Stealth Armor: Unbalanced

[MegaTrain]

I think in the Gold release they've fixed it so when a cloaked minesweeper enters a mine field, it automatically decloaks to sweep.

Well, that's better than just being killed by the minefield, but it does expose you to attacks by other enemy in the sector.

[Mysterial]

quote:

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Originally posted by MegaTrain:
I think in the Gold release they've fixed it so when a cloaked minesweeper enters a mine field, it automatically decloaks to sweep.

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According to the history file, it only does that with known minefields. If you don't know about it your minesweeper(s) still get blown away.

About Stealth Armor: I don't agree about its cloaking ability, but I agree that there really isn't a way to counter the 5-15% to-hit bonus it gives.

[Mark Walton]

Personally I think all cloaking devices ought to give a to-be-hit penalty if there is a shortfall in the scanner tech.

So a target ship with level 4 cloak being fired on by a ship with level 2 scanners would get 2x the bonus.

The bonus should be scalable in settings.txt (say 5% default)

[Aub]

quote:

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Originally posted by Taqwus:
Hm. Are cloaked ships still prohibited from sweeping?

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Here is a different question: what occurs first, sweeping or combat? If I send a bunch of suicidal sweepers through a warp point, will they sweep before they get destroyed by the guarding ships?

IF the asnwer is "yes" then by sacrificing some sweepers first I can easily sneak a cloaked task force through a mined warp point (and then it can travel undetected and pick lightly defended tragets).

If the sweepers are destroyed before they sweep then the combination of some mines plus ships is very effective at stiopping a cloaked invasion.

[Rollo]

The answer is yes.

Mines are encountered (and swept) before combat. Any ships that survive the minefield will then be engaged by the defenders.

Rollo

[Master Belisarius]

"BUT: Stealth Armor is extremely cheap (and you gat it along with the regular Armor and other benefits), and once you get it you can do stealth attacks, which gives you a huge advantage. Counter-measures? They are rather expensive..."

The counter-measures in the early game, is very cheappy: Mines. I always go for stealth armor and mines in the early game.

[bearclaw]

Personally, I think that the whole issue of mines, cloak, sensors, and sight is off and should be adjusted. IMO, there is the potential for a massive range of different cloaks suspible to different sensors. As it stands, all the sensor types are identical. The only difference will be how someone chooses to research them. If each sensor type had it's own advantage over the others, and the research cost wasn't so high, I think that would add much more to the game.

Example: The Amorkrie have developed Reflective Hull (EM cloak), while the Drushock have developed Gravitic Displacers (Gravitic cloak). Meanwhile, the Terrans, in the middle, have researched Gravitic Sensors because of an ongoing Arms buildup with the Drushock while all the time, unaware of the Amorkrie presence.