Better stealth.

[Ze_PilOt]

I'm currently working on making a better stealth behavior.

For now, if a unit is losing LOS (line of sight) or radar/sonar coverage on another unit :

- it immediately stop firing at it.
- If an attack order was issue, it's removed (so the unit is not tracked under the fog of war).

Do you have any concern regarding this, or stealth in general ?

[Ze_PilOt]

One alternative, instead of removing the attack command, is to make the unit move to the last known position instead of stopping all is orders.

What do you think ?

[Kryo]

hm this is quite a big change. This could change a lot especially in air battles (if intercepting transports, bombers or ahwassa).

Though the idea is good. But should be done quite careful.

if you do it, then it should probably stop the unit totally. Cos if the unit walks to last known position, the player will think, it still follows the target, dont you think? That could be quite confusing. (but maybe it will be as confusing if the unit stops right where it stands, cos you have to search for it anyways...)

[Myrdral]

I like the way units currently behave when losing vision of their stealth target. That unit ceases to exist to them as soon as leaves their vision. I think it is up to the player to decide whether to move their units forward in pursuit once they lose their target. Stealth would lose much of its advantage in forcing opponent to micro a little more and maintain vision if you do this.

[Myrdral]

You may also get some undesirable behavior from units charging into enemy lines where they would stay put with the currect system. If a stealth unit leaves vision radius, then it may be best for the attacking unit to stay put and pick up another target it can see. Sure you commanded a specific attack on that unit, but as far as that attack command is concerned once that unit enters stealth it is presumed to be dead.

[pip]

I'm currently working on making a better stealth behavior.

For now, if a unit is losing LOS (line of sight) or radar/sonar coverage on another unit :

- it immediately stop firing at it.
- If an attack order was issue, it's removed (so the unit is not tracked under the fog of war).

Do you have any concern regarding this, or stealth in general ?

For me, that's the way stealth is supposed to work, if you mean losing LOS and radar coverage.

[Koecher]

I barely remember it was like this in Vanilla.

And, tbh, it was just a pain.
Its almost impossible to use any kinda bombers without having like hundreds of Ints/ASFs circling to absolutely prevent from losing it out of vision, what means the bomber wont shoot.

I understand your idea behind it, concerning land war with some cloak stuff inside. But since land wars are usually dynamic, including movement-orders (instead if direct attack orders), units very rarely shoot at cloaked enemy units.

Please don't do this change

[Ze_PilOt]

You can ground fire for bombers.

In fact, it would be rather easy to change the attack order to ground fire instead of attack (for air units only) if you lose track of your target.

Being able to target under the FoW defeat the whole purpose of stealth, and make cybran mobile stealth generators almost useless.

You have to also remember that air scouts are way cheaper than before now.

[Plasma_Wolf]

Seems like a very good idea. The choice between moving towards the latest known position and immediately stopping is easy for land: stop immediately (otherwise they might automatically walk into a death trap without even returning fire).

For naval it's exactly the same.

For air its a bit different. It'll not land at the place it was when it lost track of the enemy unit but letting it go back to the latest known position of the enemy is going to give the same possible problem as with land and naval: entering a death trap without even returning fire.

Getting the bomber to do some ground attack would be a good option too.

In the end though, it really depends on how well the player fighting against stealth is paying attention to the enemy units, which is just the point.

[Koecher]

I don't think groundfire would be a real alternative at this point.

You have to also remember that air scouts are way cheaper than before now.

Sure, but there is a verry huge difference between "hum, lets make 2 or 3 scouts to see whats going on" and "omg, i need a lot of scouts to absolutely never loose the vision to my target"

As I remember, in Vanilla, the Scouts were cheep as well. And Groundfire was also available. Nevertheless, Bombers were just a pain there. To watch a bomber just stop somwhere above the enemy AA, course you lost the target for 1 secound is just crap.