Stealth

[Spartanius]

So is there no skill to counter stealth orbitals? With level 9 stealth orbitals and it has say, 5 at the planet and an enemy fleet of 999 monitors attacks won't they most likely or definitely fail to decloak the orbitals and if they fail they only have on try right? So what happens? Does the battle continue until the planet's health is depleted or the invading fleet is destroyed?

[Tsagoth]

The Cloaking skill is the counter to Stealth. In your example, if you have no Cloaking skill, it is very unlikely (pretty much zero) that your 999 monitors would survive. The planet would be ruined, but you would be unable to actually take it over unless you destroyed the orbitals.

[Leedot]

The other option is that a pk's planet buster skill can target any planet in the same solar system. This means that the pk can destroy the planet while remaining outside of the defensive orbitals effective range.

[Spartanius]

The Cloaking skill is the counter to Stealth. In your example, if you have no Cloaking skill, it is very unlikely (pretty much zero) that your 999 monitors would survive. The planet would be ruined, but you would be unable to actually take it over unless you destroyed the orbitals.

This doesn't make any sense with the skills unless the descriptions are way off. Cloaking, a rank 5 skill, says "Ships/Fleets are invisble to other players/AI. Togglable(sp?) active skill. Players cannot attack while cloaked and move at -50% speed. Speed penalty reduced at -10% per rank" This says nothing about detecting cloaked ships. The only other skill that talks about cloaking is the skill "stealth orbitals" which also just says "High energy hide-and-seek. +10% increase in orbitals avoiding detection"

So would sending in more ships to the battle(not the defender's) give more chances to detect cloaked ships? If not I think it doesn't make sense. IRL if you get shot at something invisible you keep trying to figure out where it is

[Tsagoth]

So would sending in more ships to the battle(not the defender's) give more chances to detect cloaked ships? If not I think it doesn't make sense. IRL if you get shot at something invisible you keep trying to figure out where it is

Yes, it would. Every time the targeting changes, an attacker gets a chance. So while you're beating down his ships, every time one pops and one of your needs a new target, it gets a chance. If everything is gone except for the stealths and the planet, then you're stuck, because target selection won't run again.

If you fly a new ship in, it gets one chance and if it fails, then it will just pile on the planet as well.

[Cheerio]

*oops I missed... Better sit here till I die then... Should have bought more than one bullet!*

[Spartanius]

There should be something that causes target selection to run again whenever there are stealth orbitals. I disagree 100% with it staying the way it is. I don't see it being acceptable, and this is currently my number 1 complaint.

[Tsagoth]

There should be something that causes target selection to run again whenever there are stealth orbitals. I disagree 100% with it staying the way it is. I don't see it being acceptable, and this is currently my number 1 complaint.

I suppose if I was faced with someone having a bunch of invisible to me orbitals I might put a few ranks into whatsit and fly 50 harvs in to his planet. Stealths may be invisible but they aren't invulnerable.

[Tsagoth]

Well it can certainly be addressed, but for now I want to try and get combat working properly before I start tinkering with its mechanics again. It's got a lot worse problems at the moment than not detecting stealths.

[Spartanius]

Things that someone preparing a large Dreadnaught invasion of sector 3.2 should be aware of? Not that I have anyone in mind, but it sounds like a good question to me