Cloaking Planets. Here!!!

[Puke]

Im going to fire it up this evening, i need to make another installation of the game to keep better track of mods - but I will let you know how it looks as soon as i get it going.

sounds promissing though.

[Puke]

well it didn't work AT ALL. omnipotant mode is great for testing things, but let me tell you, it SUCKS for testing things that should be cloaking

looks cool, except for the not attacking thing... i did see some odd behavior though. my second test system (after i figured out the omnipotent-view thing) happened to be a black hole system, so ships kept being pulled out of orbit. heres the setup:

race A: two worlds, both build sector cloaking ships

race B: one world, builds a em scanning ship

race C: one world, builds a non scanning ship with a gun

so the scanning ship race can see all icons on the system map view, but when clicking on a cloaked planet sector it only has the ability to select the cloaking ship, the planet does not appear (however it sees the populaton bar on the map window) no attacking is possible.

the race with the cloaking stuffs can see all of its own stuff, both in the map window and detailed. no problem there.

the non-scaning race cant see the population bar, cant see the cloaked ship, and cant select the planet in the sector window (or anything for that matter)

BUT: when the scanning ship from race B is over the planet from race A with the cloaked ship sharing orbit, and the non-scanning ship from race C wanders in, race C gets to enter combat and everything shows up. i even went tactical and race C can look at the detailed view and components of everything as well.

neat, but needs work. I dont think the game has the right features yet to make this playable.

unrelated, I am thinking of makind some boarding torpedos though, one shot weapons that fire a seeker that does crew damage. I would post it, but its a real fast hack anyone could do.

[Puke]

if someone has time to test something else, I would like to know how planets look when they are in a sensor obscuring nebula. basically this requires that someone start several games with max races in a small ancient quad, until they get starting planets for one race in a nebula system that blocks sensors. and it needs to be done with omnipotant mode of, so it will take that much longer.

It would probably help to see if the sector ability this tech is being based upon functions the same way 'in nature' as 'in the lab.' id do it my self but im a lazy bastard.

if I have not said it before, kudos to Lupusman for hacking this one. It can be balanced if its stuck at the top of the cloaking or stellar manipulation tech tree (or both, if they fix the multiple dependancy thing) and size increased to be more similar to the ring/sphereworld components so that it will only fit on a starbase (or slightly smaller to fit on a baseship). it would also need to have a second ability that increases the maintnance cost of the ship / unit that mounts it by 100-500 percent or so, depending on how hard to own you want it to be.

of course, we need to figure out a way to attack the thing that does not require the cooperation of 2 races to accomplish. and i dont mean "build an enginless ship in the enemies cloaked sector, give it to an AI player as a gift, then attack the sector with your fleet."

[Lupusman]

Hmm, the thing about the two races to need to attack, that's pretty good. I didn't think about trying that.
I'm also waiting for the new patch because I thought I saw a fix that might affect this maybe.
I just enjoy pushing the limits of things, even if they don't work 100%, it's still cool.

[Lupusman]

Here it is:

9. Fixed - Planets that are hidden by storms or nebulae were still being drawn on the system map.

This fix just might make the planet image disappear with also.

[Puke]

well, I would just like to point out that after the patch, not only does it not improve our situation with the implementation of the planet hiding nebula feature, but it stops this lovely little mod from even working at all. in the least. not even a hint of cloaking ability. none. zipp. nada. squat. bo-diddley. Thanks for making the game mod-friendly, and thanks for CRUSHING MY LITTLE DREAMS!!

[Atrocities]

Puke, sorry to hear about that. But hey, run it by MM and ask them to consider adding the component in the next patch. Also ask them to add Orbital Research Facilities that can be constructed and will accept Research Facilities as components.

Thanks.