Stellaris Dev Diary #289 - Hide and Seek

[Ajacoba]

Warships need to look tough to pass the message that messing with that ship is a bad idea. But the ships of that shipset utterly and completely failed to deliver the message.

well, they are primitives
they are trying their best, but even then it doesn't amount to much

"Captain, they are now locking lasers on us."
"Lasers?"
"Yes, sir."
"Lasers can't even penetrate our navigation shields. Don't they know that?"
"Regulations do call for yellow alert."
"Hmm, a very old regulation. Well, make it so Number One. And, reduce speed… drop main shields, as well."
"May I ask why, sir?"
"In case we decide to surrender to them, Number One… "

 

[VarekRaith]

Considering the AI already knows where player fleets are, regardless of nebula or sensor range, will cloaking really matter? Or will they simply see through that too?

 

[Sylmyn]

Considering the AI already knows where player fleets are, regardless of nebula or sensor range, will cloaking really matter? Or will they simply see through that too?

I guess the easiest way for the AI to still know about the player fleet is to make it so let an « image » of the full fleet where they cloaked, so AI still know that the player have a fleet somewhere in the area and can act accordingly

 

[malakhglitch]

Warships need to look tough to pass the message that messing with that ship is a bad idea. But the ships of that shipset utterly and completely failed to deliver the message.

Well, tell that to the Kzinti (Larry Niven) who didn't think anything of a primitive ship that didn't even have artificial gravity and used lasers for propulsion.

 

[Primarch Victus]

That was an improvised weapon, kid! Other weapons used in that war were mass drivers, fusion drives (used in the same way than the "laser engine") and Relativistic Kill Vehicles ( https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Relativistic_kill_vehicle ).

 

[Kakotheres]

You Sir have no idea what you ar talking about.
Especially in Space

No, they're basically right in an IRL Physics sense. Hiding things in space is very, very difficult if you want those things to actually do anything, double that if there's a need for life support.

The wonderful Atomic Rockets has a much better breakdown on this than I could ever write, but the core of the argument is basically "Doing things in space generates heat. Space is pretty cold. Therefore any hot object is pretty obvious."

It then goes on to talk about all the common arguments, like directing the heat away for your opponents, decoys etc.

Of course, none of this matters because Stellaris is basically jelly when it comes to being hard/soft sci-fi. It's an argument's that's technically valid but not at all useful in the context.

 

[Ixal]

No, they're basically right in an IRL Physics sense. Hiding things in space is very, very difficult if you want those things to actually do anything, double that if there's a need for life support.

The wonderful Atomic Rockets has a much better breakdown on this than I could ever write, but the core of the argument is basically "Doing things in space generates heat. Space is pretty cold. Therefore any hot object is pretty obvious."

It then goes on to talk about all the common arguments, like directing the heat away for your opponents, decoys etc.

Of course, none of this matters because Stellaris is basically jelly when it comes to being hard/soft sci-fi. It's an argument's that's technically valid but not at all useful in the context.

+1 just for mentioning Atomic Rockets.
They also have a good article about orbital bombardment and why that would actually be pretty hard. Too low of an orbit and your ships are toast, too high and everything you can throw at the planet can easily be intercepted unless we go into throwing around asteroids and relativistic attacks.

 

[Ajacoba]

won't the star's radiation mess up potential sensors?

 

[Nevars]

Finally a promising psionic buff.

Pray that it fare better than espionage.

 

[currylambchop]

hell all you need to do is get some infrared and there is nothing you can hide in space

You're not wrong, but in the stellaris world they have literal magic so they could probably use psychic powers to hide from infrared

 

[currylambchop]

I just want cloaking to be as inconvenient for the cloaker as it is for the person that has to deal with the cloaking.... I want it to be something you can do, but not easily, that you have to make very tactical decisions doing it, rather than 'Ho ho, you can't see me', *jumps from out of the shadows stab in back, immediately disappears into the shadows to do it again*. I want it to be...largely just for info gathering with limited military applicability beyond that. Make cloaking less perfect (in the sense that the detecting player knows something's there, but not what or who it is, or in-system where it is), make it really stress the cloaking player out that they have to work their way around inhibition stations either by not decloaking and taking looping paths around, or choosing stations their fleets can take while dealing with extreme decloak malice.

cloaking already isnt that important since you still have to beat the enemy deathstack in a fight, it doesn't give you more damage to do so

 

[Ajacoba]

Finally a promising psionic buff.

Pray that it fare better than espionage.

why "finally"? they already had the best jump drives, the best (and most expensive) shields and the best ship combat computers
on the ship combat side psionic was easily the best already
and just recently the 4 shroud gods got notably buffed

 

[SirBlackAxe]

cloaking already isnt that important since you still have to beat the enemy deathstack in a fight, it doesn't give you more damage to do so

When the enemy has greater range than you it does give you more damage, from all the ships that weren't knocked out of the fight before they were close enough to deal any and the ships that survive longer because they didn't take damage on the approach.

Although I suppose how well this works depends on on the exact mechanics of attacking from stealth:
a. Ships decloak: simultaneously with rest of fleet < individually
b. Decloak when: attack order is given << any weapon is in range < reaching prefered combat range < all non-pd weapons with no minimum range are in range