that has never been the problem

the problem is the icon still shows up

it doesn't really matter if the icon still shows up, as there is nothing the other player can do about the phased ship flying around in-system

The real problem with a true cloakable ship - even if you fixed the icon problem - is that it's a lot of micro to gain any benefit from it, unless it's just a super unstoppable scout ship.

nah i disagree. if i made them, i would make a cap ability for one, and in my mod, caps are super tough, and i would also make it a "tough" cruiser, and if you had, say 15 of them, waiting in a grav well, and sneaking behind the enemy lines, they could be pretty deadly

Just an idea, but i was looking at Starcraft 2 and remembering the Zerg from the original. But a good counter to "invisible ships" (oh, my idea's for the HP Star grav well didnt work, but will still keep trying) might be to make the ships very fragile and low end weapons. In this way, only a substantial number can achieve any major firepower, while at the same time because of their no armor, light hull points, they will not live very long. Meaning without a sustained stream of re-inforcements their ability to take on even moderate fleets will be extremely limited.

Perhaps best used against small low end fleets or single ships caught unawares.

That might make a good counter. 

-Teal

Can't the call to the icon be removed?

-Teal

I had an idea to remove the mesh from the call line. Or to disable the textures for the mesh to try an achieve the "invisible ship". 

The no mesh in the call line gave me a mini-dump.

The removal of the textures from the call lines in the mesh simply rendered a textureless ship. Bland but certainly visible.

What about the illuminator ability that uses the see through copies of itself as decoys? Is that a modifier for the mesh? Or to use a mesh for an effect rather than a ship mesh?

-Teal

p.s.  will test that and get back to you on that.

Is it possible to make a "blank" mesh? What happens if you remove all but a single point from the modified mesh that is called?

-Teal

hmmmm....

i think i may have found something that will actually work, i will need to test it, but basically, take the recharge module for the advent, which is a sphere, which i also reduced when i used that mesh for the combat mines in StarFall, and basically use Newboerg's resize tool to make it a tenth of its size, then re-size it again to a tenth of the tenth. Basically a small pinpoint that maybe barely visible. The icon i will try to remove by removing the call for it in the entity file.

I dont know if this is possible, but i dont think it will give me an error, and it is pretty straightforward, and would mean as modders we could use this ourselves.

I will give it a try tonight and let you know.    Wish us luck!!  I think it would be cool. 

Keep Gaming and Keep Modding!!!

-Teal

Only if you remove it from the ship itself.

I think it would be enough to give the cloaking ship a tradeship icon onscreen (something small and usually ignored ), it can use a more normal icon in the Infocard.

actually that is not a bad idea... because there is an option to turn trade ship icons off, thus, if you played that way, it could be realistic.

the question becomes, can you switch icons on the fly also? like take a BS icon, turn it to a trade ship icon, and back?

  Haha, Hello Everyone, Guess What?  <Secret Smile>  It Works!!!!!!!!    Haha, i took the Advent AM Recharger mesh, which is a sphere, and i had already re-sized it down to make my version of the combat mines, with fatalattack ability as their payload, and i dropped it into NewBoerg's Resize Tool, and shrank it to a hundredth of its size, and took that and dropped it again into the resize tool and shrank that a hundredth of that size, total one thousandth its shrank size of the combat mine, which i believe was a third of the original, i think, i cant remember off the top of my head.

Anyway, i made a quick race, called them Unknown and dropped the invisible ship (the AM recharger with the minus1000.mesh) and put it in the playerunknown.entity and of course had to do the ai name and the player name from the player.entity into the string file.

But left the planetmodules, took all the ships out except the invisible ship and the fabricator and left the research in, because eventually im going to switch meshes for all the ships to make them all invisible.

Trick here is to give them no shields, very low hit points and normal guns, relatively quick for the first inviso ship, but all the others of course will stay at the same speed, but lowered hitpoints, no shields also.

Made the fragile and invisible, haha, they do have phaseouthull but that is only renewable every two minutes so they protect themselves with that, at least temporarily.

Once i have all the ships in i will release 1.0 version, but im still testing, haha.

Oh, i fired up the mod with the Unknown race, (based off the Advent) with their one little ship. I built it, and out it popped. Icon and all, it has a pulsing light from the am recharger mesh effect.    And i went to the menu and effects and turned off the icons, and guess what?   Haha, it was invisible!  well except for the pulsing light it was, haha. Anyway, im zipping it up now and anyone is welcome of course to download it off FileFront as soon as it finishes. I will post a link here. 

