Non-Cybran stealth

@sylph_

Structures under construction do not give off radar blips.
It is only when they complete that they give off a radar signature.

Stealth fields do not give a radar blip at all unless the actual structure, (whether being constructed or finished), is visibly scouted.
Or if in range of an omni, but it will remain unknown until vision is applied to it.


~ Stryker

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@comradestryker But what if you E-stall for one millisecond?
won't it also then show the structure radar blip?

@comradestryker I must have been energy stalling when I tested it!

[edit - actually might have been the CPU-controlled player upgrading radars when income went above 90 mass/second... For how unimportant that distinction is!]

Thankyou for educating me. Now I know that stealth gens are not as utterly junk as I previously thought!

@nex said in Non-Cybran stealth:

@comradestryker But what if you E-stall for one millisecond?
won't it also then show the structure radar blip?

If the structure is not completed, and your power stalls, nothing happens out of the ordinary.
No blip other than the engineers building the structure.

If the structure is completed and your power stalls for a moment, the stealth field will fail and it along with anything it was hiding will become radar-visible for a brief duration until the stealth field reactivates on its own.


~ Stryker

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@comradestryker said in Non-Cybran stealth:

visible for a brief duration until the stealth field reactivates on its own.

At which point 'dull' blips will remain, to signify a structure that was once seen, but can't be seen right now! [edit - I was wrong about this! Ignore this post, and thanks for correcting me!]
And that's why it's incredibly important not to stall power when using stealth generators to hide buildings!

@sylph_ said in Non-Cybran stealth:

At which point 'dull' blips will remain

no, they don't

frick snoops!

Stealth generators can be used to hide your ASF or strat bomber horde when they are parked in your base. Otherwise they are basically useless. One of the limiting factors is that stealthed buildings remain discovered if scouted by a scout plane, therefore stealth on structures is much less useful than stealth on units, and a mobile stealth generator is enormously more useful than a static one.

@sylph_

At which point 'dull' blips will remain

No blip will remain.
The only time blips remain is when you have scouted a building and that structure is either destroyed, upgraded or changes ownership.


Regardless, you're correct that you don't ever want to power stall.


~ Stryker

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@comradestryker My goodness!!! That's wonderful news to me, thanks for educating me, and sorry for spreading false information!

(I guess when I was testing all these things for myself, the fact that the AI in a custom game was upgrading radars without being told to really messed up my understanding of stealth fields!)

Thanks again. x

As I'm trying this out, I'm definitely getting 'blips' for structures that have been scouted, that the stealth field is now trying to hide.
'Grey square' blips are disappearing, but scouted structures don't disappear when stealth is established.

ie. this quote:
@ComradeStryker "The only time blips remain is when you have scouted a building and that structure is either destroyed, upgraded or changes ownership."
Seems to need 'stealthed' added to the list of reasons for a blip to remain.

But UN scouted buildings is the critical part for me, and I'm glad to see that they get removed from radar intel!

@sylph_ said in Non-Cybran stealth:

Seems to need 'stealthed' added to the list of reasons for a blip to remain.

Maybe I'm following you incorrectly, here, but... Stealth doesn't hide structures UNLESS the opposing player(s) have not obtained vision on that structure to begin with. (Or Omni.)
Hence why I didn't mention stealth in that list.

Vision and Omni will break the illusion.
Omni will only reveal the blips.
And vision will grant you the identity of the structures and units and whatnot.


The intel side of the game, barring everything else, is actually quite complex, yeah.

Funnily enough, even with how complex it is behind the scenes, it's actually quite simple and straightforward in gameplay terms.

You either see something, or you don't.
You either know it's there, or you don't.
If something is greyed out, use your best context to figure out if it was upgraded, gifted, or destroyed.

Intel alone is 50% of the battle.
You can't fight (effectively) what you cannot see.

Keep scouting!


~ Stryker

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@comradestryker said in Non-Cybran stealth:

Funnily enough, even with how complex it is behind the scenes, it's actually quite simple and straightforward in gameplay terms

I agree, it's wonderful how intuitive it all becomes!
I think my understanding was thrown off by custom-game players (AI) upgrading radars to omni.
And I'm super-grateful for you patience in helping me understand it. My 'correction' was only to that one sentence, if taken in a vacuum. x

(Now I'm wondering whether I've missed a simple way of hosting a custom game, for the sake of testing, without having an AI take over one of the players?!)

@sylph_

You can always host a map with preset civilian armies, just make sure they are set to be an enemy.
Then just start the game in sandbox, and you can swap between armies with cheating enabled and spawn stuff in for each and play around like that.


Alternitavely, and easier if I may say, you can just host a custom game, again, with cheating,
plop in an AI player, and just delete their ACU as soon as the match starts so they don't build anything you don't want them to build.

Now you have your sandbox gamemode with 2 armies you can swap between. (Yours and enemy's).

🙂


~ Stryker

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@comradestryker said in Non-Cybran stealth:

and just delete their ACU as soon as the match starts so they don't build anything you don't want them to build

That's what I've been doing.
The deleted-ACU AI still meddles from time to time, like occasionally ordering units to attack a base or similar.
Such delected-ACU players seem to upgrade T2 radar to omni once they have more than +90 mass income (and similarly high energy, I assume).
(Once I 'stop' to cancel deleted-ACU-player's omni radar upgrade, they don't seem to re-upgrade it unless I rebuild a T2 radar from scratch.)

I didn't realise they were getting upgraded until I re-visited this topic, having been corrected!