View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0002201 | AI War 1 / Classic | Bug - Other | Dec 29, 2010 12:19 am | Jan 7, 2011 10:41 pm | |
| Reporter | Fleet | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 4.057 | ||||
| Fixed in Version | 4.063 | ||||
| Summary | 0002201: Cloaked raptors like to stick around in my systems | ||||
| Description | I would not mind so much that a few want to hang out in my system after the AI attack has fizzled, but the interference with harvestor auto-rebuilding is annoying. It comes down to after every attack, me having to manually rebuild them. And I usually have other things on my mind. I inevitably have to search the wormholes with tachyon drones, after wondering why my economy was so weak. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | |||||
| related to | 0002260 | considering | Chris_McElligottPark | Decloaker-Spy (needs better name) |
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I had this happening in one game where a bunch of cloaked etherjets and eyebots would just wait for me to set up a command station on a planet and then leave the planet undefended, and they'd swoop in and destroy the command station. They wouldn't come out to play if there were any military forces around, so it was extremely annoying trying to trick them into attacking so I could destroy them with some fast ships, because as soon as the AI cloakers saw military ships they'd turn tail and run off to deep space to cloak and wait again. |
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Well of course, wouldn't you do the same thing if you had cloaked units? I've played with a guy who loved to toy with space planes in a similar way against the AI (waiting until the units move to a more abusable position, or reinforcements arrive). If we do it, why should we complain when the AI does it to us? I do agree though that auto-build logic needs to be tweaked some when it comes to cloaked units "lying in wait", instead of treating those like normal ships that are actively attacking. |
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Yeah, I do support the tactic of them lying in wait. *especially* if it actually works against me sometimes, that is the beauty of the tactics of AI, and it keeps things intersting To be clear, the issue I want addressed is the interference with the auto-building of harvesters, because otherwise I can go several minutes without a hole planets worth of harvestors and wonder why my economy is in the toilet. I do try and notice the indicator on the top, but I just plain don't always.. |
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If only there was some kind of long-range cloak tagger, something like the sniper turret, which could uncloak ships anywhere, but only one at a time. Kind of a cross between a tachyon drone and a sniper turret. It would also make an interesting unit for the AI, to keep scouting in the mid to late game non-trivial. |
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The AI already has the Counterspy, I suppose the human option would be a high level mil command or a tachyon warhead. |
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I don't support the tactic of 5 or 6 cloaked ships lying in wait. It's tedious, aggravating, and micro-tastic to try to hunt them down or drag them out without either unlocking Decloakers or spending AIP to deploy a tachyon warhead. If a number of cloaked ships get trapped behind player lines, such that retreat is not viable (as seems to be part of the problem with why they're sticking around), they should probably be scrapped, and then automatically be rebuilt on a nearby AI planet. The AI doesn't lose any ships, but it keeps down on the frustration. Maybe some kind of timer - if an AI ship is cloaked for more than 3 or 4 minutes on a player planet, it's scrapped and rebuilt elsewhere. Might be a decent processor load to keep track of a conditional timer on all those ships though. |
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As tedious as it is to fight against, wouldn't you agree that it is the smart thing to do if you did not have to worry about ship caps very much? I guess in this case though, some balance between smart and fun is needed. That max wait time for cloaked ships on human worlds sounds like a nifty idea (though 3-4 minutes seems too short). |
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I don't like the "forcing them to act within a certain time" idea because that makes the tactic less effective. However, just finishing up reading Tech's comments, maybe a long wait time (1hr) would be OK. It's not the whole game, but long enough to forget about them so they can still surprise you and be effective. In any case, I would prefer a method of restoring auto-build functionality without changing the AI tactic too severely (such as forcing cloaked units to act soon after going into hiding), since that was the original purpose of this thread. |
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Maybe they should be required to wait near some environment object, it's just not feasible to scan all empty space with a decloaker but sweeping across all resources and wormholes is doable. |
