Stealth system

Pretty solid from what I see. I haven't taken the time to fully read your previous posts but does this relate to on foot, in space, or both? Does this mean you can go stealth, in space? How would that work beyond getting through blockades undetected Not that there is anything wrong with that.

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Original post by PSWind Pretty solid from what I see.

Hey, thanks for taking the time to read it.

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I haven't taken the time to fully read your previous posts but does this relate to on foot, in space, or both? Does this mean you can go stealth, in space? How would that work beyond getting through blockades undetected Not that there is anything wrong with that.

This is for stealth in space, for vehicles (air / sea / land) and for when you're on foot.

Stealth is good for dealing with superior enemies in a lot of ways: Making hit and run attacks, getting within weapons range without getting battered, and performing dirty tricks like leaving behind a cask of antimatter right off their port bow.

Stealth will let you land on colonies you're normally barred from (maybe to meet your smuggler contact). It will also give you an advantage if you decide to sack the colony.

It also allows you to steal things from ships or bases (like tech or special characters). You could get close enough to EVA over a team to hijack or sabotage a ship.

Merchants will also have a need for stealth. If you have a secret market with good prices, you'll want to lose the vultures that start following as a result of your killer sales. Alternately, you can track a ship that has a secret jump route, becoming a vulture yourself. And, if you get into deep debt, there are those pesky bill collector probes and bounty hunters that you'll need to lose from time to time. =)

Awareness/alertness escalation is rather detailed, but you don't seem to cover becomming less alert.

IMHO its still one of the major flaws with most stealth games. Theif solves it by practically never letting a fully aware (hunting as you call it) person drop down again, but in some levels it happens over time, or after a suitably large search has taken place.

Most games seem to work on a horrible 'time out'. It can really destroy the stealth aspect (in, say, Deus Ex) when you can shoot someone though the head and then just lay low for the next couple of mins. On comming back the guards have all returned to their default state, despite one of their comrades quietly bleeding into a gutter.

It would be nice if you could reduce the awareness in a number of ways. An excuse (thinking random sounds were rats etc.) a distraction (ah! fire! better sort that out sharpish!) a frame (blame some unsuspecting civilian) or perhaps some kind of retreat state (remaining guards tighten up patrol routes to just a couple of central rooms rather than the entire building).

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Original post by OrangyTang Awareness/alertness escalation is rather detailed, but you don't seem to cover becomming less alert.

Hmmm... You're right, good point.

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Most games seem to work on a horrible 'time out'. It can really destroy the stealth aspect (in, say, Deus Ex) when you can shoot someone though the head and then just lay low for the next couple of mins. On comming back the guards have all returned to their default state, despite one of their comrades quietly bleeding into a gutter.

I tried to cover this by the escalation based on obvious evidence, such as finding a body, or an explosion or gunshot. But, again, this makes the alertness go up, not down.

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It would be nice if you could reduce the awareness in a number of ways. An excuse (thinking random sounds were rats etc.) a distraction (ah! fire! better sort that out sharpish!) ...

I think what's needed are two classifications: Either your presence has been hinted at, or is obvious. Hints can be mistaken for other things, but obvious evidence of your prescence is such a screwup that it requires a diversion.

So maybe if you're just glimpsed, or make a slight noise, then the NPC should react casually if the security level is below Alarmed, and check it out. They'll move to the point of the interest, and if they find nothing, they'll de-escalate, and make some comment like "I'm hearing things" or "Jenkins, quit playing around!"

At Unprepared, the same NPC will de-escalate maybe a dozen times before calling buddies who wait around the area for awhile. Maybe they comment to tell you what's going on, saying something like, "Something not right here."

At Alert, you only get 2 or 3 chances before they call in backup. The whole calling of backup thing shoud increase the chance that you'll get caught.

