Cloaking Shields: How to Implement

[Vectorus]

I really want cloaking shields to make an appearance, at last. They've been tantalizing us on that list for ages. I've been replaying some Mass Effect recently, which has a lot of lore about stealth systems, and I thought some of their concepts would translate quite well to Hazeron's existing mechanics.

Detection in Hazeron basically works by emissions. We know this because of the "emissions" detected on your starmap, and because spacecraft on the ground without power can't be detected. As in Mass Effect, your "cloaking shield" could basically be a giant heat sink. It can absorb emissions up to a certain threshold, after which it has to be discharged. While active, a cloaking shield would protect a city or a ship from sensor scans and negate any starmap emissions. You couldn't lock onto it to fire a weapons bay, but you could look out of a window and see it, transport aboard it with manual aiming, shoot it with a turret etc.

The cloaking shield system would have an absorption rate and a buffer. The system would use heat sinks for a buffer, more advanced sinks (vulcium) being more effective than simpler ones. A Cloaking Shield Module (perhaps divided into tiers, like warp drives?) would modify the effectiveness of the sinks, according to its own quality. The volume of the system would define the absorption rate. Let's say a Q255 vulcium heat sink, used by a Q255 shield system, gives you a buffer of 10 joules (obviously the real value will be astronomically higher: many terajoules). Your ship draws 5 watts of power when manouevring normally. If you have 10 heat sinks in your hold, you can stay cloaked for 20 seconds, till all are consumed. Now, your system volume gives you an absorption rate of 3 watts. You are now putting the 2 overflow watts into the buffer, so you can last 50 seconds. When the buffer is full, or when the shield is deactivated, your ship will vent the stored energy in a burst, allowing it to be detected, possibly at long distances. In this example, using low power ratings, a Q87 system using Q87 cryo sinks might only buffer .3 joules per sink. If you have no sinks, you can't activate the shield at all. You need X sinks to press start- maybe enough for 10x the "idling consumption per second" value?

If you reduce your power draw, hurtle through a system with grav drives and sensors off, shields down etc., you might be able to stay cloaked for a long time. Some ships might be able to cloak permanently,but they would be good for little else. Perhaps you can't fire or use transporters while cloaked. Black Ops bases with good supply chains and low power requirements might be able to stay cloaked indefinitely. But warping around, manouevring or running lots of manufacturing processes will quickly exhaust your heat sinks. 

I'll run some numbers, but I think this could be quite a solid basic mechanic. Any thoughts?

[AnrDaemon]

Either that, or just reduce emission by a certain multiplier.

[Vectorus]

That wouldn't really help with in-system sensors, though, which are probably the primary enemy of stealth ships.

For cities they could be simplified to that, though, since once in a system you can always find them anyway.

[Deantwo]

That wouldn't really help with in-system sensors, though, which are probably the primary enemy of stealth ships.

But should they?

Limiting emissions so your ship isn't detected from other systems could be useful, or at least limit the amount of emissions so the detector has to be closer to detect your ship makes sense.

However if you can hide from ship sensors just by turning on your thingy, you would be impossible to find or attack. Sure if you are within visual range (500m?) you can detect units without sensors as is, so a minimum is somewhat implemented already.
But do we need more ways to hide ships? You can just land it on any uninteresting planet or moon and hide it in ground clutter. Enemies can't find you unless they are within orbit above you.

Detecting spacecraft on the starmap is still kinda new, so it is hard to tell how hard it is to hide a fleet yet. I would rather want to see detection of ships in other systems more streamlined before making them harder to detect.

[Vectorus]

But should they?

Yup, pretty sure they should.

In almost every story and in almost every medium, stealth systems in space are tactical, not strategic, weapons designed to confer tactical, not strategic, invisibility. To run through everything would be an appalling task, but in The Expanse, a big part of the plot is the Martian radiation coating which absorbs emissions and lets them sneak up without being firedon; in Mass Effect we have exactly the same; Honor Harrington has two different kinds of stealth ships (e.g. in "Mission of Honor") which both get you into weapons range; in Star Trek the Romulans can hide mere metres beneath you while being totally invisible (in the last movie they even shoot while doing so, I think); Battlestar Galactica had the Blackbird, which was so stealthy it got destroyed when a Cylon ship ploughed through it without seeing it; in Babylon 5 the Minbari were even more stealthy than that, actually getting inside a Centauri ship and pinching their atmosphere without being noticed; in Stargate almost everyone from the Goa'uld to the Asgard can pull this trick with more or less success. I'm only adding the "emission cloaking" element to my suggestion because it follows naturally from short-range cloaking - you shouldn't be able to find 10 parsecs away what you can't find under your own nose.

