It's quiet out there

I have a question for whoever may be reading this. Is it appropriate that you must hunt down every last production building as well as every last builder unit to win a multiplayer/skirmish match? Tell me where-ever.

Anyway, the Stealth faction. The Stealth faction is designed to be very sneaky, obviously, and promote more strategic gameplay. One of the more difficult things to balance is spamming stealthed units, as the counters cannot so easily be moved to where the spammed units are. Hence, several things have been done to stop as much spam as possible.

The first is the economy, discussed earlier. The economy relies on active involvement from the player, rather than being automated. It also discourages spamming units, as spam is one of the least cost effective strategies, as once your opponent starts cranking out the counter, your kills/death ratio will drop rather dramatically, and thus your ability to spam will be nerfed in the future.

The second is the way the units are designed. While the other two teams may have some units that fulfill many roles, Stealth has almost none of these. Their units are very specialised, and finding a good all round unit to spam will be difficult.

Obviously, Stealth does have quite a few advantages also, although as unconductive to spam as possible.

Stealth's build mechanic is based of three Mobile Command Vehicles, or MCVs (C&C throwback, there). It's rather similar to the mechanic for the British Commonwealth in Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, although with a few differences. Firstly, they are functionally different. They are not intended to hold ground, but rather to provide a stealthy base of operations that can be easily moved to another area. Secondly, they are more dedicated. The Primary MCV only produces infantry, the Secondary MCV only produces vehicles, and the Tertiary MCV only produces drones.

The MCVs are stealthed when deployed, and count as vehicles when packed up. This is important for reasons discussed later. The MCVs also provide valuable information by 'listening in' on enemy movements. Thus placing your MCV slightly off the path of commonly travelled routes is a good idea, although you never want to get caught.

The first Primary MCV is paradropped in at a location of your choosing from around your starting location. Once deployed, your can start producing infantry. Each MCV is also able to build the other two MCVs.

Which brings us to the tech tree. The tech tree for Stealth is based around kills. You get more kills, you get more tech. Obviously, it's non-linear. To get the Secondary MCV, you need to purchase that off the tree. To get the Tertiary MCV, you need to already have the Secondary MCV, as well as buying the Tertiary MCV off the tree. You also need to purchase various specialist units which have their own tree starting with the Advanced Infantry.

The Stealth faction have more infantry than the other two teams (though not combined), and they play a more important role in the Stealth player's strategies, as well as their opponents'. All Stealth infantry are... Well, stealthed. This means that they are undetectable unless you have a stealth detector unit nearby. The majority of stealth detection is also based around infantry, which means that your opponents' infantry will now play a larger role in the battle too (as opposed to being relegated to useless in lategame).

The Stealth basic infantry are enough to see you by almost everything. Their AA infantry is the same, pretty much (it seems to be a point of commonality between the teams), their anti-infantry infantry is halfway between the other two, and so are their anti-tank infantry. Their basic anti-tank infantry also serve as better anti-fortification than their advanced anti-tank infantry, which keeps both units useful in both their own roles and in others.

Their advanced infantry sort of blur the line with the well-defined roles. The advanced anti-fortification infantry pack a powerful assault rifle and demolition charges, while the advanced anti-tank infantry have the same assault rifle and a deployable missile launcher. Neither are particularly spammable, since they are both very expensive for their purpose, and you can only have one demo charge on a building at a time. You also have to deploy the anti-tank infantry for it to kill tanks, and then pack it up to move on, so it's better for ambushing than going out and attacking an enemy army.

The third advanced infantry is the advanced anti-infantry. This infantry actually does much less damage per second against infantry, but does it at a long range. It is a sniper, and yes, it can shoot people out of buildings, important for harrassment against an opposing Rush player. It also has an ability called spot, which stops it from shooting, but allows it to see further into the fog of war, and also detect stealth units, which means that it plays a vital role (doubly so!) in a Stealth mirror match.

All of the advanced infantry must be bought through kills, in the same fashion as MCVs are. How much of these tier 1 options you'll be able to get at the onset of a game remains to be seen at this point. The tree is also undecided at this point.

Stealth vehicles operate in a different manner. Stealth does not have any tanks, which are defined as vehicles that can shoot while moving and crush infantry. All Stealth vehicles are based off the same chassis (except for the MCVs). They are divided into anti-infantry, anti-tank, anti-air, and anti-fortification. Anti-infantry is the only vehicle that fulfils multiple roles, providing the Stealth player with transport capability, which holds up to five infantry who cannot shoot out.

One thing I don't believe I have mentioned is that whenever a transport is destroyed, all the infantry inside are also killed. This applies to all transport vehicles, not just Stealth ones. The way this affects Stealth in particular is that it increases the importance of destroying transports before their payload is delivered. It gives a large hit of funds from the troops inside and the cost of the transport itself.

Anyway, there are several points of commonality with Stealth vehicles, which I have dubbed a 'chassis bonus'. Something I want to try in this mod is the idea that several vehicles can be based off the same chassis, and thus an upgrade that applies to a particular chassis effects all different variants of. Some example chassis include the Turtle HAT chassis, or the Rush Lightly Armoured Vehicle chassis.

The stealth vehicle chassis include the ability to disguise the vehicle. All Stealth vehicles can disguise. This is an important departure from the stealthy infantry. Disguising vehicles means that an opponent knows something is there, but not what is there. Obviously, using Stealth vehicles relies a bit more on the opponent than using infantry. You must attempt to bluff your opponent into believing your force is something else, to maximise killing potential.

The two most basic examples are disguising as your opponents' vehicles to get into an advantageous position and making your force look vulnerable to a particularly sort of attack. The first is the most basic, being usable in C&C Generals with demolition trucks. The second is slightly more complex. The example I use most of the time is disguising your AA units as AT units, so that the bad guys send out aircraft to quickly dispatch your units, and then you get a ton of loot.

There are sneakier things you can do with that. For instance, you could disguise one of your MCVs as one of their construction vehicles, and then try to sneak into their base (because it's probably the last place they'd look, but maybe not). Once deployed, you will no longer be risking anything as your MCV will be stealthed.

In larger multiplayer free for all games, you can try to make opponents attack each other, or maybe even break truces. The possibilities are many!

Stealth vehicles are also extremely fast, promoting hit and run behavior with their long ranged weapons. This tactic also provides high reward for fairly low risk. The thing that most Stealth players should have at the front of their minds is whether their actions will be rewarding while suffering as few losses as possible. Rush doesn't need to concern themselves with this, as their economy is self-sustaining and permanent. Turtle needs to think about it more, but bad decisions are not as quickly reflected in their economy.

The last pair of units are the drones. Stealth have two drones, both of which are stealthed. One provides AA support, and the other provides AT support. Outside of these roles, they are close to useless, other than keeping an eye on the battlefield below.

The upgrade system works similar to the patch system of the Novus. You can swap out various upgrades for new ones depending on what situation you are in. This is facilitated by the Tertiary MCV. The upgrades have their upsides and downsides, and obviously you have to weigh them up.

When playing against Stealth, you obviously have to use strategies that are a massive departure from the ones you'd use against Turtle and Rush. One of the goals of this mod is that build-order and strategy is not only dictated by which army you are playing, but which army your opponent is playing. Games where the teams are cosmetic changes or slight variations in heroes or special units can often get bland very quickly.

Next week, I'll talk about the history behind this mod, where various ideas originated etc.