To de-escalate, you should be able to

• Use "Jedi mindtricks" with psionics
  
• Project a hologram of something innocuous, like a rat or asteroid
  
• Use some sort of sensor echo device or setting on scanners
  
• Use some kind of skill bluff to impersonate someone or something else
  

At Alarmed and above, NPCs don't de-escalate unless you fake signals that you're leaving, which can be some sort of sensor equipment option. The only other alternative would be to create, as you said, a massive problem for them elsewhere. If you're only hinted at, then this will be a great way not to de-escalate security, but to clump them around the problem area; but if you've been discovered, they should still deal with the problem but hunt you as well.

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... a frame (blame some unsuspecting civilian)

I don't quite see how this one would work.

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... or perhaps some kind of retreat state (remaining guards tighten up patrol routes to just a couple of central rooms rather than the entire building).

This is good, I think if their forces are reduced past a certain point, they should hole up and wait for reinforcements. Maybe you can lengthen this time by destroying their ability to call for off-map help.

Well written.

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Original post by Wavinator This is good, I think if their forces are reduced past a certain point, they should hole up and wait for reinforcements. Maybe you can lengthen this time by destroying their ability to call for off-map help.

A well defined communications system is, I feel, vital. Not just on external comm level, but internally as well. If the enemy forces are using cell phones, then a local scrambling device won't alert the lone guard to your presence unless he feels the need to contact somebody. Then, even if he sees you, the rest of the base won't realize you're there. But if he's constantly hearing radio chatter on an open band, then that suddenly going to noise will make him suspicious more quickly, giving you a much smaller window of opportunity to take him out.

When you mention disguising yourself as something else, you may consider disguising kills as well. Finding a dead body washed up on a beach won't be as suspicious if there are no signs of a struggle, for instance. So the initial body would only hint at your presence, rather than make it obvious. After the second or third, they stop assuming a coincidence. In a wilderness environment, killing somebody so it looks like a cougar attack may be even less suspicious, so you could get away with a few more deaths before they stop believing the ruse.

CM

Excellent system ;)
There's only one aspect I think you have overlooked: if there's ambient "noise" that the guards are used to, the player can use this to his advantage. In a high-security facility, the guards are used to everything being quiet, so even a short sighting would be enough to make them suspicious. The usual patrol on a suburban district will discard small sounds and weird shadows because that's what they're used to - "it was probably the rats". In a war zone, someone showing up with a bullet through his head is not going to raise any alarms. Same for an isolated prison where guards show up dead from time to time. For each of these possible alarm raisers, there should be an ambient level for each zone, so that events below that level are automatically discarded. I know you could have a similar effect by having those guards starting at different alarm levels, but then you lose the kind of flexibility that allows you to have guards posted to a zone with high electromagnetic interference, who won't mind if their sensors show weird signals sometimes.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: ... a frame (blame some unsuspecting civilian) I don't quite see how this one would work.

I'm having a hard time figuring out how you'd actually do this in a game, but I stuck it in as another plausible way of calming down the hunters. The only way I could imagine would be to be seen impersonating someone and acting suspicion. They give chase and you lead them round the corner into the person you've been impersonating. While they grab the innocent you've quietly slipped away. Of course that kinda requires you to have not been positivly identified as someone else first.

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Quote: ... or perhaps some kind of retreat state (remaining guards tighten up patrol routes to just a couple of central rooms rather than the entire building). This is good, I think if their forces are reduced past a certain point, they should hole up and wait for reinforcements. Maybe you can lengthen this time by destroying their ability to call for off-map help.

Something more complex than just the size of the force I think. Probably based on confidence/confusion. A person who constantly hears you in the same area and has a mate with him is going to feel pretty confident about tracking you down. But a group of people who are hearing noises everywhere and getting shot at from all sorts of different angles are going to be much more jumpy, even if they are a bigger group.

Seems like a solid system, I only have a few minor suggestions.

Under stealth stats, I would add footprint, this is the the overall trace/evidence of your activives. It covers everything from footprints in the snow, to leaving dead bodies lying around. The higher the the footprint the more likly the security will escilate whether they detect you or not.


