Sunderer Stealth is Completely Useless

Hear me out - the sole purpose of sunderer stealth is to increase the longevity of your vehicle.
Well, after nearly a year and, many, many stealth sunderers pulled, I am pretty much certain that it does no such thing. Or at least, not nearly as well as its alternative, deployment shield.

Cloaked sunderers are ridiculously easy to spot. The other day, I was on NC late at night, and there were no good NC fights, so I figured I'd screw around by going to a VS/TR fight. I parked a stealth sunderer in the middle of nowhere, far from any action, off the beaten path, and locked it (not that anyone else spawned there anyway).
Less than 3 minutes later, someone had found and destroyed it. And there was hardly even anyone there! It was a 1-12 on both sides.

Once fights become larger, the odds of a "stealth" sundie remaining hidden for even a few minutes quickly reaches zero. The only thing that keeps the sunderer alive is the fact that, usually, there is a big blob of friendly units around it to draw the enemy's fire. But in this case, you'd be better off with a shield or armor sundie, because it can tank more damage while the friendlies protect and repair it.

The only other scenario I can think of is the 'lone wolf' one, where you might not have friendlies to defend your sunderer. In this case, additional defense is useless, so something like cloak - to hide instead of defend - seems like it would be ideal. But, like in the scenario I mentioned previously, cloaked sundies are just way too easy to find, even if there isn't a trail of infantry to follow.

TL;DR: If you place a stealth sunderer in the 'usual' spots, it will immediately be found. If you try to 'hide it in plain sight', it will immediately be seen. Since the enemy is basically guaranteed to find your sunderer in the same general timeframe whether you have stealth equipped or not, you're almost always better off with a defense item that actually increases the durability of the vehicle instead.

Am I wrong here?

They're called 4th factioners and they report to the enemy locations on where the sundies are. Or the dude has another computer set up to monitor enemy movements. Had this happen when I was trying to solo attack a hive. Guy found every sundie I pulled. Heard high end computers with great video cards see cloaked units with ease. It's a problem DB will never solve......

You are partially wrong.

This game is getting old. Plenty vets, including me, know pretty much all the common and less common areas to place a sundie. If fights are good and even, ill farm the fight. If we are outmanned and the hex is critical, sourcing out those sundies are key importance and I'll hunt them, find em in their usual places. 90% of the time they are were i expect em to be. Stealth sundies has the advantage of being hid in less obvious places.
Are they too easy to see? Imo, yes. They should have a tad less visibility when cloaked.
But the main problem is sundie placement vs veterans.

Remember that stealth reduces or eliminates auto-detection which is handy - good for sneaking around away from the fight and getting into useful places. They don't last long when discovered and discovery is swift if many friendlies are appearing out of 'nowhere'.

I have all the abilities unlocked and use different loadouts for different purposes. Naturally, whatever option you choose tends to be the wrong one for the situation you find yourself in but such is life...

I think they should bring in a noise dampener too. So many times I've heard a stealth sundy go past, found it from the sound and just followed it and watched where it parked. Then dropped mines on it or pull a tank and blam.

I've wandered into a stealthed Sundy by accident (you can see a wireframe of the thing if you are close enough).

I've also watched a Sundy roll up, deploy and then cloak.

I've back-tracked the direction enemies are coming from until I've seen them magically appearing out of thin air.

From the other side of the fence, I've stood in the aura of a cloaked Sundy and watched enemy vehicles roll past without stopping and on one occasion I crouched on top of one and gunned down three oblivious planetmans, one after the other, as they crept straight past or towards it.

Not saying it's perfect, but it doesn't seem useless to me either.........

You are basing your experience on one single Sunderer?

I've been placing stealth Sunderers around since they were released, and they are awesome. Ofcourse you don't place them in places where people expect them like a Sunderer Garage, you place them somewhere no one will come. Also you have to make sure that only a few people spawn there, because a congaline of allies running out of nowhere tips the defenders off instantly.

Is this foolproof? No. There's maphackers, 4rth factioners that either alert their mates or destroy the Sunderer themselves and the actual fools/dumb luck crashing into your Sunderer with a Harasser or MBT, and the occasional knowledgeable person who figures out where you put it and searches the area based on a few attacks he experienced.

But make no mistake, even my allies often need to be told of my Stealth Sunderers simply because they don't look at the map as closely and look at their options.

Stealth sundy has 1 problem, Light Assault.
A Light Assault can kill a stealth sundy in seconds, it only takes 1 to stumble upon it, and its dead before you can react.

Before you say 'well just defend it noob' remember this; the defenders have to get it right 100% of the time, an attacker only has to get it right once.

Id like to be able to replace 1 or both of the guns on my sundy for shield generators or additional armour mods that only become active when its deployed.
I think that would be a neat way of increasing a spawn points staying power, but not increasing its killing power at the same time.

Doesn't matter how invisible a sunderer is if you park if somewhere obvious.

Stealth sunderers are supposed to be used for flanking, long range engagements, secret deployments, not parking them in a sundy garage in the next base on the lattice in the ongoing 48v48 battle.

it depends on what you want to do with the sundy,
if you're parking it by your A point (before DBG stupidly add nodeploy zones for allies next patch) then always go with shield sundy,
if you're parking it in an obvious spot like a sunderer garage then use shield,
but if you're parking it outside, perhaps high on a cliff to make an AV nest, use stealth so aircraft and distant tanks wont see it.
anytime you're parking out in the open in a less conventional spot, use stealth.

it can be a tough choice between shield and stealth sometimes,
with stealth you risk being solo'd by any LA who comes along, but you're also pretty safe from tanks and air that are rolling by.
with shield you're there for everyone to see, but you're very hard to solo for a C4 fairy, but your dead if a tank/air spots the sundy.

one last hint for everyone, ALWAYS lock your stealth sundy when you deploy it,
or you'll have idiots jumping in to fire at things that are passing by unaware.

