Nebulae, visibility, and skulking...

[Possum]

I have a very old set of SE4 notes, dated April 2001, in which Atrocities is quoted as saying...



The cyan and violett nebulaes also obscure to level 3, so unless you don't have a level 4 sensor (below that you won't see anything in nebulaes) you can't detect things in violett, cyan and orange nebulaes. Even with level 4 sensor you will be blind like a mole in red and green nebulaes.
Summary:

Obscuration to level 3 (need level 4 sensor):
violett, cyan and orange nebulaes

Obscuration to level 4 (obscures everything):
green

Obscuration to level 5 (obscures everything):
red




Now, I am very fond of playing with Ancient type galaxies, so I deal with nebulae quite a bit.

And I have found that, contrary to the above, I seem to be able to see enemy ships and planets in all nebulae sectors once I have Hyper Optics III.

This is with SE4 Classic, patch Version 1.49

Would anybody care to comment on this?

[Possum]

...on second thought, that may have been Geoschmo, not Atrocities. My notes are unclear, it's just a C&P from the forums into a .TXT file...

[Aiken]

There are 2 different types of nebulas: nebula systems (nebula1.bmp-nebula5.bmp) and storm systems (storm1.bmp-storm5.bmp). Only 2 types of nebulas are completely obscure for any scanner - Storm4 and Storm5. Just to be sure: look at bmps and check again.

Was it different in Classic?

Edit: it was a PsychoTechFreak, and the name of that thread was "Cloaking and nebulae", easy to find it with forum search function.

[TerranC]

nebulae sectors? Do you mean Storm sectors or Nebula systems? No storms have level 5 cloaking; but the red nebula systems have it; and no sensors, wether it be Hyper Optics or Temporal or Psychic or Tachyon, can penetrate it in the stock game.

And yes Aiken. The Nebula pics (the one with two colours, instead of one) weren't in se4 classic.

[Makinus]

Visibility really affect the AI? or it cheats seeing ships that it shouln´t see?

[Possum]

Makinus said:
Visibility really affect the AI? or it cheats seeing ships that it shouln´t see?



THAT, colleague, is a very good question! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

[Aiken]

My cloaked spies hangin in the center of AI's home system have no problems at all.
So I doubt that AI is cheating.

PS: I have few ships inside his territory hiding in obscure storms too.