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[intrinsic_parity]

For sneaking in, I found that the easiest way for me to sneak in is to Sustain Burn to the station as max speed and hope no one is nearby.  If I get caught, well... lure the fleets away and kill them.  Usually, when I try to sneak in a station that is guarded, it is too hard even with high stealth (e.g., Going Dark with some phase ships).  Despite my best efforts, one of them often finds me, often by pinging sensor burst at an inopportune time, and my stealth is ruined.  Thus, if I will be picked up either way, might as well make it fast - with Sustained Burn.

We've already drifted waaaay off topic, so I don't feel bad suggesting this:

What if detection wasn't a simple radius, but was directional, say a sector of a circle.
Either rotating slowly à la stereotypical radar (passive scanning?), or locked forward facing (active scan).

It should improve the rather limited & random stealthy approach to stations, making it more reminiscent of the classic Commandos. (sneak around patrol 'vision')
It'd also allow interceptions to involve a degree of maneuvering & timing (avoid being detected during approach), rather than just the simple 'have more momentum' chase.

I second this. It would add a lot more interesting interactions between fleets and make stealth much more viable. I think it would also make for more tense/exciting gameplay, as you could actually be close to a fleet without it noticing you, but there also could be fleets in your blindspots.

That being said, I can see that as a downside as well, getting ganked by a fleet e burning out of your blindspot would suck.

Here are a couple iterations of this idea I think could be interesting:

- Having a small radius around you where you can see everything so that you can avoid getting ganked, and then a larger cone in front of you (or rotating as the op suggested).

- being able to toggle between omnidirectional sensors with limited range and long range sensors locked in a forward facing position with a limited arc, you could even add a third setting for rotating sensors etc. Maybe these could be campaign abilities.

- A version of the current transponder system where you can see ships with transponders on from any direction at a large distance, but if the ship has its transponder off, you can only see it in a limited cone in front of you.



You could probably combine these in different ways as well i.e. toggleable sensor to detect ships with transponders off etc.


Making stealth more viable would add a lot of depth to the campaign layer. It would also be nice to be able to investigate fleets/areas from far away without drawing every hostile fleet in the area to you.

[Goumindong]

Stealth is already pretty viable. Both on the player side and on the combat side. It’s almost mandatory if you’re going to be a pirate before you have a massive fleet. And if you want to smuggle in any place you’re hostile to it’s mandatory.

Specifically you can get your fleets identifiable radius down really amazingly small with the right skills and equipment. Phase ships which are kinda bad in large fleet combat suddenly become a lot more valuable because you can add large ships to your fleet without increasing the sensor radius.

When you do this you can land on size 7 military planets without alerting the authorities while on a pirate commission.

It also is instrumental in making three ping sectors farmable/killable without having already ended the game because going dark with high quality prevents the combat alert from hitting multiple fleets. (And also you can sneak up on the base)

2.  How do large fleets catch anybody?  What actually threatens player fleets?

Theoretically the game will eventually have 4x mechanics and so the enemy can catch you by getting between you and your planets. Realistically the answer might be “it can’t because getting ganked isn’t fun, and the illusion of danger is better than real danger”

[Snrasha]

Then big slow ships can hit high speeds, but it's a cost-over-time issue; this allows smaller fleets to win the acceleration race, if using Emergency Burn, but only if Fuel supplies permit.  This would present the player with interesting challenges; they can out-run the local system police, for example, but only if they're willing to give up Fuel, and only if the locals don't have enough Fuel to catch up.

Currently,resources are just not a consideration for AI fleets or factions as whole. I'm not saying this should remain as is, but making AI handle limited resources in intelligent manner is not a small task either.

And if the player is the only side to be limited by resources, it's not fun.

Resources should definitely not be a consideration for AI fleets or factions as a whole (besides the obvious stuff). Its way too AI intensive and doesn't serve a purpose that stability doesn't already.

 The only real problem comes in when AI fleets clearly have enough resources to sustain themselves, but don't have enough resources to sustain a much smaller player fleet. There is no reason that i should not be able to buy enough supplies to sustain me if the planet i am on can consistently supply larger fleets... and then when you destroy those fleets you don't retain enough supplies to sustain yourself and the planet also doesn't have enough supplies to sustain you.

There are also other problems WRT supplies and so i think i will make a suggestion about it

No, they can supplies themselves, they just do not sell theses supplies on the market, seems logic. And when you destroy those fleets, how many supplies are destroyed on the processus?

[Linnis]

@Stealth
I rather not have to think too much about stealth at the moment because other game systems beyond outpost and station building might use it so it in the future.

@Burn level discussion

The whole point of burn speeds is that small weak fleets can escape huge fleets, as (huge AI) fleets often has a ship in it that slowed them down. So a player can hop in a small ship and not get chased down by AI.

But now things are different with Sustained Burn.

What could work right now is replace burn speed with burn agility. With all ships able to reach burn 20, just with different acceleration and maneuverability. But I don't personally mind the system in place right now.
Lore wise both universal burn speed and different burn speeds can be justified so it could go both ways; let's not talk about that.


@on topic
Aside from encountering lone large ships in bounties, they could also appear stationed around bases of various sizes. It makes sense lore and theme wise for powerful ships with high running cost to idle around or act as a mobile base.

Or maybe a mission or event where say, target faction or pirate is repairing/building/transporting a cruiser, go destroy it. While the target has low cr.

[Megas]

Burn 20 for all requires Navigation 3, which is a huge opportunity cost.  I would love to fit Navigation 3 on my characters, but never have the points to spare.  Thus, I get stuck at burn 16 or something similar, which is not too bad when the AI moves at sub-10 speeds.  This is a reason why I scuttle capital (D)s with Degraded Engines, because it will drag my fleet's (sustained) burn down.

As for stealth, I would need to keep my fleet small, and even then, if I try to go somewhere like one of major planets in Askonia or Hybrasil, there are enough enemy fleets that either one pings a sensor burst, or one just blunders unaware toward my fleet, but my fleet is too slow to get out of the way (due to being dark).  If I want to smuggle (buy or sell) thousands of cargo, with lots of warships and Atlases in my fleet, I simply make the mad dash to a planet, and if the guards were distracted by something else (like chasing pirates), the planet is clear and I get to shop at their black market (maybe buy lots of organs).

[intrinsic_parity]

As for stealth, I would need to keep my fleet small, and even then, if I try to go somewhere like one of major planets in Askonia or Hybrasil, there are enough enemy fleets that either one pings a sensor burst, or one just blunders unaware toward my fleet, but my fleet is too slow to get out of the way (due to being dark). 

This is pretty much my experience. There's a massive chance of being stumbled upon when going dark and very little way to avoid it since you are going so slow. You have to build your fleet specifically for stealth (at least in the late game) which is a massive opportunity cost and then there's still a high chance of unavoidable failure, and then the rewards are generally not that amazing. The risk/reward is just so far off that I don't consider it viable, even if you can technically do it under very specific circumstances.