Standing with invisible unit on a resource

[Ed-ward]

Standing with an invisible unit on a resource should trigger a warning and/or make the unit visible.

It's not fair that you don't get a warning. You are losing a resource after all. You should know it's happening. The loss of the resource can be figured out on the city screen so it's not something you are not supposed to know. UI just hides the fact.

 

[Sinsling]

I have the same question for you. Why should I use the detector mod for checking my income if I can do it without? It's just very time-consuming method so should be changed (keep income unchanged) or automated (let player know about income decrease).

Are you suggesting to have own scouts with that mod sitting in every sector? That's kind of ridiculous when we have just got rid of annoying requirement of sending a unit to annex a sector.

I'm suggesting roaming with a detection scout so that the invisible player can't snipe you.

This does a number of things.

1) your resource nodes don't get camped.

2) the enemy player loses resources as you snipe their camo units.

3) it prevents you from being backdoored by camo stacks

No3 is the most important one there. No1 and 2 follow naturally for playing smart vs a stealth oriented enemy.

The way I see it, if someone is camo camping resource nodes, then whoever they are playing doesnt understand how to play against camo. Node camping is the least offensive thing they could do. Imagine if they constantly stealth sniped cities instead. It only takes 3 turns to level one and they can just ghost people's armies so that they can constantly determine the best time to snipe.

I'd prefer if people started playing against camo the way they should rather than slowly expunge camo from the game. Because the next thing people are going to want is for camo units to show up on radar when their cities get knocked over by runner stacks instead of their resource nodes being camped.

 

[Sandman25DCSSS]

I'm suggesting roaming with a detection scout so that the invisible player can't snipe you.

It is my problem. Go capture my colony and see what happens. Maybe I have a hidden army myself or maybe just every of my colony can be captured back in 3 turns thanks to nearby armies or smart orbit sectors location.

This does a number of things.

1) your resource nodes don't get camped.

Are you suggesting me to lose cosmite mini-game just because one of 12 players selected syndicate race? You build a 30 energy unit with upkeep 4 and park it on on energy resource with 15 income, or just steal 5 cosmite per turn and I must spend another 5 cosmite and 4 energy upkeep on an useless unit? And then spend my precious time on patrolling every sector every turn? No, thanks, I hate such games.

You seem to miss my point so I will repeat it again here, using some analogy. Imagine that total energy income is not displayed in the top left corner and you have to calculate it yourself every turn, by going to colonies overview screen, manually calculating their income total, then going into units overview screen, manually calculating their upkeep total and finally comparing them to find your total income. That's what we currently have in regards to detecting hidden units. It is already possible to find that some resource is being stolen and then by checking every colony (and comparing to income from previous turn) to find which colony is causing the problem. Why isn't it automated???

Or let me ask you another thing. Why garrisons have been added to planetfal in the first place? To protect vs some single bats capturing cities? I have a level 1 energy sector (with +5 energy income) and hidden scout cannot steal it because of garrison, same with 1 size colony which gives +5 energy but has a garrison too. But if I have an energy special location which gives exactly same +5 energy, suddenly the scout is able to disable it without even letting me, the owner of that thing, be notified. That's kind of bug and should be fixed IMHO.

2) the enemy player loses resources as you snipe their camo units.

3) it prevents you from being backdoored by camo stacks

No3 is the most important one there. No1 and 2 follow naturally for playing smart vs a stealth oriented enemy.

The way I see it, if someone is camo camping resource nodes, then whoever they are playing doesnt understand how to play against camo. Node camping is the least offensive thing they could do. Imagine if they constantly stealth sniped cities instead. It only takes 3 turns to level one and they can just ghost people's armies so that they can constantly determine the best time to snipe.

I'd prefer if people started playing against camo the way they should rather than slowly expunge camo from the game. Because the next thing people are going to want is for camo units to show up on radar when their cities get knocked over by runner stacks instead of their resource nodes being camped.

Sorry, this is irrelevant to the discussion.

 

[Sinsling]

It is my problem. Go capture my colony and see what happens. Maybe I have a hidden army myself or maybe just every of my colony can be captured back in 3 turns thanks to nearby armies or smart orbit sectors location.



Are you suggesting me to lose cosmite mini-game just because one of 12 players selected syndicate race? You build a 30 energy unit with upkeep 4 and park it on on energy resource with 15 income, or just steal 5 cosmite per turn and I must spend another 5 cosmite and 4 energy upkeep on an useless unit? And then spend my precious time on patrolling every sector every turn? No, thanks, I hate such games.

You seem to miss my point so I will repeat it again here, using some analogy. Imagine that total energy income is not displayed in the top left corner and you have to calculate it yourself every turn, by going to colonies overview screen, manually calculating their income total, then going into units overview screen, manually calculating their upkeep total and finally comparing them to find your total income. That's what we currently have in regards to detecting hidden units. It is already possible to find that some resource is being stolen and then by checking every colony (and comparing to income from previous turn) to find which colony is causing the problem. Why isn't it automated???

Or let me ask you another thing. Why garrisons have been added to planetfal in the first place? To protect vs some single bats capturing cities? I have a level 1 energy sector (with +5 energy income) and hidden scout cannot steal it because of garrison, same with 1 size colony which gives +5 energy but has a garrison too. But if I have an energy special location which gives exactly same +5 energy, suddenly the scout is able to disable it without even letting me, the owner of that thing, be notified. That's kind of bug and should be fixed IMHO.



Sorry, this is irrelevant to the discussion.

Oh okay detecting camo units is like calculating empire income. Gotcha. xD

 

[Fluksen]

Dear god how did this got so derailed about everything camouflage?
All that is asked for is that one mechanic (camping income nodes with invisible units) triggers a warning like e.g. "An energy node in city X has not produced it's expected outcome last turn".
Implementing this rule will still mean you need detection to: Prevent stealth armies from surprising you, deny scouting-intel for the enemy and even to hunt down the infiltrator (because obviously he'd probably like to move if a warning like this was implemented)
But at least you won't have to constantly (and manually!) run around your empire checking every single income node you have just on the off chance that one of them is being camped, because that really is not a fun mechanic.

 

[The Numi]

Indeed, the issue isn't invisible units or the need for detection to spot them, that's fine and part of the game. Problem is not knowing if there might be one stealing your resources or not. The game is clearly not built with that in mind, that you should be running around checking if that happens every turn manually as there's so many things designed to make it less tedious and more fun. Invisible units don't need to make the game unfun for it to work.

Now whether you want or value such complexity is up to you, but it feels like one of those old school strategy game stuff that just aren't meant for newer strategy games which has innovated and shifted its complexity elsewhere, with the core philosophy of that if a mechanic is tedious or is not fun for one player but only fun for another, then it's not a good mechanic. A notification warning you that something is being lost doesn't change the need for detection or searching for said invisible unit, it just cuts out the need to do math every turn to even react to it.