Also I assume that for each stealth stat there is a corresponding detection stat? Also for detection devices you may want to think of having a set of high level detection equipment that use negative detection technology, in other words it looks for whats missing and inverts stealth ratings for the purposes of its test, so the higher your stealth rating the more likly you will be detected.

Lastly, you might want to think of adding stealth decoys and jammers. Examples might include holo recorder and projector, scans a target and records their actions, then can be used to create a holo version of that target and its recorded actions, diffrent level can recorder longer and are less likly to be noticed. Used to conivce guards that another guard is still alive.

I just had this really cool idea - what about if you use holograms for other bands of the spectrum (x-rays, gamma rays...)? And nano-tech scattered through the atmosphere emitting other particles to achieve the same effect for other detection methods?

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Original post by Conner McCloud A well defined communications system is, I feel, vital. Not just on external comm level, but internally as well. If the enemy forces are using cell phones, then a local scrambling device won't alert the lone guard to your presence unless he feels the need to contact somebody.

Good point. OTOH, guards who suddenly CAN'T use their equipment might even be more alerted. To my mind this makes any game move like this have an automatic time limit before they become even more wary. You could have strategy where the player turns this scrambler on when they're about to make a strike, then off. Abstractly, you could determine some sort of chance that the guards are smart enough to pick up on the fact that every once in awhile, their comm gear malfunctions.

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When you mention disguising yourself as something else, you may consider disguising kills as well. Finding a dead body washed up on a beach won't be as suspicious if there are no signs of a struggle, for instance. So the initial body would only hint at your presence, rather than make it obvious. After the second or third, they stop assuming a coincidence.

This is a cool idea, but as always, it has to be distilled down to a ruleset. I like the idea of disguising by hiding, and it would be cool to have some mechanism which makes a death natural (say, like using telekenesis to cause a stroke). But if this is something that the player can only do once at every new area, you'll run into some consistency issues: Does it reset when you come back, so that they never learn, or is it a one time strategy?

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In a wilderness environment, killing somebody so it looks like a cougar attack may be even less suspicious, so you could get away with a few more deaths before they stop believing the ruse.

This would be great on a planet with deadly animals. I wonder if there is some simple way to do this in terms of interface. Maybe if you have a tusk of a creature you have a special "USE ON" enemy option?

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Original post by Jotaf For each of these possible alarm raisers, there should be an ambient level for each zone, so that events below that level are automatically discarded. I know you could have a similar effect by having those guards starting at different alarm levels, but then you lose the kind of flexibility that allows you to have guards posted to a zone with high electromagnetic interference, who won't mind if their sensors show weird signals sometimes.

Wow, this would really improve the idea of stealth. What I'll need to do is determine what elements are ambient in what situations.

How would you organize something like this? It needn't be comprehensive. Maybe you have states such as war, disaster, hostile environment or peace, and this determines if finding someone dead is significant.

Then you have environmental designations, such as animals, communication or sensor interference, and lighting. These would determine if an noises, comm or sensor blackouts, or glimpses of your character are significant.

Then maybe you give the AI an intelligence based "hunch" as to whether or not to investiage further. If the answer is no, then they mutter something about the weather, or the dang racoons, or whatever. If yes, they investiage.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Jotaf For each of these possible alarm raisers, there should be an ambient level for each zone, so that events below that level are automatically discarded. I know you could have a similar effect by having those guards starting at different alarm levels, but then you lose the kind of flexibility that allows you to have guards posted to a zone with high electromagnetic interference, who won't mind if their sensors show weird signals sometimes. Wow, this would really improve the idea of stealth. What I'll need to do is determine what elements are ambient in what situations. How would you organize something like this? It needn't be comprehensive. Maybe you have states such as war, disaster, hostile environment or peace, and this determines if finding someone dead is significant. Then you have environmental designations, such as animals, communication or sensor interference, and lighting. These would determine if an noises, comm or sensor blackouts, or glimpses of your character are significant. Then maybe you give the AI an intelligence based "hunch" as to whether or not to investiage further. If the answer is no, then they mutter something about the weather, or the dang racoons, or whatever. If yes, they investiage.

