Decloaking is tough

[colonyan]

I find little too hard to "find" AI cloaked ships.

Scout star ship
With their construction and knowledge cost and limited decloaking range, only default level 1 ones serve
as minimum mobile decloaking asset.

Decloaker
Modest price on both material and knowledge but limited to 4.

Tachyon emitter
Only 17 + 19 of them are available. Again, their short range of detection and limited number limits their use.

With expansions, number of cloaking units is increasing.
It is also annoying to see "1 ship swallowed with 88% hp" message jamming message list which sometime tells
important things.

I wished existing tools have more unit cap or increased range or sensor to decloak AI ships.

Alternative is new ships to find annoying hidden ships on your planets.
1. One time reveal-er. It reveals all cloaked ships on the planet for very short period of time.
    For example, for each 20 minutes of survival, it can use its ability 3 times. And ability is
    store-able up to X times which X can be augmented with ship module update.

2. Approximation pointer. It tells best guess of hidden ships location to friendly mobile decloaker unit on the planet.
    Any mobile decloaking ability unit chase after hostile cloaked ships with pointer's aid.

[Vinraith]

Your item one is already sort-of present as the tachyon warhead.

[colonyan]

I wish something cheaper to operate in long term.
If I fire it on my planet, there could be something cheaper.
It wouldn't need to have any armor.
Instead I would prefer fixed structure or ships than one time use missile.

[hullu]

I think the mobile tachyen drone (or whatever it is) should have a mode where it scouts the system either randomly or systematically if there is a known cloaker in it. That would make me actually build them every once in a while...

[Mánagarmr]

The mark 3 military command station has system wide tachyon coverage.

[hullu]

The mark 3 military command station has system wide tachyon coverage.

So you're just gonna unlock and build that to get rid of one red '1' in galaxy view?

And then replace it with a logistic/econ again after the '1' has been eradicated.

Yes it's a solution, but a somewhat bad and tedious one.

[TarlSS]

Yeah,

If Scout Starships and Tachyon Scanners had some sort of "Hunter Killer Mode" in which it scouted the map in a spiral, and then followed cloak ships (And alerted FRD Military and Turrets) that would be really sweet.

Right now I'm fighting an AI that uses autocannons and space planes mostly and it's really a pain. I always get these cloaked starships popping up when my forces leave a system.

[Red Spot]

Not sure if this has to do with last beta or the AI's I have selected, but about 1/3 of my planets have untraceable cloaked ships on it. As long as I dont see an "mk" to classify them as a certain mark of shipslevel I dont bother with them, they seem to be there, do nothing .. and I cant find them.

[TechSY730]

I like the long range but one at a time decloaker thing. Make it like the counter spy, targets cloaked ships only but at a huge range, but instead of insta-killing them, it decloaks them (for the same amount of time as normal decloaking). Of course, it would cost MUCH less than a counter spy, have a much greater recharge time, and a moderate knowledge unlock cost. Maybe with a ship cap of 3 or something, so you can reasonably get rid of "waiting" cloaked stuff in border worlds and still build some to stop those occasional cloaked ships that sneak in and "park" in your home world or core worlds. Up to you whether scouts and scout-starships should be immune, but it definitely should not target those immune to tachyon beams. Also, it is up to you whether the base AI gets some of these or not. (The AI that uses many counter-spies should also get even more of these though)

Now to address some possible criticisms:

Does this completely null the strategy of the AI "parking" cloaked units?
  No, as you have very small number of them you can build, and thus you have to choose which planets get them wisely. Also, although they would be cheaper than a counter-spy, they still will be pretty expensive and lengthy to build so that players don't freely "juggle" them between planets. This way, if the AI manages to sneak into a planet that does not have one, it will still be a hassle to "move" one there. Plus the slow refire rate means that if there are many cloaked ships, it will take some time reveal all of them. Of course, the cloaked ships would realize they are in danger if there is one or even one being built, and thus be more likely to risk an attack or a retreat, so you may get attacked anyways.

