Stealth Missiles

[Prae (OP)]

My suggestion is to allow races to use signature reducing or other stealth tech to make missiles harder to detect.  It could be balanced by including 'stealth tech' in the same way 'reactors' and other missile components are included (agility, warhead size, etc. ) And would be balanced based on the strength of the technology versus the size you need to use it.  The gameplay implications would, I believe, something like this:

Race A is facing an opponent with very good PD weaponry, and it's hard for their missiles to crack through the shield.  They could choose to invest in 'stealth' missiles, which would be a larger size or not as efficient as their regular ship-killers, but would have the bonus that they can penetrate much deeper into Race B's missile shield.  The downsides for Race A are that 1.  The missiles would be much more expensive to produce, given the engine signature or other stealth technology included, and miniaturized to fit on a missile.  2.  A magazine would hold fewer stealth missiles, due to the increased size to have a worthwhile effect OR existing missile effectiveness (agility, speed, etc) would be reduced to make room for the stealth component on the normal missile they use.

This technology has some real-life parallel.  The best instance would be submarines during World War 2 adopting electric motors for torpedoes, making them harder to detect by ships.

[Steve Walmsley]

My suggestion is to allow races to use signature reducing or other stealth tech to make missiles harder to detect.  It could be balanced by including 'stealth tech' in the same way 'reactors' and other missile components are included (agility, warhead size, etc. ) And would be balanced based on the strength of the technology versus the size you need to use it.  The gameplay implications would, I believe, something like this:

Race A is facing an opponent with very good PD weaponry, and it's hard for their missiles to crack through the shield.  They could choose to invest in 'stealth' missiles, which would be a larger size or not as efficient as their regular ship-killers, but would have the bonus that they can penetrate much deeper into Race B's missile shield.  The downsides for Race A are that 1.  The missiles would be much more expensive to produce, given the engine signature or other stealth technology included, and miniaturized to fit on a missile.  2.  A magazine would hold fewer stealth missiles, due to the increased size to have a worthwhile effect OR existing missile effectiveness (agility, speed, etc) would be reduced to make room for the stealth component on the normal missile they use.

This technology has some real-life parallel.  The best instance would be submarines during World War 2 adopting electric motors for torpedoes, making them harder to detect by ships.

We already have cloaking devices and one of the tech lines is making them smaller. It would not be internally consistent to allow large ships and missiles to have cloaks, but not small ships. Of course, I could change the overall cloaking mechanics to remove any size restrictions which would solve that problem.

Secondly, there is a minimum size for sensor detection. Anything missiles smaller than size 6 are classed as size 6 for the purposes of detection, so reducing the sensor signature wouldn't help unless this rule was also changed. That potentially opens up some wider issues with the sensor model, so I don't want to mess with that - at least until all the other recent changes are properly play-tested.

[Prae (OP)]

Could do a modification of the cloak tech, maybe? I'm not sure how that functions, I've never played with it myself, but from what little I know, it'd keep you from having to re-write the engine size sensor rules as-is?

[nuclearslurpee]

Could do a modification of the cloak tech, maybe? I'm not sure how that functions, I've never played with it myself, but from what little I know, it'd keep you from having to re-write the engine size sensor rules as-is?

Cloaking tech in Aurora has the sole effect of reducing a ship or object's active sensor signature. For example, a 100-HS ship with 75% cloaking would have an active signature of 25 HS. Given that, there's not really an allowance for cloaks that make a missile look smaller than 6 MSP (15 tons) since that is the minimum object active signature in Aurora for game balance reasons (trying to spot a 1-MSP missile with RES-1 sensors would be an exercise in futility otherwise).

[Jorgen_CAB]

I think that stealth technology could do with some changes as well in the future. I don't generally think that stealth is worth the research for the rather minimal impact it will have on the game. Stealth probably need to scale better on ships so it make sense to put stealth on even larger ships or it is not really worth investing in it, in my opinion.

[kilo]

I think that stealth technology could do with some changes as well in the future. I don't generally think that stealth is worth the research for the rather minimal impact it will have on the game. Stealth probably need to scale better on ships so it make sense to put stealth on even larger ships or it is not really worth investing in it, in my opinion.