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Excellent. Maybe somethings like: If I am a cloaking attacking ship, and I am idle or if the thing I was guarding was destroyed, and I do not think it is safe decloaking and attacking now, and I do not think it is safe moving to another planet, then move to a "safeish" wormhole or resource deposit, preferably one with a guard post. That should make it easier to track them down. Again, for the original issue here, the auto-rebuild logic needs to be tweaked for handling units "lying in wait". |
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That is a good phrase to describe what they are doing, and it would in fact make perfect sense if auto-build ignored units "lying in wait". I'm do kinda like the idea of having them stay by a building so we actually have a chance of scanning them, but I'm not sure of their logic on that...a better solution I think would be to let them hide wherever, but introduce some new wide-area detection method that does not cost a lot of knowledge (for military command station), or AIP (through warheads). I don't like the warheads because they wave often enough that AIP would take a large hit if I were to stay on top of it and keep my systems clear. |
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Well, a tachyon warhead mk. I only gives 1 AIP. Even on level 10, that is barely noticeable. Plus, this situation shouldn't be happening very often, so that is not a lot of AIP in total. Even so, when you first notice the AI is using cloaked units, you should unlock specialized decloakers when you can. Part of the goal is to take out the cloaked units while you attack, so you rarely have this problem in the first place. There is a good wide area decloaker already under the support options (MUCH better than the free one). I can't remember how expensive in knowledge it is, but if it is more than, say 2000, that would be too much for where the game is today. |
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For a more complicated solution I'd suggest: If a cloaked unit (non-scout) remains in a hostile system for too long its cloaking becomes weakened and the enemy team can see a marker at its position. The ship would still not be targetable until a tachyon beam locks onto it but the enemy would at least know where to tachyon it. The timer would reset every time the ship passes a wormhole or is decloaked and should be pretty long. The AI should also make note of this and go after human fleets that have been hiding in one of its systems for too long. Alternatively make the ship hidden even from scout intel once it's been cloaked in a system for long enough so auto-building and other presence-dependent effects (AI Eye, etc) would ignore it. |
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Ooo, those are interesting solutions. |
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Well, if the AI puts idle cloaked ships in low-power mode, then low-power mode ships after a timeout could be considered non-military for purposes of auto-building. The targeting logic of AI ships should be adjusted so they don't come out of low-power mode as soon as the harvesters and stuff are built just because new undefended targets are now available. It would take more "weakening" of the system before they wake up. Note, the ships will still be considered non-military for auto-building purposes ONLY! Otherwise, it would be extremely abuseable. Such as cheesing AI Eye's by only sending a few cloaked ships, waiting for those to become "non-military", sending in the next batch, until the planet is VASTLY outnumbered but the AI Eye ignores it, completely ruining its purpose. Now imagine that with cloaker star-ships. X_X |
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Sounds like a valid use of stealth to me. |
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Okay, I think I see something you are getting at. Currently (as it has always been in this game) cloaking only hides ship type and position, not its existence on a planet. This is unlike most other RTSs with cloaking, where cloaking also hides the fact that the unit even exists. Do you think this should be changed? Note: Cloaking in many other RTSs doesn't fully hide position. There is a small "blur" where cloaked units are, which good players know to look for. For purposes of this discussion though, we can consider that hiding position. |
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Not all games have subtle hints about cloaking, some hide the unit completely I think the cloaked units should remain in the intel list for a few minutes before disappearing completely, it seems strange to me that you can tell the exact number of cloaked units in a system without knowing anything else about them. For added nastiness the cloaked units could remain in the intel summary if they left the system but haven't been spotted doing so (were decloaked in an adjacent system). The "ghost" entry disappears after the same timer. Yes, that would be complicated but it would also add a nice element of information warfare. E.g. the AI could raid a system with a cloaked group, then retreat without the player noticing that the group is gone and constantly worrying that they might be hiding somewhere out there... |