Actually you could do this fairly easily by assigning an ambient value for each of the stealth stats in an area, then each npcs oberservation or similar stat is used to determine the deviation to the ambient. Finally you get:

if(stealth<(ambient+deviation)) then detected.

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Original post by OrangyTang This is good, I think if their forces are reduced past a certain point, they should hole up and wait for reinforcements. Maybe you can lengthen this time by destroying their ability to call for off-map help.

Something more complex than just the size of the force I think. Probably based on confidence/confusion. A person who constantly hears you in the same area and has a mate with him is going to feel pretty confident about tracking you down. But a group of people who are hearing noises everywhere and getting shot at from all sorts of different angles are going to be much more jumpy, even if they are a bigger group.[/quote]

Okay, programmatically, I can track incidents because these are the nodes the AI needs to respond to. But what constitutes confusion? If you make a bunch of noise simultaneously? Or if you make a bunch of noise period?

I do like the idea, I'm just not sure how you as a player would put it into practice.

What you could have as a game item is a mechanism for remote triggering. If you do the work to sneak around a base and plant a bunch of grenades, then trigger them all at once, you might give the impression that the entire base is under mass assault. (We've seen this is good spy thrillers).

But is that enough? You'd have a trigger item attached to a bunch of detonators or emitters (maybe sensor ghosts or holograms), the risk of you being discovered as you try to plant them, the risk of the items themselves being discovered (which could be skill based), and then the challenge of what you do when the AI is running around.

The intelligence level of the leader could determine how fast people get themselves under wraps, and that also might affect your strategies (if you want to take them out first, you have to find them; then you have to not tip off the plan too soon).

I like the idea, but I've got to find ways of simplifying and abstracting, or it'll be its own game. :)

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Original post by TechnoGoth Actually you could do this fairly easily by assigning an ambient value for each of the stealth stats in an area, then each npcs oberservation or similar stat is used to determine the deviation to the ambient. Finally you get: if(stealth>(ambient+deviation)) then detected.

Yes, you're right for ambient environmental interference. The ambient stuff could be modifiers: For sensor interference, maybe it's -X to sensors. This would naturally cause them to be likely to fail a test.

However, some evidence is going to need to be context sensitive, like the body during wartime. I may simply have to draw up a list of what is and isn't normal under certain situations:

For instance, finding a body with a gunshot wound might be normal during wartime or civil unrest, but not during a natural disaster like a flood or hurricane. And finding a body that's been backstabbed during war is different than one that's been snipered.

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Original post by TechnoGoth Under stealth stats, I would add footprint, this is the the overall trace/evidence of your activives. It covers everything from footprints in the snow, to leaving dead bodies lying around. The higher the the footprint the more likly the security will escilate whether they detect you or not.

Hey, I like this, because it can be tracked on a per incident basis and simply tallied. But I need a more sci-fi name, for those races without feet. ;) Maybe something simple, like "Trail?"

What's nice about such a stat is that it doesn't have to be immediate. I've been puzzling over how to tell the player that bounty hunters or feds are on their tail in the wake of lots of crimes they've committed in the past. This value could have a local AND a global version. The local would get added to the global maybe when you left the level.

So if you kill a bunch of characters and don't hide the bodies, your local trail rises. In order to completely erase the local trail, you have to destroy the level or use some item (nanites?) to scrub the place from top to bottom. And you'd maybe have to prevent witnesses from escaping.

(This gets more into stealthed crimes, but the systems dovetail).

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Also I assume that for each stealth stat there is a corresponding detection stat?

