Winghelm

Join Date 07/2013

Feature Request: Stealth

Stealth stat for ships; techs, modules and racial abilities that modify it

Nice to see that Galactic Civilizations 3 sees introduction of new counter-opposing combat stats for ships: accuracy and evasion. However, ever since GC2 times I've been wanting to suggest adding a steath ability that would be playing off against sensor stats of other ships and would add a new cool edge to ship handling and military displacement outside of direct combat.

How could it exactly work? Very simple (in case we're scaling it with sensor stats): every point in stealth decreases the range at which non-allied sensors will show our ship. Let's say our ship has +2 stealth and enemy ship has +5 sensor range: thus enemy ship will be able to see us only at the distance of 3 (as if we had 0 stealth and enemy had +3 sensor range).

I hope you'll like this idea and I suppose it isn't something really hard to implement in the game. This ability will of course require adding technologies that will unlock corresponding ship modules and even provide a global stealth bonus to all your ships, plus a global bonus or penalty that can be chosen during civ creation.

Just think of all those new opportunities to sneak up on your enemies to strike into the weak spots or just evade combat when you don't need it, and the elevated importance of sensors in general and AWACS-like monitor ships with lots of sensor modules that will be necessary to counter enemies with high stealth.

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Stealth is a great idea. I think however they will probably save it for DLC or an expansion.

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ForesterSOF

Join Date 10/2013

+32

If at all.

They have talked about it many times mentioning why not.

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Brad said in the last stream he did not plan to add stealth. He stated on how GalCiv1 had the feature but that coding for GalCiv3 would be a nightmare for the AI if stealth was in the game.

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Can you a bit elaborate on this and give a link to that stream?

Also I haven't played GC1 so I don't know how stealth was made there. Is it different from what I propose because my suggestion isn't something that makes ships totally invisible, just decreases their detection range

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ForesterSOF

Join Date 10/2013

+32

they are on You Tube.

May 1 has Brad saying why no and many in the past Paul says basically the same thing.

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androshalforc

Join Date 03/2007

+62

every point in stealth decreases the range at which non-allied sensors will show our ship. Let's say our ship has +2 stealth and enemy ship has +5 sensor range: thus enemy ship will be able to see us only at the distance of 3 (as if we had 0 stealth and enemy had +3 sensor range).

except this would make sensor ships even more powerfull . by taking a cargo hull and removing all engines/ life support you can make a ship turn one with like 30+ sensor range.

as the game goes further i can build larger versions of those ships with stronger sensors by mid game i could see them having well over 100 tiles of sensor range. since they dont need to move i dont need to worry about range/speed while your stealth ship still does i can always have a stronger sensor ship then you can make a stealth ship

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Quoting androshalforc,

reply 6

except this would make sensor ships even more powerfull . by taking a cargo hull and removing all engines/ life support you can make a ship turn one with like 30+ sensor range.

as the game goes further i can build larger versions of those ships with stronger sensors by mid game i could see them having well over 100 tiles of sensor range. since they dont need to move i dont need to worry about range/speed while your stealth ship still does i can always have a stronger sensor ship then you can make a stealth ship

Good point, there are multiple ways around it.

First off an obvious solution is to make stealth a field that can cover a whole fleet. Let's say stealth bonuses of different ships in the fleet don't stack, then you can build a dedicated stealth field ship that carries nothing but stealth field modules - same possibilities as with your sensor ship would apply, the only difference being it'll probably need some engines. If stealth bonuses stack, it's even easier and you can have either a dedicated ship or standard ships with stealth modules that have cumulative efficiency when grouped together.

Another way around is to make the equation more complex and nerf detection. Let's say that 5+ tiles away stealth efficiency increases with geometric progression - thus you will need a network of detector ships rather than a single OP one.

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My solution to this is that they should add special sensors that have a stealth detection range of about 5tiles. It should be limited to one Sensor per ship.To balance this, stealth fleets would need 75% of their movement points to attack while cloaked, which would add a bonus during combat.

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Maybe a simple solution would be to instead of having ships completely invisible unless you have the correct techs to see them. You just add like a hidden sensor penalty to all ships within viewing distance of the Stealth ship.

So basically what I mean is, you might have a Sensor boat that can see 20 hexs, but then have a Rule set that you cant see any ship in Stealth unless your within 3 or 4 physical hexes of the ship. And even maybe you could add something similar to how the shipyard "anchor" works, where while a ship is moving it cant be in Stealth, and then it takes one turn to become Stealthed once its not moving.(Is Stealthed even the right word? keeps being flagged as a mistake, anyway..) Then if it moves again its not invisible. That way instead of having hundreds of ships running around sneaking up on planets and such, they can be used as more of a Ambush mechanic
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Anyway to answer your questions before on why they decided not to add it.

-In general people tend to get upset when the AI stealths up on a player, they feel cheated and angry.
-The AI either wouldn't be able to easily defend against Stealth, as even a normal player couldn't, especially on larger maps. And when the AI didnt see you people would complain about the AI being "stupid" even know its not its fault as it couldn't see the ship. Or if the AI could see the ships, people then complain about the Ai "cheating" even if it had the techs.
-Then you have the problem of "well we have to add techs and things to counteract the stealth.. But then if you start adding counters to it then what's the point of having it if everyone can just see the ships anyway. Stealth would be so powerful everyone would use it and also get all the techs to counter it, so it starts to loss its usefulness.
-What happens when you try and move a non Stealth ship onto the tile of an opponents Stealth ship, does it just attack them, do they unstealth.

There are probably more reason and the devs did explain it better, but that's what i remember off the top of my head.

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Quoting 00zim00,

reply 9

-In general people tend to get upset when the AI stealths up on a player, they feel cheated and angry.

I don't really see the problem here.

Quoting 00zim00,

reply 9

-The AI either wouldn't be able to easily defend against Stealth, as even a normal player couldn't, especially on larger maps. And when the AI didnt see you people would complain about the AI being "stupid" even know its not its fault as it couldn't see the ship. Or if the AI could see the ships, people then complain about the Ai "cheating" even if it had the techs.

Regarding the fact that most of your attacks focus on operations deep inside enemy territory, the ai could deploy detection ships (with about 4-5tile detection range) in areas it classifies as "important". Possesing stealth tech should trigger counter research in this area, since you can actually see the techs of the enemy in the diplomacy screen.

Quoting 00zim00,

reply 9

-Then you have the problem of "well we have to add techs and things to counteract the stealth.. But then if you start adding counters to it then what's the point of having it if everyone can just see the ships anyway. Stealth would be so powerful everyone would use it and also get all the techs to counter it, so it starts to loss its usefulness.

I suggest adding stealth detectors with about 4-5 tiles range, limited to one per ship. In contary stealth ships (when cloaked) would need to have 75% of their movement points to attack, so they need to close the distance before attacking, while still retaining their usefulness when used right. To prevent stealth spam, i would suggest that stealth devices cost

strategic ressources like 3 thulium per device, so stealth ships are extremly expensive but have the ability to change the course of an entire war, if used correctly.

Quoting 00zim00,

reply 9

-What happens when you try and move a non Stealth ship onto the tile of an opponents Stealth ship, does it just attack them, do they unstealth.

This should trigger a battle with an combat advantage for the stealth ship, since the enemy is "suprised" spotting you.

This way, one could implement balanced stealth with only adding 2 new modules and without making huge changes to the game.

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