Stealth can be handy on scouts. On warships, it is oftentimes a waste of displacement. The enemy does know where you are when you intend to fire due to the fact that an active sensor lock is always required. At that point the enemy should either extend the distance to run the incoming weapons dry or close to get a target lock himself. In beam combat stealth is completely irrelevant.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I think that stealth technology could do with some changes as well in the future. I don't generally think that stealth is worth the research for the rather minimal impact it will have on the game. Stealth probably need to scale better on ships so it make sense to put stealth on even larger ships or it is not really worth investing in it, in my opinion.

Stealth can be handy on scouts. On warships, it is oftentimes a waste of displacement. The enemy does know where you are when you intend to fire due to the fact that an active sensor lock is always required. At that point the enemy should either extend the distance to run the incoming weapons dry or close to get a target lock himself. In beam combat stealth is completely irrelevant.

Yes... but not when considering the investment in resources you need, that research is much better invested in better sensors and engine technology or just about anything else really.

The very limited use of stealth is simply not really worth it... especially since scouting is so effective in small platforms who also is very cheap. Stealth platforms rarely is cheap, neither in research nor in actual costs.

Stealth in it's current form does not give you much advantage in the game for it to be really worth using... that is why I think the mechanic needs an overhaul so it become useful.

Perhaps make it so ships become nearly impossible to find but also at the same time give some other negative drawbacks... this could make it interesting for entering into systems undetected for example. Make stealth a charge based system so it can only be used a finite number of times and a finite time limit but nearly impossible to find. While under cloak you also can't use anything but passive sensors, no fire-controls can be activated either, but you can't be hit either.

If a cloak is activated while an opponent have a you under active sensor and identified you the cloaking will fail... so you can't just disappear if detected and you can't use the cloaking device all the time either.

This would make cloaking actually interesting mechanically, just reducing the sensor detection size really have limited use in the game. While I think such a mechanic can still remain... there could be both stealth and cloaking technology, stealth need to be MUCH cheaper and work more like stealth for engines and not take up extra space on ships. Cloaking need to be something else and much more powerful as well as investment into research.

Stealth could just make armour cost more, so stealth work more like engine stealth. The armour have stealth abilities and you want less armour on stealth ship or they become very expensive, so shields are probably a good idea for stealth ships rather than armour.

[Steve Walmsley]

I agree that stealth needs a major rework at some point.

[Ragnarsson]

Stealth could just make armour cost more, so stealth work more like engine stealth. The armour have stealth abilities and you want less armour on stealth ship or they become very expensive, so shields are probably a good idea for stealth ships rather than armour.

Or perhaps, as stealth in-game is tied to engines, the attribute could confer a large speed limitation. Be fine for a scout to move about slowly, and it makes sense in-game as an emissions control requirement, but if you used it on a warship you'd be giving yourself a massive disadvantage in any engagement.

[Warer]

Stealth could just make armour cost more, so stealth work more like engine stealth. The armour have stealth abilities and you want less armour on stealth ship or they become very expensive, so shields are probably a good idea for stealth ships rather than armour.

Or perhaps, as stealth in-game is tied to engines, the attribute could confer a large speed limitation. Be fine for a scout to move about slowly, and it makes sense in-game as an emissions control requirement, but if you used it on a warship you'd be giving yourself a massive disadvantage in any engagement.

Maybe some kind of toggle that makes the ship fully invisible/very close to it but disables shields and limits engine output by some kind of ratio based on the size of the ship? For every 20HS -500kps when it's active and -100 when it's off.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Stealth could just make armour cost more, so stealth work more like engine stealth. The armour have stealth abilities and you want less armour on stealth ship or they become very expensive, so shields are probably a good idea for stealth ships rather than armour.

Or perhaps, as stealth in-game is tied to engines, the attribute could confer a large speed limitation. Be fine for a scout to move about slowly, and it makes sense in-game as an emissions control requirement, but if you used it on a warship you'd be giving yourself a massive disadvantage in any engagement.

It could still be very powerful on a warship for surprise attacking someone at close range... it certainly would make beam weapons more powerful. Cloaked ship would act more like submarines which I like the sound of... the cloak is sort of submerging the ships into the void where it is hard or nearly impossible to detect.

