portable cloaking device / planetary fleet scanner

[mathematician]

- have a research "planetary fleet scanner mark x" (x=1,2,3,4)
- reveals fleet composition of incoming fleets with eta <= x

- have a research "cloaking device mark x" (x=1,2,3,4)
- enables attack missions to (optional) use a cloaking device <= x
- reduces range of planetary fleet scanners by x, but also reduces damage of the ships in this fleet by 10*x%

The planetary fleet scanner is intended to decide if you better run your fleet (but not for getting defence). Attackers may counter this, but at a cost of reduced damage.

[Mzyxptlk]

..what?

Please explain in English:
What does it do?
How does it do it?
Why is it a good idea?

[JonnyBGood]

What the ****.

Okay I've managed to work out the first part. There's a new option on the scan tree which would enable a scanner to FA scan every incoming fleet on his alliance on a particular eta? The cloaking device then blocks this. I then lose you again entirely.

[booji]

Originally Posted by mathematician

- have a research "planetary fleet scanner mark x" (x=1,2,3,4)
- reveals fleet composition of incoming fleets with eta <= x

that sounds very like the current incoming scan, unless this is like what I put in the vision for planetarion thread where you can scan incs on someone else... if so as I mentioned there this would need to be limited somehow, either with a very wide margin for error, or else simply saying what class there is in that fleet + maby some idea as to the numbers in that class.

Originally Posted by mathematician

- have a research "cloaking device mark x" (x=1,2,3,4)
- enables attack missions to (optional) use a cloaking device <= x

does this mean when you have this cloak that if you have x+1 of it researched then someone with just x of the scan cannot scan you to find out your fleet? if so why not just rely on the usual amps and disds?

[Fatrick]

Originally Posted by mathematician

- have a research "cloaking device mark x" (x=1,2,3,4)
- enables attack missions to (optional) use a cloaking device <= x
- reduces range of planetary fleet scanners by x, but also reduces damage of the ships in this fleet by 10*x%

The planetary fleet scanner is intended to decide if you better run your fleet (but not for getting defence). Attackers may counter this, but at a cost of reduced damage.

i think what hes getting at is that an attacker can choose to cloak his fleet by sacrificing weapon efficieny. i also presume he implys u would have to research for this privilage up to a maximum of 4 braches off the reseach tree for this device. so a guy with research level 3 on cloaking cannot be fleet scanned by a guy with research level 2 on the scanning branch.

if this is indeed what he is getting at i cant see it adding very much to the game, as amps/dists does the same job in a simpler way.

[mathematician]

actually, my idea was to have a scan which is targetted at your own planet (planetary based). it may list type, eta and amount of all incoming ships within a certain eta range. somewhat like the 'out-of-the-window scan' mentioned in an old suggestion, but from the planet's point of view.
since this scan is not directed towards another planet, dists are not relevant here.

this is in fact an incoming scan, but for all incoming fleets at once. with this scan you won't be able to derive in which fleet the listed ships are in.

i added the cloaking idea to compensate for the fact that the planetary scan ignores distorters.

[JonnyBGood]

Reverting back to "what the ****".

[Mzyxptlk]

Now it's starting to look like you're combining JGPs and FA?

[Machado]

Originally Posted by mathematician

actually, my idea was to have a scan which is targetted at your own planet (planetary based). it may list type, eta and amount of all incoming ships within a certain eta range. somewhat like the 'out-of-the-window scan' mentioned in an old suggestion, but from the planet's point of view.
since this scan is not directed towards another planet, dists are not relevant here.

this is in fact an incoming scan, but for all incoming fleets at once. with this scan you won't be able to derive in which fleet the listed ships are in.

i added the cloaking idea to compensate for the fact that the planetary scan ignores distorters.

So tell me this nice and simply as I'm feeling a little bit lost here. What is it good for?

[Vladel]

that sounds way too complicated