Decloaking is tough

[Castruccio]

So if I have a planet with 6 cloaked ships there, what does the message "6 enemy ships at this planet, 2x reinforcements here" mean?  Specifically, what does the "2x reinforcements" part mean?

[arthurp]

The discussion seems to have wandered away from an autodecloaking movement pattern. But that would actually be my favorite solution. I already do it by hand and I would love to see a mode similar to "auto-scout" where the decloakers/tacyon drone would spiral or even just wander randomly. It would reduce my microing a noticeable amount.

[ShadowOTE]

So if I have a planet with 6 cloaked ships there, what does the message "6 enemy ships at this planet, 2x reinforcements here" mean?  Specifically, what does the "2x reinforcements" part mean?

Are you running the latest beta? Awhile ago the AI would receive multipliers for the waves sent to a given planet based on what was present there - that was discontinued after hilarity ensued (603x multiplier + counterattack guard post = 700k wave, amongst others). Unless there is something in the patch notes I dont know about, there shouldnt be wave multipliers in the latest version.

[Mithror]

Finding cloaked ships on your planets can be a pain, but I don't see an easy way to solve this. I once asked if we could have a 'search-for-cloaked-ships' mode, but it seems to be very processor intensive

On a slightly related note:

When I cloak my ships on my planet, via a cloak starship, does the firepower of the cloaked ships add up to the observed firepower viewed from the AI? In other words: could I cloak my army to trick an adjacent Threat to attack me only to then strike back in surprise?

[Castruccio]

The discussion seems to have wandered away from an autodecloaking movement pattern. But that would actually be my favorite solution. I already do it by hand and I would love to see a mode similar to "auto-scout" where the decloakers/tacyon drone would spiral or even just wander randomly. It would reduce my microing a noticeable amount.

An auto-decloak mode for decloakers sounds terrific.  It would be awesome if you could just put them in FRD mode and they'd just wander.

[hullu]

The discussion seems to have wandered away from an autodecloaking movement pattern. But that would actually be my favorite solution. I already do it by hand and I would love to see a mode similar to "auto-scout" where the decloakers/tacyon drone would spiral or even just wander randomly. It would reduce my microing a noticeable amount.

An auto-decloak mode for decloakers sounds terrific.  It would be awesome if you could just put them in FRD mode and they'd just wander.

This.

And it can't possibly be processor intensive, and if they do it somewhat randomly it can't possible even be programming time intensive:)

[Laelia]

Cloaked ships are currently my bane.  My problem isn't massive swarms of cloaked ships, it's the 10 or 15 little things that manage to get past the defenses long enough to re-cloak and meander to the relatively defenseless econ planets to blow up the command stations.  And then it mocks me.  Mean computer.

It's actually not too much more than annoying, or anything the computer hasn't done before.  The main problem is the fact you only get four decloakers and that it seems like the computer guns for them first now.  Ultimately, that that whatever gets past the tachyon turrets long enough to re-stealth becomes unfindable unless you use drastic measures like warheads (progress=bad) or using a ton of knowledge for a Mark III military station.

On the flip side, I don't currently find cloaked ships to be very useful, although I'm remaining stubbornly loyal to my precious autocannon minipods.  The computer always seems to instantly find my cloaked stuff, so springing their own tactics on them isn't all that effective.  You can take out the tachyon guardians with raid starships or a force of ships, but if you've got enough stuff to do that, you might as well just use the normal force to blow up whatever you were going to send your cloaked ships at.

Also, in the last game we were playing, I was running around with the Mark IV scout and found an ENTIRE PLANET that was cloaked.  Including the PLANET ITSELF.  Seriously, the planet was a big cloaked circle that you could see stars through.  That made my day.  Hee.

[keith.lamothe]

Also, in the last game we were playing, I was running around with the Mark IV scout and found an ENTIRE PLANET that was cloaked.  Including the PLANET ITSELF.  Seriously, the planet was a big cloaked circle that you could see stars through.  That made my day.  Hee.

Sounds like a planetary cloaker, which would be uncloaked and susceptible to raiding.

Or you could just say "hmm, nobody's here, looks like a safe place to detonate this unwanted nuke"

[Nalgas]

I kind of forget what I wanted to say about this when I originally read it a week or two ago before getting around to creating an account.  It really is aggravatingly difficult at times, though.  In a multiplayer game, we had a system with maybe a dozen cloaked ships in it, and we sent a decloaker and a couple scout starships doing laps around the place for at least 20 minutes, and they found one of them.

They weren't any sort of threat at any point, but it still gets kind of frustrating when they're just sitting there waiting ominously for an hour or six.  Not quite enough to justify the AIP for launching missiles at my own planet just to find what's probably a couple harmless Mark I ships that got separated from their friends at some point and are hiding in the corner because they're scared, though.  Ok, maybe I'm anthropomorphizing a bit too much there.  Heh.

[keith.lamothe]

Well, there's the AIP method, and there's also the temporarily-upgrade-the-command-station-to-military-command-station-mk-III method

[TechSY730]

Or you could try this method posted in a discussion about something similar to this one's topic:

Or do it my way.

• Take five scout starships (and throw in two tach drones)
• Line them up horizontally, with enough space for all the tachyon ranges to touch their neighbours
• Go into formation move
• COMB THE DESERT!

(Which derailed the topic into posting various quotes from Space Balls, but still a great technique)

[keith.lamothe]

It's funny; the requested "auto-make-these-decloakers-line-up-and-comb-the-planet" thing is exactly the kind of command I like to implement on a lark, but I've learned too well in recent months that such a feature generates an amount of follow-up requests and grumbling over it being useless without granting of said requests that is significantly in excess of the benefit actually provided to players

[Nalgas]

Well, there's the AIP method, and there's also the temporarily-upgrade-the-command-station-to-military-command-station-mk-III method

Which would be great if it were free, but I think I'll usually be sticking with an option that doesn't cost 40 hojillion knowledge I could be spending on something more useful.  Might have to resort to that at some point in our current game if the Spaceballs approach doesn't work, though, because at least one of the AIs seems kind of cloak-happy.  I think it must've just got lucky with its random ships, because I'm pretty sure we didn't choose any of the ones that are explicitly given them/themed around them.

And if you're such a fan of follow-up requests, be happy that no one else from my group has time to follow the release notes or post on here so far.  I keep up with the new stuff being added and tell them about it, and they try it out and decide, "Hmm, that's kind of neat, but it'd be even better if [insert list of additional changes]..."  I'll spare you the details, because I'm pretty sure I've seen them all mentioned elsewhere already.

[keith.lamothe]

It's not the followup requests that I mind (in moderation at least); we actually need those to some extent or lots of stuff will never get better.  What wears on me is the (relatively few) who chime in that the feature is useless without the additional pieces (I generally manage to resist the urge to simply say "ok, I'll remove it then").  I think in my case it's just been quite a few months of that since we've been focused on AI War for 2.5 consecutive projects; moving onto a whole-new-game project (AVWW) for a while should help replenish my tolerance

[Nalgas]

Yeah, I kind of know what you mean.  I used to run a MUD back in the day, and there were always a few people like that at any given point in time.  Even if you do end up adding/fixing the stuff they're complaining about (usually for some unrelated reason, not just because they said so), they're never happy with it anyway.  You can't win with them.