Does this make other decloaking methods significantly less useful?
 No, because of the slow firing rate, the low cap, and the "only one at a time" thing. Conventional decloakers can still reveal everything in their range all at once, thus being much better for the area they cover. Admittedly, planets with military Mk. III command stations would not need these, but military Mk. III command stations would be much harder to get (knowledge wise), and if IIRC, also suffer from a ship cap (only Mk. I command stations don't have a cap). Tachyon warheads will still be a quicker (albeit dirtier) way to decloak ships, if you can handle the whopping 1 AIP it adds.    

If the AI does get them, and they would be able to target scouts, does that make scouting too hard?
 Possibly, but like counter-spies, they would be quite (but maybe not quite as) rare. The exception would be that AI type that gets counter-spies, which would also get many of these. But then again, it is already hard to scout against one of these, so no major additional hassle is introduced. Also, unlike counter-spies, they obey tachyon-beam immunity, so they would be unable to decloak Mk. IV scouts and Mk. IV scout starships.


Anyways, should this be copied to the bugtracker as a suggestion?

EDIT: Doh, didn't see that the OP already had a suggestion. In my completely biased opinion, I like my idea better, but we can discuss which one would work better, or maybe even if neither would work.

EDIT2: If no one says I should or should not post this idea in the bug tracker in about an hour, I'll go ahead and post it.

EDIT3: I just posted it, http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=2260

[Minty]

Actually, one thing to note about having a parked-up bunch of cloaked ships on one of your planets:

Whenever there's AI ships on your planet, or yours on the AI's, there's a chance marauders will spawn (If you have them enabled). Many's the time I've captured a backwater planet, cleared it of all visible enemies and plonked down a com station and reactors for economy, only to get the warning-claxon a half-hour later and watch as a bunch of marauders wander out of the wormhole leading to that planet.

So yes, I habitually tech up to MKIII miliary com stations if I'm against AIs using stealth ships these days. Just to make sure my backwater planets are clear before replacing them with econ stations.

Edited to add:

Oh, and the cloaked ships are still there, parked up while the marauders are.. Marauding. So if I rebuild the econ station, it gets blown up again. Parked cloaked ships == Marauder-bait.

[TechSY730]

Actually, one thing to note about having a parked-up bunch of cloaked ships on one of your planets:

Whenever there's AI ships on your planet, or yours on the AI's, there's a chance marauders will spawn (If you have them enabled)...

Good point, and another reason to find a way to deal with "parked" cloaked ships. However, I think the devs plan on nerfing marauder strength and/or spawn conditions, so this should be less of an issue once they do that.

[Tridus]

The mark 3 military command station has system wide tachyon coverage.

So you're just gonna unlock and build that to get rid of one red '1' in galaxy view?

And then replace it with a logistic/econ again after the '1' has been eradicated.

Yes it's a solution, but a somewhat bad and tedious one.

That might be more practical if millitary command stations were better in their own right, but they're pretty weak compared to logistical right now. Even a mk 1 Millitary has a wide enough detection range that a few ships can't stay cloaked and then just reappear and blow your command station away the second you leave.

Maybe they'll be helped by the recent change giving all command stations the 2x move bonus?

[Minty]

The mark 3 military command station has system wide tachyon coverage.

So you're just gonna unlock and build that to get rid of one red '1' in galaxy view?

And then replace it with a logistic/econ again after the '1' has been eradicated.

Yes it's a solution, but a somewhat bad and tedious one.

...Maybe they'll be helped by the recent change giving all command stations the 2x move bonus?

Actually, that "change" will have zero effect, as playerships already had an invisible permanent 2x speed boost. All the patch is doing now is making the boost transparent, and actually removing the boost on non-player planets. So it's actually more a nerf than a buff.

[TechSY730]

Geez, all this discussion (and sometimes bickering), and little mention of the tachyon warhead. Its relatively cheap in resources, only raises the AI progress by a measly 1 point. Best of all, no knowledge cost. This makes it a pretty good way to do those occasional planetary decloakings. Remember, they don't have to be killed to get the effect, you can get the effect by scrapping them as well.

[Fleet]

Its only one point, yes...but waves are not exactly uncommon, and in multiplayer games the AIP would add up fast.