

Examples: ( Remeber all sensors scan at a level one higher than their number)

Psychic Cloak, Psychic racial trait required. Personel trained in the ability of manipulation the sensory lobes of other intelligent races. Use of this tecnique can "cloak" a ship by affecting others awareness of it's presence. Also by means of telekenesis can affect mechanical and electronic equipment to the same effect. (This explains why it works on ships with master computers)

Psychic Cloak 1, can defeat Psychic Sensors at level 1, can defeat all other Sensors at a level 2.
Psychic Cloak 2, can defeat Psychic Sensors at level 2, can defeat all other Sensors at a level 3.
Psychic Cloak 3, can defeat Psychic Sensors at level 3, can defeat all other Sensors at a level 4.

Since the highest level of sensors scann at a level 4, at this point a Psychic Cloak 3 would be unbeatable by anything but a Psychic Sensor 3 (which scans at a psychic level 4). So we add a new tech area that is accesable by non-Psychic races.

Tech Area: Psionic Studies, research into the latent psychic abilities in all intelligent races. Concentration on devising tests to find individuals with greater than normal abilities and teqniques and devices for training and optimizing those abilities.

Component: Psionic Sensor. Personell trained in Psionic Studies and equipment used to focus and enhances their abilities. Cabable of detecting ships in the same system that are protected by a Psychic Shield. Ability: Equivalent to Standard Psychic Sensor of level 3.

Here's the catch, the Psionic Sensor only defeats Psychic cloaking. So if skip the standard sensors and go straight for the Psionic sensor, or you will be suseptable to standard cloaking, and Stealth Armor.

This could be done for all the racial traits with suficent mumbo jumbo. It actually wouldn't be all that difficult to mod in, but I agree the AI would have a heck of a time dealing with it.

Geoschmo

[ 12 December 2001: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Argh]

If y'all don't mind, I'm going to butt in. . .

This sort of back-and-forth about stealth has led me to what looks like a good compromise:

Every racial tech-tree should get. . . oh, I dunno, something like "Matter Detectors" or something. . . that is effective against *all* cloaking systems, but only at a limited range(say, range 2), and at a high level of expense. And they should get this tech pretty early. Ideally, this tech's maintenance requirements would make it impractical to use on ships, unless you *really* needed it.

All other cloaking systems should, ideally be set up in a grid of cross-effectiveness. . . so that, for example, Grav-Wave Detectors negate Gravity Cloaks, are able to detect ships with Gluon Flux Armor at a range of 4 spaces, and cannot detect ships with Phase Cloaks. I'd make it a perfect grid, so that, no matter *what* racial tech tree you picked, you'd have one race that was effectively invisible from you, if they chose to be so- all you'd have to do is trade for somebody else's technology, however, and you'd effectively negate their special advantage.

When designing a game system, I try to avoid unique or one-off systems as much as possible, unless I provide other ways to accrue a similar benefit. It'd very hard to design around a system where one race out of 8 has the unique ability to destroy stars, for example- it's such a potentially destructive ability that everything else would have to be cut back to compensate.

Stealth tech is definately one of those hard-to-balance items- not knowing with some precision where your enemies are is a recipe for disaster in a multiplayer game, unless you have an overwhelming advantage in terms of materiel and time. I can send a half-dozen smallish fleets around to your systems, and it's win-win- if I can't glass your planets, because you have sufficient(expensive) fleet cover, then I can get out of the system with minimal losses, because you can't see me. . .

[DirectorTsaarx]

I have another interesting idea to add to all this; it may have been mentioned before, but I'm too lazy to search for it.

(EDIT: the below speculations would require hard-code changes, not just modding /EDIT)

Instead of the absolute system of "sensor X defeats cloak Y", make it a percentage chance. For consistency & believability, higher-level sensors should have a 99% or 100% chance of defeating lower-level cloaks/stealth. But (as seen in many Star Trek episodes, both old & new), sometimes an experienced captain (or his experienced science officer) can find ways to detect cloaked ships. Which brings up the other part of the plan: ship experience (and maybe fleet experience) provide bonuses on the cloak/sensor percentages. So an experienced ship/fleet can use their stealth better, and an experienced ship/fleet can detect cloaked ships better.

That's the qualitative view; the quantitative view requires a bit of work for balancing, but maybe something like:

Sensor I: 100% chance to detect Level 2 cloak
50% chance to detect Level 3 cloak
25% chance to detect Level 4 cloak
0% chance to detect Level 5 cloak

Sensor II: 120% chance to detect Level 2 cloak
100% chance to detect Level 3 cloak
50% chance to detect Level 4 cloak
0% chance to detect Level 5 cloak

Sensor III: 140% chance to detect Level 2 cloak
120% chance to detect Level 3 cloak
100% chance to detect Level 4 cloak
50% chance to detect Level 5 cloak

If the sensor ship has experience, that counts as a direct bonus (e.g., 20% experience and Sensor II gives a 70% chance to detect a Level 4 cloak).

If the cloaked ship has experience, that counts as a direct penalty against the sensor (so that same 20% experience ship with Level 4 cloaking has a 70% chance of sneaking by a satellite with Sensors II).

Finally, the different types of cloaking have bonuses/penalties against different types of sensors. (The chart above is for when the sensor type matches the cloak type, e.g. Temporal vs. Temporal). So a Psychic Sensor would have a 20% penalty vs. Temporal Cloak, but maybe a 10% bonus against standard cloaking.

We could even get really tricky and apply bonuses or penalties for actions by the cloaked ship; like a bonus if the ship doesn't move, and a penalty if it moves more than 5 spaces in a single game turn. Even add bonuses & penalties according to size, just like the to-hit bonus/penalties.

As Geo points out, this would give the AI fits, especially if it has to research multiple cloaking and sensor techs and build ships/satellites with all of the various components (or at least fleet together a set of ships, each with a different type of sensor). But it would be interesting...

[ 12 December 2001: Message edited by: DirectorTsaarx ]