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I would just recommend the minimal-profile solution of allowing auto-rebuild of harvesters if there are only cloaked ships / astro trains in the system. That resolves the original problem without screwing around with AI logic. |
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What about allowing sensor drones (and decloakers) to perform sensor sweeps? As in they systematically search the system (automatic move orders). No AIP, no super resource cost...but ship cap is limited, and finding the cloaked ship would take time. If you spread them out, you have lots of planets covered, but complete sweeps take time. If you have both your drones on one planet, then they can sweep the system twice as fast. |
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@Fleet Sounds sort of like the solution I proposed. Not quite the same though |
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@TechSY...I honestly don't see anything you said here that is even "sort of like" the solution I just proposed haha. Which comment were you referring to? |
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Check the related bug report. 0002260 Though my solution involves adding a new unit type, while yours involves modifying existing ones. EDIT: Oh duh, of course you've seen that one. You added the relationship :P |
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Thanks for the link. Thinking about a scanner sweep movement option (my idea), that could give the microfighters new utility...which would help them stand out. (I don't have enough energy to really analyze your idea...this thread is getting gargantuan). |
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In 4.063, they should no longer hang around silently like this anymore. Please post a save if you still see it then, but I highly doubt it -- most likely they were in Wait mode before, which just had them sitting there until they felt it was safe to go into the next system. Now when they are in wait mode, they will pass the time by attacking whatever stuff you have on their current planet. ;) |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 29, 2010 12:19 am | Fleet | New Issue | |
| Dec 29, 2010 1:43 am | Sunshine | Note Added: 0007197 | |
| Dec 29, 2010 1:51 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0007199 | |
| Dec 29, 2010 1:51 am | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0007199 | |
| Dec 29, 2010 1:51 am | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0007199 | |
| Dec 29, 2010 2:01 am | Fleet | Note Added: 0007200 | |
| Dec 29, 2010 2:41 am | Prezombie | Note Added: 0007201 | |
| Dec 31, 2010 4:43 am | KDR_11k | Note Added: 0007289 | |
| Dec 31, 2010 3:20 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0007296 | |
| Dec 31, 2010 8:20 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0007298 | |
| Dec 31, 2010 11:42 pm | Fleet | Note Added: 0007300 | |
| Jan 1, 2011 12:58 pm | KDR_11k | Note Added: 0007305 | |
| Jan 1, 2011 1:06 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0007307 | |
| Jan 1, 2011 1:51 pm | Fleet | Note Added: 0007309 | |
| Jan 1, 2011 2:39 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0007310 | |
| Jan 1, 2011 4:38 pm | KDR_11k | Note Added: 0007312 | |
| Jan 1, 2011 4:41 pm | KDR_11k | Note Edited: 0007312 | |
| Jan 1, 2011 4:52 pm | Fleet | Note Added: 0007313 | |
| Jan 1, 2011 5:11 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0007314 | |
| Jan 1, 2011 5:12 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0007314 | |
| Jan 2, 2011 6:02 am | KDR_11k | Note Added: 0007329 | |
| Jan 2, 2011 1:54 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0007336 | |
| Jan 2, 2011 2:07 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0007336 | |
| Jan 3, 2011 7:04 am | KDR_11k | Note Added: 0007347 | |
| Jan 3, 2011 2:18 pm | NickAragua | Note Added: 0007369 | |
| Jan 5, 2011 10:46 pm | Fleet | Relationship added | related to 0002260 |
| Jan 6, 2011 10:57 pm | Fleet | Note Added: 0007691 | |
| Jan 6, 2011 11:01 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0007692 | |
| Jan 6, 2011 11:04 pm | Fleet | Note Added: 0007693 | |
| Jan 6, 2011 11:07 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0007694 | |
| Jan 6, 2011 11:12 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0007694 | |
| Jan 6, 2011 11:13 pm | Fleet | Note Added: 0007695 | |
| Jan 7, 2011 10:41 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0007870 | |
| Jan 7, 2011 10:41 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => resolved |
| Jan 7, 2011 10:41 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Fixed in Version | => 4.063 |
| Jan 7, 2011 10:41 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => fixed |
| Jan 7, 2011 10:41 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
