Should humans get a stealth turret?

[chemical_art]

As name implies, it would be a turret whose job is to stealth nearby units / structures*

There would be limits to this power, of course.

*Comm stations cannot be cloaked
*Requires supply
*Costs K by default
*May cost ongoing resources (see below)

It's uses would be as follow:
*for turrets, a limited form of radar dampening. If not firing, cannot be fired upon
More importantly, though
*can hide certain irreplaceable structures, such as factories (for balance reasons, if they are turned off) radar dampeners, z power generators, ion cannons (if turned off) etc.

Would such a structure, even if only accessible by research, be too strong? Would it like a warp jammier need ongoing resource cost for such potentially great usage?

[Kahuna]

As name implies, it would be a turret whose job is to stealth nearby units / structures*

There would be limits to this power, of course.

*Comm stations cannot be cloaked
*Requires supply
*Costs K by default
*May cost ongoing resources (see below)

It's uses would be as follow:
*for turrets, a limited form of radar dampening. If not firing, cannot be fired upon
More importantly, though
*can hide certain irreplaceable structures, such as factories (for balance reasons, if they are turned off) radar dampeners, z power generators, ion cannons (if turned off) etc.

Would such a structure, even if only accessible by research, be too strong? Would it like a warp jammier need ongoing resource cost for such potentially great usage?

This would be awesome and useful. If it cost 3k Knowledge for example I don't think it would be overpowered. If it's a turret it shouldn't consume resources. The cap energy cost could be higher than for other turrets.

It's uses would be as follow:
*for turrets, a limited form of radar dampening. If not firing, cannot be fired upon

Do you mean all turrets in range of this stealth turret would get radar dampening? That might be overpowered at least for 3k Knowledge. It would be useful though. For me the cloaking alone would be enough.

can hide certain irreplaceable structures

I haven't thought about this before: can Cloaker Starships do this?

[Hearteater]

Reminds me of this thread.  A good read in general, although nothing ever came of it at the time.

[Faulty Logic]

Cloakers cannot cloak any structures, including turrets.
I approve of the idea, but think it should be in the 10000 k range, as protecting your fabricators and factIV is a very important part of the strategy.
If it just cloaked turrets, then 1-2 thousand k.

[Toranth]

Cloakers cannot cloak any structures, including turrets.
I approve of the idea, but think it should be in the 10000 k range, as protecting your fabricators and factIV is a very important part of the strategy.
If it just cloaked turrets, then 1-2 thousand k.

It wouldn't actually protect your structures very much.  If the Command Station was destroyed, the turret would likely go out of supply and stop working.  Poof, the Factory (or whatever) also goes bye-bye a few seconds later.

[Minotaar]

Toranth has a point. You can't protect planets in the middle of nowhere with this. That very much limits what can be done with it on high difficulties. A price in the 2k-3k range is probably fine.
Also, this must not work with gravity turrets.

[Kemeno]

Well, for planets in the middle of nowhere, I agree that it's not a one-stop solution, but it definitely helps; now you don't have to split your turrets and forcefields across two structures - you only have to protect your command station on the remote planet. That means fewer grav turret paths, more concentrated defenses, etc.

It's definitely not a one-stop solution, but it provides enough of an advantage that 1-3k knowledge seems reasonable. And yeah, this + grav turrets would result in some hilarity...

[Minotaar]

Well, for planets in the middle of nowhere, I agree that it's not a one-stop solution, but it definitely helps; now you don't have to split your turrets and forcefields across two structures - you only have to protect your command station on the remote planet. That means fewer grav turret paths, more concentrated defenses, etc.

It's definitely not a one-stop solution, but it provides enough of an advantage that 1-3k knowledge seems reasonable. And yeah, this + grav turrets would result in some hilarity...

I thought the way you solved that problem was by putting the command station on top of the structure in the first place

[Faulty Logic]

Supply can be provided by adjacent planets, meaning your factories are often close to invulnerable.
However, you were right that I failed to consider supply, and I now think that 6k or so is the appropriate price.

[7cardcha]

I support this.

[Diazo]

I'm going to have to disagree.

I've actually used Exo-Sheilds lately. They effectively render the harvesters invulnerable because the AI does not have any "decloaking" logic of any sort. Being able to hide structures would be cheap as the AI simply has no way of finding them.

Even the Cloaker Starship is borderline over-powered with what you can do with cloaking against the AI already.

You just have to setup your defenses correctly to keep capturables alive.

The AI does have to be able to hurt you somehow and you already have force fields to defend things like this.

That's my opinion for what it is worth but it would make things too easy is my thoughts on a stealth turret.

D.

[TechSY730]

On the topic of AI and decloaking, I would agree that the AI could be much smarter in terms of how it deals when it knows there is cloaked non-scout stuff around. If that is done, possibly the number of tachyon guardians could go down without making cloaking OP.

[LintMan]

I like this idea.  I'd rather not see if cost more than 3K knowledge, though.  If it needs balancing out, some suggestions:

- The stealth turret cloaks the structures around it, but it itself always remains visible.
- The stealth turret does not actually have a weapon
- instead of this: "for turrets, a limited form of radar dampening. If not firing, cannot be fired upon", AI tachyon-capable ships should be able to detect cloaked structures and while detected, any AI ships can fire upon them at their full range.

[Toranth]

Supply can be provided by adjacent planets, meaning your factories are often close to invulnerable.
However, you were right that I failed to consider supply, and I now think that 6k or so is the appropriate price.

Usually, people only conquer planets they need, in which case there will usually be no planet adjacent to give supply; or the conquer everything (Fallen Spire) in which case the Factory will not remain on the front lines for very long.
Basically, it seems like this is an idea destined for abuse and lots of balancing issues.

I think Diazo has it right - The AI does not deal well with cloaking at this time.  Because of that, anything that cloaks is significantly more powerful than it seems.  When the AI is better at handling cloaking, then something like this would be much more reasonable.  But until then, I don't think this is a good idea.

Really, what I'd prefer instead of cloaking are decoy buildings - fake Factories, ZPGs, command stations, even fake turrets that give fake FP but do nothing.  I think those would be easier to balance, not require a major rework of the AI, and still provide some of that "Additional protection for uniques" that all of us desire.  'Course, that idea has problems of it's own...

[Draco18s]

I think Diazo has it right - The AI does not deal well with cloaking at this time.

Conversely, the player has extremely limited methods of dealing with cloaking.

What, 7 units in the whole game that have tachyon beams?