a few wee little questions...

[Vildecor]

what about creating a facility with the "cloak level" ability? I'm assuming this would also not work, since cloaking seems hard-coded to work only on vehicles.

[Baron Munchausen]

That's right. It doesn't work either. Hardcode changes are needed for planetary cloaks.

[Lemmy]

ok, so the only way to hide a planet is with Sector - Sight Obscuration.
Unfortunate side effects is that enemy ships at that location will also be cloacked....there is no way to make a ship visible in such a sector, is there? Not without the appropriate sensors anyway

[Taz-in-Space]

BTW, the sector sight obscuration ability will not hide a planet from the AI.
I created a map in which I used this ability to 'hide' ringworlds until the tech allowed someone to find them.
Well, what I didn't know is that a player's colonization minister WILL see them and sent colony ships to that location. ( I don't normally use this minister.) However I am told that you still cannot colonize the planet until you have the tech to see the planet. So if your intent is to keep these planets uncolonized, then this ability IS the proper one!

[Pax]

Originally posted by Taz-in-Space:
BTW, the sector sight obscuration ability will not hide a planet from the AI.
I created a map in which I used this ability to 'hide' ringworlds until the tech allowed someone to find them.
Well, what I didn't know is that a player's colonization minister WILL see them and sent colony ships to that location. ( I don't normally use this minister.) However I am told that you still cannot colonize the planet until you have the tech to see the planet. So if your intent is to keep these planets uncolonized, then this ability IS the proper one!

Uh.

Dumb question: how in the nine frozen hells does one manage to NOT SEE a bloody ring world ... ? Three billion times the surface area of the earth ... kinda hard to miss, n'est-ce pas?

[Phoenix-D]

"Dumb question: how in the nine frozen hells does one manage to NOT SEE a bloody ring world ... ? Three billion times the surface area of the earth ... kinda hard to miss, n'est-ce pas? "

Divide that by the size of a star system.

That and the thing could be, oh, burried inside of a star that went red giant (not hot enough to melt whatever the world is made off), obscured by nebula.

Even the largest structure in the galaxy is invisible if there's something blocking the light between it and you.

Methinks a sphereworld would be rather hard to detect, too. Not a ring, but SPHERE. No light exiting from the resident star.

Phoenix-D

[Taz-in-Space]

In the tradition of Startrek:

Techno Babble Answer #1: Light warping (bending) magnetic field generators

TBA #2: Totally transparant materials (and inhabitants)

TBA #3: VERY thin ring world