Boy do i love this Game!!!  Haha, it feels good to do stuff, you know?  Haha, and fun and im acting like a kid, but hey, im having a good time.  I have to remember i couldnt do any of this at all if the devs hadnt made this game, and i didnt hang out with all these cool people who get all these cool ideas!!!!!

Take care and see you on the forum!!

Keep Gaming and Keep Modding!!!!!

-Teal

p.s.  I know its not "Cloaked", you know, visible ship casts ability, becomes invisible, then it wears off and the ship is visible again.    But it IS Cool!!!  

-Teal

so, i am a little lost, did you just make it a small mesh from the start? or was it a normal sized ship, then used cloak ability, then it switched to small mesh? i also thought, an easy way to remove the icon is to just turn the icon for trade ship into a single pixel (if possible) i mean, who really bothers with them? why see them? they are autonomous anyway. i acutally have an idea now, of what you are doing, but how do you switch meshes on the fly? what is the code for it? cause i would like to take a stab at this.

edit: where do I find the icon in the game folder? lol

 Okie, here is the link:

http://files.filefront.com/13647995

Tell me what you think, ok?  

-Teal

Actually, i had resized the AM recharger before, in my StarFall mod, to make a makeshift combat mine. It is a sphere, which i thought would be a good shape you know, when its small its hard to see, a single dot or something, instead of a ship with like length and wings and all. So i took the combat mine mesh and shrank it.  

Now its not even a dot, you cant even see it.

As to why i left the icons in, well, its a good thing for people who want to see their ships, even invisible ships. And for those that dont all they have to do, is turn off icons.    Everybody is happy!!  Im Happy too!!!  

Just finished uploading it, it has only one ship now for the Unknown race, they are they only one's with the invisible ship.

And am working on the other ships now, and Hope to finish tonight or tomorrow.    Then the Unknown race will have all ships and a full tech tree and invisible ships, all of them, haha. 

Downside to playing them is going to be that they are fragile, (no shields, low hullpoints) but they will be cheap, sorta invisible Zerg for Sins!!!  

Try it out and let me know what you think?  KK?

-Teal

Oh, you are one of the co-creator's ok?    Isn't that Great!!!!  

-T

EvilIron, 

               There is NO mesh change on the fly, partner. Its invisible to start with, stays invisible.  It is NOT Cloak.

But it is Cool!!!!!  

-Teal

Icons are listed at the top of the entity file, 

like:

hudIcon "HUDICON_CAPITALSHIP_PSICARRIER"

smallHudIcon "HUDICONSMALL_CAPITALSHIP_PSICARRIER"

infoCardIcon "INFOCARDICON_CAPITALSHIP_PSICARRIER"

minZoomDistanceMult 1.000000

for Capitals and Frigates,    

-Teal

ok i tried it in 1.16 (you didn't say what version it was for) first, it still has the AM recharge icon, and second, you make it invisible from the start, don't know if that is what you want; well, it blinks

cloak, imo, is supposed to work like "Phase Out Hull" ability, or "Invulnerability" where you have to use the ability, then it cloaks, then when the ability is over, it uncloaks.

i think i can make claok, using your suggestions, but i need to know where the icon for the vanilla game is. also i need to know how, in entrenchment, you can switch meshes on the fly. after that, i think it would be easy

Ok i understand that it is somewhere in here, but i have questions then:

for instance, can i switch this to "ability" or something? criteriaType "Research"

also, when i use this in this way, how would i code this:
meshNameIncreasedEffectName "HangarGetupgrade"
meshNameDecreasedEffectName "HangarLosegrade"

leave it blank like the other files?

To be honest with you EvilIron, you are in over my head, i haven't "created" new abilities tieing parts together, basically i have taken a "stock" ability and changed the values inside to get either a negative value, or increased performance, or limiting or changing targets or adding or removing modifiers.

Thats all i have experience with so far, im sorry to disappoint, but you are probably a better modder than me. I tweak files and change out meshes and re-size them and play with ideas where i can use those skills.

Anyway, ShadowMastif and others on the forum could steer you better than me, sorry, good luck with it though, and also ask the devs, they are good people, and very helpful too. 

Take care and Keep Modding!!! 

-Teal

also i meant the actual brush icon. i looked in textures and the like in the original game folder but i cannot find the icons

eviliron have you looked in the unit_main.tga in the textures folder?

harpo

If the Devs dont "Make" the cloak, could they "Show us how?"

-Teal

If we get cloaking, we will finally have my favorite tactics in way. Guerilla tactics. Behind enemey lines and raiding ships and disapearing before they catch you. I love that type of warfare.