Right, I mentioned in the OP that parking it in obvious places will get it found quickly.
But parking it in non-obvious places gets it found just as quickly, since they are very easy to see (I can reliably see them from 30m+)

Um.


I'd love to see a recording of enemies actually not finding someone's stealth sunderer (when they would have found a non-stealthed one), for more than a few minutes.

All good points; It is useful against aircraft since they're generally so far away in terms of distance.
Still, it rarely seems like stealth will provide more longevity for a sunderer than shield will in any normal situation.

Oh come on, this makes no sense at all. You might just as well say "the Stealth sundy has 1 problem, any AV-capable class or vehicle". Because if anything, vehicles kill my Sunderers more often than LA's.

Stealth Sunderers aren't supposed to be defended. If you put it in an area where you have to defend it you didn't put it in the right place. The whole point is that you can leave it, that no one finds it for at least 4 minutes, which is the time it takes to replenish your Sunderer's cost because Oh yeah, they are cheap as hell.

Then you aren't parking them in non-obvious places. If people get within 30m of them, you are doing it wrong. I have to constantly get in my Stealth Sunderer (STundy?) to prevent it from dissolving. Monday I had one that lasted for +/-70 minutes because I had to jump in 3 times before I had it dissolve.

What kind of recording is that? You get to see 60+minutes of gameplay with a Stundy in the background? I'll just take some screenshots of places I use or something.

exactly and let's not forget that the cloak bubble your ability to see it is based on graphics settings and your distance from it.

cloak sundie behaves like hunter cloak does, both are good stealth for range but if someone gets to close range they can see it.

cloak sundies are meant to be used with intelligence and not careless placement inside predictable spots like sunderer garages(some people are dumb enough to do just that)

if you want a cloak sundie to live you need to place it away from normal spots preferably with a little cover to make the bubble as a whole harder to pick out and to prevent people from seeing infantry suddenly pop into existence at range when they leave the cloaking bubble.

stealth sunderer is a good tactical tool and backup spawn point if the armored or shielded sundies are destoryed, letting you keep the fight going while allies bring up more defendable sundies.

it will or it won't depending on the situation,
it either works amazingly in the right situation or it is used badly and a c4 fairy comes along straight away.
bases like Mani Outpost (when you're attacking from the left warpgate) are an example of when i'll always pull a cloak sundy over a shield one,
your sundy is safe from infantry (because there are long bridges for them to cross to reach you and allies will take em out.)
plus there will be vehicles in the distance and even base AV turrets at mani tower, and they won't see you.

for most people i'd say just plonk 50 certs into shield and you've got yourself a tanky deployment sundy.
2,330 certs is indeed a bit extreme for the cloak.
they did talk about moving the cloak to the utility slot, which would have been awesome, allowing for both shield and cloak

tl;dr it is entirely situational, used correctly it will be better than shield, used badly it'll be dead fairly quickly.

Problem with stealth/cloaked sunderer is the proximity radar, the enemy see you appearing from nowhere.
So solution would be to allow the radar in bases to be either hacked or destroyed.

When im in a base that is being attacked, I just run around as infiltrator and spot the sundies and then mark em up and change to whatever I need. Cloak sundies are easy to spot.

"Less than 3 minutes later"

He heard you.

I really dont care to argue this with you.
When attacked by an LA, a stealth sundy goes from full health to destroyed within a second, that is a problem and no1 should have to argue why.

O and the whole, 'you're playing wrong' argument is getting boring, and i really dont hold you in high enough regard to listen to your suggestions on how to play. Thnx tho.

It isn't a problem. An LA trips over a stealth Sundy, it blows it up unless someone nearby prevents it.

It's like saying "well if a Lightning is attacked in the rear by a vehicle, it's dead". It's true, but it's not a problem. It's just part of the game, and an important part even as it makes rear/flank attacks important.

If an LA, or Engineer, or vehicle, happens on your Stealth Sundy, it's as good as dead. That's because the Sundy isn't supposed to survive when found. It's not supposed to be completely impossible to find either. And you know what? HA's, Engi's and LA's all have reasonable capabilities in most used loadouts to deal with a Stealth Sundy, it's just that the LA is more likely to travel large distances on foot and accidentally run across a Stealth Sundy.

The whole "you're playing it wrong" arguments is exactly right here.
If you play an Infiltrator as if it's a Heavy, you aren't going to get far. If you place Stealth Sundies where LA's keep happening on it (and seriously why should they? 90% of my Stealth Sundies are found by vehicles if they are found at all) then you are doing it wrong.

How hard is it to place a Sundy 15 to 20 seconds walk further? That's just about all it takes for most of my Sunderers to stay hidden. Don't place it on the "well this looks like a suitable place for a Stealth Sundy" spot. Because everyone thinks that is a suitable stealth Sundy spot. Place it somewhere a bit farther away where people who check the obvious spots won't run across it easily/give up looking for it before they find it with the usual "look in a larger circle around obvious spots".

Like i said, not arguing with you.
Youll just have to accept for once that some1 else has a diff opinon to yours.......sorry grand master of gaming.....