Right. When you're playing, you really only deal with one core stealth stat, Covert, and one core detection stat, Perception. But items and other stats (like Intellect) act as modifiers. If you want to see the true matrix of categorical modifications (Perception for UV, IR, motion, etc), you can pull it up under your character's stats.

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Also for detection devices you may want to think of having a set of high level detection equipment that use negative detection technology, in other words it looks for whats missing and inverts stealth ratings for the purposes of its test, so the higher your stealth rating the more likly you will be detected.

Hah, but wouldn't this be cruel? There you are, doing your best to raise your stats, then you run into a situation where you want them to be lower?

For the "what's missing" idea, though, I think camoflague sort of covers that by the idea of pattern matching.

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Lastly, you might want to think of adding stealth decoys and jammers.

Yes, stats is an excuse to add more items, which we love in RPGs!

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Examples might include holo recorder and projector, scans a target and records their actions, then can be used to create a holo version of that target and its recorded actions, diffrent level can recorder longer and are less likly to be noticed. Used to conivce guards that another guard is still alive.

I'm thinking about all the heist movies I saw where they record an empty part of the bank and splice it into the cameras as they're really stealing.

I do really like the idea, but I'll have to weigh it a bit. For the hologram, there are some issues: When does the NPC know its a fake?

Doing this might not be all that hard: You have a recorder which has some sort of quality level. You have to stealth your way close enough to the target to copy it. Then, when you take out the target, you activate the recorder. From the technical side, the game just reuses the model that was removed, maybe applying some transparency as an interface hint that its known to be a hologram.

The illusion is broken as soon as another entity tries to interact with the recording. This means if you record yourself and it gets shot, the guards aren't fooled. If a guard tries to come up to another guard, then when he gets close enough (based on quality) he breaks the illusion.

It could work.

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Original post by Jotaf I just had this really cool idea - what about if you use holograms for other bands of the spectrum (x-rays, gamma rays...)?

Not bad. I've got to read up on this and figure out what's involved. A gamma or x-ray hologram I think would be a high energy affair. I really want to know if holograms are easily dispelled on infrared, however, and how you might spoof heat. I may have to dip into my magic well of science baloney for this one (right next to the FTL ;))

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And nano-tech scattered through the atmosphere emitting other particles to achieve the same effect for other detection methods?

Yes, what's really wicked is that you could have nanotech explain alot of things. Self propelled reorganizing nano could form a tympanum that could broadcast sounds; it might reorganize to form smells and chemical traces.

I'll need to limit nano a bit, or it'll quickly be sort of a magic wand. But for the advanced empires in the game, this could easily explain their powers.

What will suck, however, is if you run afoul of them without knowing that this is how the universe works.

How easy the hologram is to reconginze would depend on the quality and the npc interaction. Your hologram might fool the security cameras or distant npc, but the closer the npc is the more likly they will spot, oh and holgrams that extend beyond into ranges beyond visable light cost extra ;).

They could also be used to quickly hide dead bodies. Then depending on how smart your AI you could get funny situations like this:

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*Blood Curtling Scream* Guard 1 "What was that sound?" Guard 2 "I didn't hear anything." Guard 1 "Hey, wait where's Fred??" Guard 2 "I don't know, he was here a minute ago." Guard 1 "Wait second was that large rock always in the middle of this hallway?" Guard 2 "hmm, never noticed, but it must have been." Guard 1 "Oh well, I guess your right, better get back to work."

I'd be weary of waving the nanotech magic wand around to much, people might start asking question like "why can't I fill a room with an invisable nano cloud the sets off an alarm if it detects something moving through the cloud, and becomes the perfect unbeatable security system."

That brings another thought to mind are you going to include deadman switches? In other words at a high security base all the guards may wear small devices that cause an alarm to be actived should the guard be killed or incapacited, but maybe thats too much.

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Original post by Wavinator Good point. OTOH, guards who suddenly CAN'T use their equipment might even be more alerted. To my mind this makes any game move like this have an automatic time limit before they become even more wary. You could have strategy where the player turns this scrambler on when they're about to make a strike, then off. Abstractly, you could determine some sort of chance that the guards are smart enough to pick up on the fact that every once in awhile, their comm gear malfunctions.

