[Droid803]

there's also the whole "lol stealth in space" issue

[Mongoose]

Procyon Insurgency did a few interesting (and brutally hard) stealth missions.  I remember one bonus point required you to stay within a 10-meter precision or so of a certain transport.  Sooooo much rage.

But yeah, in general, most of my most frustrating gaming moments involve instal-fail stealth situations, especially in games where stealth isn't the primary mechanic.  Guards that quickly forget your position in series like Splinter Cell or Metal Gear Solid may be unrealistic, but at least they allow you to recover from a mistake, and you could at least attempt to shoot your way out if worst came to worst.  FS stealth missions don't normally give you that luxury.

[NGTM-1R]

Back when I was contemplating the Recon Campaign, I think my primary conceit was not so much the stealth mission, because few of the missions would have been purely recon, but rather a Crysis-like stealth mechanic to let you disappear and having various "levels" of stealth. Your stealth fighter would have an option to kill your weapons and burners to "go dark" where you wouldn't be detectable from more a hundred meters or so. With everything active you'd still be stealthy, but more detectable, and when you started shooting you'd be visible until you went dark again.

Part of the problem I had in the end was trying to properly incentivize the use of the stealth aspect. Setting and resetting visibility and enemy AI patterns that much drove me insane, and I never fully worked out how to do it best. At the end I was toying with some kind of idea about sufficient damage compromising your fighter's stealth too.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Maybe if there were LOS SEXPs or something.

I believe BP2 Tenebra incorporated line of sight stuff in its stealth mechanics, most noticeable in the first and second missions. I'm not exactly sure what combination of SEXPs or scripting they've used, but I'd definitely reverse-engineer that if I were to make stealth missions.


I also like NGTM-1R's idea of an active stealth system, it worked wonders in Crysis. Regarding "traditional", "don't-go-near-the-enemy"-style missions, it could be nice if we could devise a way to render the various "detection bubbles" to the player, possibly combined with ways to have a clear overview of mission space and where danger-zones are.