Currently Stealth is very tricky to the point of being almost useless.
Instead of Stealth being all or nothing it might improve things to
think of it more like ECM. Even a little bit of stealth might be
of help protecting the ship. Not sure how it would work though.
Maybe every certain level of stealth gives a certain percentage
chance that a shot might miss. It would make all the Stealth
techs a much more attractive option.
Stealth as Defense
Moderator: Oberlus
Re: Stealth as Defense
To extend on what you say:
Stealth is useful for some specific strategies (e.g. stealth empire with bio carriers) than become completely useless at late game. And since late game may be most of the game in some situations, that sucks.
What you suggest imply using hit ratios, which are not considered in the current combat engine.
There are suggestions (and I think some implementation of it) for giving different ammounts of noisiness to the weapons, launch bays included, so that the untouchable carrier strategy becomes less OP in mid game. But that does not fix the late game uselessness. And a simpler idea would be to just make launch bays break stealth the same that SR weapons do.
Another way to make stealth useful (without hit ratios) at late game could be by considering three states or levels of stealth. Currently there are two: detected and undetected. If you are undetected, you can start a battle and completely avoid all damage for round 1 of combat (that is, by default, 1/3, which is a pretty usefull shield effect). There could be a third state, something meaning "hard to locate", which means that enemy knows you are there but not exactly were. The values of detection and stealth could be balanced so that late game a top tier stealth ship is still partially hidden ("hard to locate") for top tier detection empires. The effect in combat could be: for "undetected", 2 rounds shooting without being targetted (-2/3 damage), "hard to locate", 1 round shooting without being targetted. With more that the standard three rounds per combat, this could have more versatility.
Stealth is useful for some specific strategies (e.g. stealth empire with bio carriers) than become completely useless at late game. And since late game may be most of the game in some situations, that sucks.
What you suggest imply using hit ratios, which are not considered in the current combat engine.
There are suggestions (and I think some implementation of it) for giving different ammounts of noisiness to the weapons, launch bays included, so that the untouchable carrier strategy becomes less OP in mid game. But that does not fix the late game uselessness. And a simpler idea would be to just make launch bays break stealth the same that SR weapons do.
Another way to make stealth useful (without hit ratios) at late game could be by considering three states or levels of stealth. Currently there are two: detected and undetected. If you are undetected, you can start a battle and completely avoid all damage for round 1 of combat (that is, by default, 1/3, which is a pretty usefull shield effect). There could be a third state, something meaning "hard to locate", which means that enemy knows you are there but not exactly were. The values of detection and stealth could be balanced so that late game a top tier stealth ship is still partially hidden ("hard to locate") for top tier detection empires. The effect in combat could be: for "undetected", 2 rounds shooting without being targetted (-2/3 damage), "hard to locate", 1 round shooting without being targetted. With more that the standard three rounds per combat, this could have more versatility.