This is where having different means of communication adds an extra level of strategy. Its impossible to notice that cell phones have stopped working until you go to call somebody, whereas open radio bands are noticeable immediately. Once you've established what comm system is in use, different methods of neutralization become appropriate. In a metro area, a device that scrambles a wide range of frequencies might alert outsiders to your presence, or alert enemies in more subtle ways [perhaps the specific impact it has on television signals worries an off duty guard watching the Wheel?]. But a narrow range will make your window of opportunity between being seen and being reported more narrow, as the guard just has to change channels and try again. In the case of land lines, you could possibly just kill the dispatcher right away. Guards will continue reporting in, but they'd be reporting to nobody, and wouldn't get suspicious.

These are the sorts of things I think about with every stealth game I've played so far. Enemy communication is always the bit they get wrong -- either the NPCs are too independent, like in Deus Ex, or too globally aware. The latter is mostly an issue in games that don't emphasize stealth so much. Either way, it ruins the my experience.

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This is a cool idea, but as always, it has to be distilled down to a ruleset. I like the idea of disguising by hiding, and it would be cool to have some mechanism which makes a death natural (say, like using telekenesis to cause a stroke). But if this is something that the player can only do once at every new area, you'll run into some consistency issues: Does it reset when you come back, so that they never learn, or is it a one time strategy?

This could connect with the ambient noise thing somebody else brought up. In fact, now that I think about it, all detection could be done in this same way. Basically, make it time based, with exponential decay. When something is seen, the 'suspicious' level for that particular thing is increased by some variable amount, and then decays at some variable rate. Is the suspicion level exceeds some set value, then the rules you outlined initially go into play, and the decay no longer matters.

So a dead body is found on a shore. Because guards have been known to drown, this only raises the suspicion for dead bodies to 50/100. An hour later, its dropped down to 40/100, when a second body is found. It increases up to 90/100, but the guards still just shrug it off to the wind. An hour later, its dropped down to 80/100, but a third body raises it to 130/100, and the base guards go on alert.

Expanding on it a little, different levels could add together. Perhaps 50% of the dead body level gets added to the 'I thought I saw something' level for the same purpose. Spying footprints in a snowy field may bring it up to 80/100, but the dead body you saw earlier knocks it up to 110/100.

For many things, the initial boost would just be set at 100. But adding in ambient noise would be as simple as setting that value to something smaller, and changing the decay rate. A noise in a metro environment may be suspicious enough to bring the noise level to 90/100, but it only takes a few seconds to drop off. But the dead body on the beach is less suspicious, but drops off over the course of several hours.

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This would be great on a planet with deadly animals. I wonder if there is some simple way to do this in terms of interface. Maybe if you have a tusk of a creature you have a special "USE ON" enemy option?

I was thinking more like a specific attack related skill, but it depends on how fights work. If you have attack skills, 'cougar attack' may be a dagger skill, while 'bear attack' would be a mace skill. But in a MGS type situation, perhaps poisonous darts are easily mistaken as snake bites [especially if a dead rattler is found nearby]?

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Original post by TechnoGoth That brings another thought to mind are you going to include deadman switches? In other words at a high security base all the guards may wear small devices that cause an alarm to be actived should the guard be killed or incapacited, but maybe thats too much.

I like this idea. Not only does it make stealth play that much more important, it makes the communications question more tricky. If you accidentally disable the deadman switch, you immediately raise a red flag. Somebody will try to contact the guard, and if his communications are down they're going to raise an alarm and send forces to your location to investigate.

So long as there are non-lethal ways to incapacitate, so that the deadman switch can be tricked by a careful player, I don't think this would be going too far at all. Everybody shouldn't have them, but maximum security prisons or presidential palaces and such might.

CM