Useless Useful Stealth: Difference between revisions

* Averted in ''[[Dark Messiah of Might and Magic|Dark Messiah]]: [[Heroes of Might and Magic]]'' where stealth is a viable approach throughout most of the game, at least when in dark poorly-lit areas.

* The ''[[Alien vs. Predator]]'' games are built around averting this trope for the Alien and Predator when fighting humans. Marines have enough ranged firepower to drop you very quickly in open battle but suffer heavily from [[The Guards Must Be Crazy]]: Staying hidden and taking them down one-by-one is pretty much mandatory. Played straight when the two fight each other, as both Alien and Predator can see through each others' stealth (and the Marine never gets to be stealthy. Ever.).

* In the small but loyal fan community of the original ''[[Doom (series)|Doom]]'', most players see the "partial invisibility" powerup as more of a burden than anything else. This is because monsters fire much less accurately at invisible players, which sounds like a good thing, except that's it's usually harder to dodge projectiles when they're scattering all around you than when they're flying predictably towards you in a straight line (to the point that the sphere seems to make enemies ''[[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|more adept at leading their shots]]'' rather than making you harder to hit). Also, partial invisibility doesn't really make it harder for the enemies to actually SEE you and thus start attacking (and even if it did, your gunfire alerts them anyway). This is abused in some user-made levels where the player is required to pick up an invisibility sphere, just to make a fight ''harder''.

* The Spy of [[Team Fortress 2]] manages to subvert this, but Spy is still inarguably one of the three hardest classes in the game to play well, up with Scout and Sniper. The Spy can do truly horrifying amounts of damage to Sentry nests with Sappers and to enemies (especially the feared Heavy-Medic combo), so the difficulty is worth it. The Spy combines various kinds of invisibility with disguising as the enemy team's players for maximum effectiveness. All forms of disguise hide the spy from sentry guns. The Spy's disguise options are as follows:

* Averted in ''[[Allegiance]]''. Of course it's a multiplayer-only game, so AI cheating and limitations don't really play a role. Still, it is essentially a Real Time Strategy game with human players directly controlling each of the individual units, and some of the most feared ships in the game are stealth-based. A good team can sneak stealth bombers into an enemy sector to strike when the enemy has no chance of successfully defending, and competent players can use stealth fighters to quickly take out the miners that are the back-bone of every team's economy. Even units that are not designed to be stealthy can take steps to lower their chances of being detected, and this often adds greatly to their effectiveness. One of the most feared factions in the game (when in the hands of a veteran commander) has stealth as their [[Planet of Hats|hat]]. Trying to keep your forces stealthy and to keep enemy stealth units from sneaking up on your team are significant elements in the strategy in the game.

* Nearly all Romulan and some Klingon ships in ''[[Star Trek Armada]]'' have cloaking devices. This also includes the Romulan most powerful unit the ''D'deridex''-class warbird. True to Trek canon, cloaked ships can't fire weapons or use shields. While this is seemingly offset by allowing the Romulans to spring ambushes, if they happen to be detected, they ''will'' be destroyed before they have a chance to decloak and open fire. Also, scouts are cheap and cloak-detecting systems for them are one of the first upgrade options.

* Outside of [[Stealth Based Mission|Stealth Based Missions]], cloaking is pretty much useless in ''[[Nexus the Jupiter Incident]]'', as the goal in other missions usually involves fighting and destroying the enemy.

* ''[[Homeworld]]'' and its sequels have several ships capable of cloaking. However, this cloaking is temporary and is mostly useless, especially since it's very easy to research cloak detection. The Kushan in the first game have the ''Spectre''-class cloaked fighter, which wasn't particularly powerful and was really only useful in taking out lone resources collectors (for which regular, cheaper fighters would work as well). The ''Cataclysm'' stand-alone expansion features the ''Assassin''-class ion array frigate, which can also cloak. However, it's also incredibly slow, meaning that the cloak will run out before the ship can get within range and align its [[Wave Motion Gun]] for the shot. The Somtaaw have three stealthy ship classes that are actually a little more useful. The ''Leech''-class breaching pod is unmanned and is small enough to avoid being picked up by standard sensors. It can then attach to a larger ship and slowly drain its HP, until the ship suffered a [[Critical Existence Failure]], or just bring back the drained HP as resources. It can still be detected by scouts, but it's nimble enough to find holes in sensor networks. The ''Mimic''-class infiltration craft can use holographic projectors to impersonate an enemy ship or an asteroid, get close to the enemy and suicide-bomb them. Two ''Mimic''s can combine into a corvette-sized ''Martyr'', which can impersonate even larger ships or asteroids and has a bigger bang.