However if you can hide from ship sensors just by turning on your thingy, you would be impossible to find or attack

So, as we've established, this is the whole point of cloaking. An almost continuous stream of examples from classic and mainstream sci-fi over the last few decades creates an expectation that when a player sees "cloaking device" he's going to get something which stops him from getting shot at while switched on. Recent games like Starmade naturally follow this expectation without feeling any need to explain themselves; it's just a natural assumption. You'd have to make a pretty strong case that cloaking devices, in our universe, should mean something totally different, entirely to do with long range strategic obfuscation. Haxus added cloaking shields the module list long before emissions were even discussed, so I doubt that's all he intended them to do. I'm voting for the Expanse/Mass Effect version (absorption) because it's a nice, consistent system which isn't too far fetched and two of my favourite harder sci-fi shows use it in more or less the same way.

Stealth ships are scouts, so they should allow you to enter a system and scout the disposition of enemy forces, otherwise they're fairly pointless. The system would need a few more balances, of course, in addition to the quite strict time limit. You can't shoot or use transporters while cloaked, but you can't be shot at either. The cloaking shield should perhaps have special shield properties which prevent you from ramming with full effect. Perhaps there is a minimum effective range, greater than weapons range, at which you will be detected, so your best bet is to skirt system boundaries and install powerful sensors. That would be logical scout behaviour.

[Neils Iyssada]

Coming from StarMade, I can see two variants that can be used in-game :

- Jamming. It's what Vectorus is thinking about, with Mass Effect as an example. It consists of only blocking any emission from your ship, disabling auto-lock weapons. You have no more radar signature, and can be virtually invisible to enemy radars. You're still physically visible.

- Cloaking. You're physically invisible, and jammed as otherwise it would be useless. It needs to be more limited than jamming, to prevent abuse.

As Vectorus said, they both have to be limited in time and possibilities while cloaking. It could need a lot of raw power or capacitor. Or maybe its efficacity could be based on the ship's dimensions or volume, making it easier to detect large cloaked flagships.

[Vectorus]

Exactly Neils, I think you get what I'm saying. I think true cloaking is unnecessarily far-fetched and could introduce rendering problems. Which avatars are allowed to see the ship? Can you see it if you're inside the shield?

I feel if the heat sinks' capacity were judged correctly, it would provide the proper limitations. A large ship would dump so much power that no cloaking shield could absorb it; it would then start filling up the buffer at a substantial rate. You could dedicate lots of volume to the hold, to stock up on heat sinks, but that would reduce your effectiveness in other areas. And even then, you'd burn through them pretty quick, and you'd have to return to a well-stocked supply base to get more.

[AnrDaemon]

Please don't drag "almost every story" into Hazeron. It has its own mechanics and limitations, and unless you want a completely ruined game, you have to judge changes against existing mechanics first.

Beside your classic "total blackout" kind of "cloaking field", there's more variants that are actually usable in the game environment.
Not to mention, it does not necessarily have to be only one variant ever existing.

[Vectorus]

Every fictional universe is built on tropes. If you only consider mechanics you end up with a game like chess or Go, which may be very strategic - but totally lacking in character and immersion. Using those points of reference is not "dragging" anything in: unless "warp" drives, "transporters" and other core concepts belong in the same category! You start with a trope, you build a mechanic on it. Guess where you get tropes from...correct! Other stories. 10 points to Anr.

We're already considering its specific implementation re. weapons, sensors, emissions, ramming, transporters and other existing mechanics, so not sure quite what you're getting at there. It's not as if we're saying "Romulans can cloak permanently therefore all Hazeron ships should cloak permanently so case closed see you next week!"

I agree that we can have many variants. I propose that this specific variant makes sense with the name "cloaking shield", which we've already been given.

[AnrDaemon]

Correction: Fictional universes invent tropes, not build on them.
You first invent trope, then build your universe around it.
The obvious problem starts, when you want to invent a new trope. You either have to fit it into existing universe, or fit universe into your new trope.
So be careful to not repeat the retcon failures of other companies.

Also, I can talk for hours about everything you yourlist. Warp drives especially. So, don't try to bait me, you'll regret it.