I'm not sure. Today we ran our normal loadout: HG3, Comp, AB, Dalton. We were unable to sneak up on any Skyguards (not a bad thing). However, I'd be willing to trade comp for stealth if it quiets the Lib's engines (plus all of the other benefits). If not, there is no use for stealth because we now sound like a freight train no matter where we go (not very stealthy). Does anyone know or tested it?
At the moment stealth doesn't affect engine noise at all. I believe awhile back there was talk about having stealth armor reduce engine noise, but nothing has been updated about that in awhile.
Unfortunately not. It has been brought up repeatedly on the forums and I personally believe it would be a great way to make stealth a more competitive option, especially on Liberators.
getting jumped in the air sucks enough as is, no need to make it happen more frequently if people could cert esf (or libs w.e) into being silent i would like to at least double the esf render range at the same time
Doesn't need it, IMO. If you lay off the AB as you approach, and pick a good angle, stealth as is will be all you need. I don't even bother upgrading to rank4 on my Libs, 3 works just fine.
No. I would like it to though. I've been thinking about how to balance it. It's really irritating not to be able to sneakily take out an air zerg one by one when they stray from the flock because you're just so audible in aircraft. However, it would completely suck to allow scrub pilots with silent aircraft to be able to get up behind better pilots with high DPS weapons and/or lock-ons. I think the answer is that Vehicle Stealth should just reduce the range at which aircraft and aircraft weapons are audible, rather than completely removing the sound. I would suggest a Vehicle Stealth 4 aircraft would be able to be heard normally at 300m, at the same noise level you can currently hear aircraft at at that range. I would also like for Vehicle Stealth to reduce the range at which a spot is shared between enemies. Currently, when you are spotted, you show up on the mini-map for any of the spotter's allies within 100m of him.
if it did the liberator would be the ONLY vehicle to get that treatment. today i was actually using engine noise to track a stealth tank while playing a heavy assault (he still managed to get the drop on me, because i was depending too much on my eyes and watching the wrong area). against most players, simply not showing up on radar is more than enough.
The best audio stealth you can get is the audio render range bug that keeps you silent until you are up nice and close.
In fact, everything should be louder, and they should implement the Engine Noise reduction for stealth already. I also had a cool idea once, that maybe the final rank of stealth could give you some kind of pseudo cloaking, that causes you to blend into the background behind you. Hilariously OP? Maybe. Completely awesome? Completely.
So you want to be a Klingon Bird of Prey. I like it! However, that would be OP I would like an ability that allowed me to cloak for a short period of time. 5 sec? 10? I dunno how long but that would be fun.
Actually, come to think about it, a cloaking ability would be really helpful in letting Liberators participate in larger fights. A cloak that lasts 10-15 seconds, recharges at the same rate as the AB tanks or a little slower. Obviously you wouldn't be allowed to shoot, but perhaps unlike the Infiltrator your weapon would not be locked, but firing would simply instantly uncloak you. Maybe have a 2-3 second cooldown after firing or something. Problem is, you're still screwed as soon as you start firing, since every tank, Lockon, Dumbire, Basilisk and Burster in your immediate hex(Probably two for the Bursters and Tanks!) is going to want a piece of that pie. In order to negate that, you'd need Afterburners, which the Stealth module would probably take up the Utility slot. Oh well, guess we can keep trying...
as a heavy assault i will say outright that i hate your suggestion, but you are still very right. i don't think full stealth should make any vehicle completely silent, but they should be significantly harder to detect.
If you're using Stealth then the whole point is to be stealthy. Being impossible to hear isn't what I want. It should just be a reduction in the sound range/scale. So if I'm 5m away from you in a vehicle I should sound the same whether or not I have stealth. If I'm 50m away, I should not be as loud with stealth. If I'm 300m away, then I should be significantly harder to hear than if I did not have stealth.