Useless Useful Stealth: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

* There are many enemies that players [[But Thou Must!|must kill to complete key objectives]], such as [[Boss Battle|bosses]], that are harder to kill than enemies that you can stealth by. Hence, if your character or party is powerful enough to kill the bosses (as is necessary in order to progress in the game), it is also more than powerful enough to kill the grunts, so it is unnecessary to stealth by them.

* Stealthing by enemies leaves them in place, so if you were to stealth by them and later end up in a situation where you had to run away, you would be sandwiched between two sets of enemies.

** Plus the highest level of radar tower overcomes both cloaking ''and'' stealthing. This all makes life hard for the Cybran Nation, the faction that prefers unconventional tactics like stealth.

** The cloak and stealth defeating radius of that tower are much smaller than it's normal radar range though, and those radar towers are rather expensive to maintain. And thanks to the huge maps and the large number of weapons that can fire beyond visual range, there is an advantage to only being noticed once you're right on top of the enemy. Cybran fighters and bombers especially benefit from their stealth capabilities, since their high speed means they are unlikely to be spotted en route, and can be attacked by AA enemies for only a short time while they are within visual range.

** Stealthed Ghosts could stand next to your base and tell the nukes where to hit you unless you found out where they were fast enough to kill them before the nuke launches. And the Protoss had a stealther that could fly alongside a fleet of Carriers (making them invisible too) to make a slow but powerful death unit.

*** Note that the stealth-granting Protoss unit cannot, itself, become stealthed, not even with the help of another stealther. Given that the stealth-granting unit can also teleport friendly units from elsewhere on the map to itself, it's a popular target.

** Against the Zerg, however, this trope is played straight. The Zerg have Overlords for detection, which are always mass-produced (as [[Construct Additional Pylons|you need more of them]] to build more units). They also fly, so they can go anywhere. Using stealth against a Zerg requires them sucking badly or you executing a deliberate campaign of Overlord slaughter and immediately hitting them with your stealth units (Corsair/DT).

* In ''[[Dawn of War]]'' and its first expansion, ''Winter Assault'', Infiltration was a toggleable ability that made your units go invisible but stop shooting. Had its uses, but not exactly many of them. ''Dark Crusade'' onwards, units can now fire when infiltrated. Not just the lightest ones, either. Some sides merrily fight with invisible versions of their mainline combat units, arguably the best anti-vehicle unit in the game, or, with the help of an item, their whole army...

** Its sequel even has commander units dedicated to stealth. The lictor can take upgrades that make it more powerful when away from your army and has an ability to pluck single high value units and reel them in for a beating. Combined with the ability to highlight enemy commanders on the map this makes it a powerful assassin unit able to infiltrate behind enemy lines and pick off lone high value targets or pull one out of the middle of an army for your troops to easily target as a nasty surprise.

* 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.

* Cloaking devices are much more useful in the ''[[Star Trek Starfleet Command]]'' games, but other ships can still be set to scan for cloaked targets which will sometimes result in a temporary reveal. Additionally, while it's easy for a cloaked ship to sneak up, decloak, and open fire, it also leaves the first ship vulnerable, as it takes a second or two for the shields to come back up. Even the ''Scimitar'' (from ''[[Star Trek: Nemesis]]'') in a special mission of the third game acts like a regular Romulan ship when cloaked (i.e. lowered shields, can't fire), even though the fact that it could do both was kind of the point of the movie.

* ''[[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.

** Stealth could be really useful in the campaign, during one specific mission in which you had to destroy an entire fleet of enemy beam ships guarding a hyperspace jump suppressor. If you had three stealth generator ships, you could keep only one powered on and switch out their cloaking when they began to run out of energy, meaning you were permanently cloaked. Your permanent (but very micromanagey) cloaking field would conceal a fleet of salvage ships, with which you could steal the entire enemy fleet essentially undetected. Fifty free beam ships for your next mission.

* Angband variant Steamband has something one can choose at the beginning of the game called Wonderland Mode. This is [[Disc One Nuke]] coupled with [[Nintendo Hard]] pure bragging rights as in order to complete your game you will have to climb back down normally. You start with your new character at the level before the last, but can't go down and face the final enemy. Instead, you must make your way to the top floor then go back down, collecting completely out of depth loot as you go. How might a level 1 character survive you ask? On every floor in wonderland mode every single enemy begins the level ASLEEP even the ones that CAN'T be put to sleep. Hitting an alarm trap or accidentally awakening one monster can lead to a full-on death stampede especially if near enemies that can pass through walls like Ghosts and Vampires. Still, even this can have its use. If you pick up something that fires a particular elemental bolt, you can wake up monsters weak to it intentionally, then fire and rebound it off a wall to kill wildly OOD monsters while near a staircase (as where you find the rod-equivalent determines its strength) catapulting you 20 levels ahead. Averted with loud and noisy PCs like golems and steam-mecha. They might not have the hit dice to go toe-to-toe but they certainly have the strength to take out something 10 levels higher than them, playing one of them turns this into [[Glass Cannon]] mode instead. Slap down some of the british soldiers or Nemo's men, then smack around a couple vampires, then mangle some martians, and you'll have a fighting chance from then on. (note that some post-30 monsters are such heavy sleepers even mecha can't wake them!) Also if you're lucky and find a ____ of return, you can leap straight to the top, but if you find two you can't cheat. Reading a second moves you to level 1 only instead.

 

* ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'' suffers from all of these. Most monsters that you can stealth by can easily be attacked and killed a few at a time - but if you stealth by them then if you are exposed you could be in the middle of a lot of enemies. Also, stealth is only possible in "solo mode" where you are only controlling one character at a time and it is very easy to accidentally switch back into normal mode and expose yourself.

** The sequel makes it somewhat more useful with the addition of high-end Jedi classes that focus on Sneak Attack, as well as several sections where the protagonist doesn't have allies with him anyway.

 

== [[Wide Open Sandbox]] ==

** There's also robbing houses, which the player is also introduced to through one of the aformentioned stealth-based missions. It's supposed to be an easy way for the player to make cash without actually playing the storyline, but in 90% of the houses you can try to infiltrate, its occupants are in the front room, ready to discover you as soon as you enter.

 

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* ''[[Mutants and Masterminds]]'' allows for impressive levels of stealth, including a "hide in plain sight" feat that can be taken even at the lowest levels and allows one to hide without cover and while being observed. On the other hand, the system is supposed to model [[Comic Book]] superheroes who commonly have such abilities. Becoming invisible (or unable to be perceived by other senses) is similarly easy to do. On the flip side of things, there's often [[Internet Backdraft|heated discussions]] on the Atomic Think Tank message board about whether the vanilla stealth skill applies to super-senses with or without some degree of preparation for said skills, and it's similarly cheap to buy powers that will counter any and all invisibility effects.

 

[[Category:Invisibility Index]]

[[Category:This Index Is Useless]]