Cloaking

I think it would create serious game balance issues. It's just too powerful.

I think cloaking was part of the defense line in the GCI tech tree, it would've been cool if they had found a way to put it in GCII. Like you said it could be used to limit opposing ships senors detection, to help with balance cloaking devices could be large and expensive making their use limited.

Sounds more like stealth the cloaking.

Sounds like a good idea, we probably wont get it though as the dev stuff I read said they tried to put it in but it couldn't be balanced. As a counter to sensors it could be cool in the future if we get multiplayer.

Stealth is a better term in my opinion. Perhaps compare it to sensor "jamming". Each "level" of jamming reduces an opponents sensor ability to detect the ship at range. The top power could be a cloaking device. Have it act as a top end jammer but also allows the ships to strike 1st even if they do not start the battle. Perhaps one ship per fleet would need these jamming pods to affect the entire fleet.

Or maybe there should be an "Anti-cloacking" technology line with various levels. Sort of like missle vs. missle defense.

This would mean that cloaking effectiveness would be dependant on how much anti-cloaking you are up against. If the Anti-cloaking is equal or greater than the level of Cloaking being used the ships are visible. If Cloaking level is higher than Anti-cloak then the range at which the sensors would pick up the ship is reduced.

Maybe math says it better:
(Say Cloak is "C", Anti-cloak is "A" and "E" will represent Effectiveness.)

C - A = E If E is zero or lower the cloak is useless because they have too great a level of detection end story.

If "E" is a positive value (meaning the cloaking has some effect) then reduce the level at which Sensors can locate the ship by "E".
Sensor range = Sensor range - E (if Sensor range is zero or less the ship can not be detected)

This would mean that a civilization that has a limited amount of Anti-cloak technology researched would be easier to sneak up on. It would also mean that really good sensors would "help" in finding a cloaked ship but wouldn't be as good as having the "Anti-cloaking" technology. This could be based on heat signatures or whatever...as in the crew isn't sure what's out there but they know something is or was there.

Imagine the terror of catching a glimpse of fleet and not being sure where it went...
Trying to scramble all your scout ships and zig zag through space hoping to catch the enemy before their troop transports come screaming into the atmosphere.

Just a thought on how it might be implemented without it being a sure thing and unbalancing the game. I'm not sure how they coded the routines for Sensors and whatnot so I have no idea how easy it is to put this kind of an idea into play.

Anyway, that's my addition to the brainstorm.

Regards

NT

I am too think we need cloaking tech (and move the "Spin Control" building there too).
The balance can be reached by huge size of the cloacking modules.

Right now it's insanely easy to create max ranged sensor "drone" very early and give yourself a huge "vision" for detecting the ship movements of everyone else (not as ridiculous as it was pre-last-patch where I could "watch" an entire medium map with ONE ship, but it's still pretty crazy).

So. the idea of being able to add cloaking modules to reduce opposing sensor ranges sounds interesting. So if your enemy can "sense" at 15pc maybe you reduce the range at which your ship can be detected to 10pc or something with a cloaking module or two.

I think it should even be possible to cloak heavily to make a ship all but invisible to sensors - but it should be both insanely costly and take up a lot of room (think MOO2 style) so that there would be an opportunity cost of lost combat effectiveness for a super stealth ship.

HOWEVER.

All of this is fun to discuss but pointless. The AIs do station ships around to monitor you but I've yet to see them make anything remotely close to my type of sensor ships (tiny ship with max 15pc sensor range) and it would be a hassle to code the AIs to consider cloaking modules in their ship design. There would seem to be little point in using cloaking modules yourself when the AIs aren't using sensing tech worth foiling!

You may have a point there about the AI.

I like the idea of it taking up lots of space. Perhaps it would mean your ship runs without much if any Armor or other defensive items.

Of course, if Stardock does come out with a multiplayer addon, you know having cloaking in there would be fun.

I want cloaking too. It is vital for any mod that attempts to implement mines, for one thing. For another, I agree that it is a "strategy game staple". I know that I could add cloaking to an existing AI, and Froggy has much more applied AI experience than I, so he could, too.

I remember fondly a duel against a friend in Command and Conquer in which my power plants were annihilated by stealth tanks. I love invading 10+ deep-behind-the-lines undefended provinces with a massive coordinated sneak attack in Dominions II using cheap, weak, stealthy scouts. And then again, I remember the computer ignoring stealth in Age of Wonders, making stealthy units worthless. In other words... it takes a good AI programmer. But fortunately, we have one So at least there's a possibility.