New types of ships

from GalCiv2 Forums
I love Galciv II. I have finished a few games so far and I would love to see these types of ships.

1. Stealth/Cloaking Ships.

Stealth ships would have the ability of being invisible on sensors. Cloak ships would be invisible on sensors and invisible visually. They would make great scouts that you could use to keep tabs on what your enemy is doing without having to worry about your ship being destroyed on sight. To balance these ships make then have little or no armament. That way you will not have a Cloaked fleet running around killing everything in sight. Perhaps limit them to a "small" hull size.

A tech improvement could be created where you can research different types of anti stealth sensors to put on your ships and starbases to detect stealth ships.

2. Q-Ships, Military ships hidden inside merchant hulls.

Imagine sending a ship to take out a freighter only to have the freighter shoot back and destroy your attacking ship. Would make attacking freighter traffic a little bit more interesting.

What do you guys think?
warfare
12,468 views 14 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Actually the second point is in the game, either if you equip your own freighters with weapons, or if you build the Galactic Privateer achievement which protects your trade routes, OR if you get a Yes on the vote for a global equip of guns on traders!!
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Cloaking is a very good idea, in fact why it isn't in the game now is unknown to me. Seems like a basic sci-fi tech...
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have a suggestion regarding this:

Instead of having a different type of sensor, just make it so it reduces the effectiveness of normal sensors quite a bit, and survey vessels less than normal as well. If there is a perfect counter, their use would be kind of marginal, since their timewindow for usage wouldn't be large. I agree about either limiting size or make the cloaking device take up a big percentage of the capacity of the ship, or you'd need extra devices the larger the hull size. Or as you say, make them unarmable.

Just a thought anyway.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Wasn't there a stealth/cloaked ship on the show Battlestar Galactica? I would love to see this idea in the game!
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Cloaking should not be in the game. All it would do is add a worthless 'sensor vs stealth' metagame. Given the ranges the ships fight at, are we really going for 'zomg can't lock weapons'? ST-ish cloaks are even worse from a thermodynamics perspective, and again useless against decent sensor tech. What's the point?
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Actually ECM is the same thing as stealth, practically speaking. ECM includes a broad range of technologies, including using false sensor data, stealth, static, hacking and a variety of other things all lumped together under one category for ease of use. "Cloaking" the way people usually think of it (IE Star Trek) is USELESS in space since starships that are close enough to see each other have no business shooting at each other. Just look up the stats for the Enterprise (any of them) some day - those phasers have a range of like 100,000 KM, and photon torpedoes are farther than that (because they're energy missiles, basically) - space missiles have ranges measured in LIGHT MINUTES. Go read the Honor Harrington books by David Weber, you'll see what I mean.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Having different tactics makes the game more enjoyable. I would love to use stealth ships in a recon role. Sensor ships are effective but they make perfect targets. Having mobile detection platforms will alert you to what your enemy is doing.

LordEttera, I just started reading the Honor Harrington series last week. Great books.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Realism doesn't have to be a factor here. Actually realism would really bog down the game; that whole faster than light thing. But additional metagames make for additional play. Think about how different basketball is with one (1) person versus five (5) people per team. The free-throw game, the three-point line all introduce additional elements that make the game interesting. Look at modern RTS's for inspiration on some of these elements. They gave up a lot of cookie cutter designs for more variability. It takes more effort to balance, but it makes for an infinately better game.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
1. How do we determine the difference between normal sensor range and "visual" range? Visual range could be just 1 parsec, and that would make some sense. But the component for stealth/cloak should be large and expensive. It wouldn't do to have invisible battleships roaming the galaxy.

2. A component that adds the ability to decrease the attack value of a ship (by having "pop-up" turrets, etc) would be interesting. It would be like the opposite of the planetary improvement that over-hypes your fleet strength.
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Wouldn't that be fun when the AI sicks it on you? (Hint: not so much so)


Yeah, it's another of those ideas that sounds really cool in YOUR fleet, but not the other guy's. Like planet-busting Death Stars.

I have enough to cope with, without swarms of cloaked enemy ships that I can't detect without a huge investment in additional sensor tech. It would also have to be very carefully balanced (or extremely expensive, as noted above), to prevent the player using it as an exploit with an early rush down that tech tree.
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I know that cloaking won't be in the game but I think it could have been cool......they could have made it a trade good like Xanthium Hull Plating....you could trade it to your friends and deny your enemies the advantage.
Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
There is seriously no need for #1. You can design a ship that can see an entire sector easily. There is no frikin reason to sneak around. And only reason for ships liek that would be to twink the hell out of AI.

#2, no reasona t all as well. There are ways of protectign your traderoutes as is.