Cloaking and stealth should be two different types of abilities, stealth is just reducing your active sensor detection size while cloaking give you a very different ability not related to either active nor thermal sensors at all. You then could have "sonar" technology... but now we are looking at beam range detection ranges for finding stuff where size really is not an issue. This would also make it possible to jump into a system even beyond sonar range depending on how the mechanic would work. But you would need a specialized jump engine and cloak for it to work so not likely to jump entire fleets and be undetected.

But any mechanic that can potentially be used for raiding and smaller attacks deep into enemy territory would be fun. Although, we would also need a mechanic that can extract ships as well as insert them into enemy territory for it to really work.

[jatzi]

My suggestion is to allow races to use signature reducing or other stealth tech to make missiles harder to detect.    It could be balanced by including 'stealth tech' in the same way 'reactors' and other missile components are included (agility, warhead size, etc.   ) And would be balanced based on the strength of the technology versus the size you need to use it.    The gameplay implications would, I believe, something like this:

Race A is facing an opponent with very good PD weaponry, and it's hard for their missiles to crack through the shield.    They could choose to invest in 'stealth' missiles, which would be a larger size or not as efficient as their regular ship-killers, but would have the bonus that they can penetrate much deeper into Race B's missile shield.    The downsides for Race A are that 1.    The missiles would be much more expensive to produce, given the engine signature or other stealth technology included, and miniaturized to fit on a missile.    2.    A magazine would hold fewer stealth missiles, due to the increased size to have a worthwhile effect OR existing missile effectiveness (agility, speed, etc) would be reduced to make room for the stealth component on the normal missile they use.   

This technology has some real-life parallel.    The best instance would be submarines during World War 2 adopting electric motors for torpedoes, making them harder to detect by ships. 

We already have cloaking devices and one of the tech lines is making them smaller.   It would not be internally consistent to allow large ships and missiles to have cloaks, but not small ships.   Of course, I could change the overall cloaking mechanics to remove any size restrictions which would solve that problem. 

Secondly, there is a minimum size for sensor detection.   Anything missiles smaller than size 6 are classed as size 6 for the purposes of detection, so reducing the sensor signature wouldn't help unless this rule was also changed.   That potentially opens up some wider issues with the sensor model, so I don't want to mess with that - at least until all the other recent changes are properly play-tested. 

It could be something that doesn't actually reduce the sensor signature of the missile or anything, it just acts as a modifier to the hit chance for AMMs and maybe PD systems.   That being said with your new decoy stuff it might be irrelevant that way.  Maybe it could be a very late game tech that makes decoys more effective in the hit chance calcs.  The idea there being the stealth tech makes the actual missile harder to see/target while the decoys ya are decoys and are very easy to target lol

[Scandinavian]

If we don't want to mess with the sensor model, stealth could be implemented as a malus to the tracking time bonus to hit (to simulate that you are only spotting them later than you would according to the sensor model.

[Xanithas]

If we don't want to mess with the sensor model, stealth could be implemented as a malus to the tracking time bonus to hit (to simulate that you are only spotting them later than you would according to the sensor model.

Sadly I feel that doesn't really give you much of as advantage to justify the cost unless it also gave the enemy a accuracy penalty due to the poor tracking.

In a more complex solution I would suggest that the ships stealth value is compared to the predicted sensor range of the detecting ship and have the detecting ships sensors drop the track every X increment where X is a function of the stealth value VS the detecting sensor resolution and range. higher resolution sensors lose the track for more increments simulating the lower fidelity and lower resolution sensors will hold the track more firmly thus having less increments where the track is lost. I would run this in parallel with the already per-existing mechanic of the ships stealth field lowering the ships signature making this extremely effective against ships without a low resolution sensor. This way a stealth ship has some play against anything it encounters, either allowing it to move in closer to attack relying on the enemy being unable to hold a firm track to lower the number of times it gets attacked or to break contact with someone hunting it in the periods of tracking loss. I would also suggest that this should be massively dependent on the range from the detecting ship, with the closer the stealth ship is the less increments its undetected trending toward a point where the ship is always detected no matter how crappy the sensor. This could also be modified by the training level of the crew as a more skilled operator might detect the stealth ship more often then a poorly trained one.