Dear all, just musing about the perceived benefits of stealth. Where applicable is it worth spending the costs for having stealth ranking with characters?
Obviously this only applies to games where you can buy stealth ranks.
Any comments welcome 
In a word, no. The cost exceeds the value in FA.
It’s definitely worth to take in KS, when you can Combine it with naming agents at 40 (Morlaen, Rebels). The Chance to Name a stealthy character is still not more than 1/3 in my experience.
Thank you. I really appreciate the clarity of your answers.
I’m not a fourth age player, so my comments refer to Kin-strife. The stealth SNA for your nation is definitely worth considering. But buying stealth for specific characters with setup options seems to me prohibitively expensive.
In FA, the odds of receiving stealth on any newly named character seem to be about ~15%. Average stealth hovers around 25, which makes sense. You’ll also likely receive 10 stealth on a starting character as your random bonus. (Though I’m not sure if that holds true on the new code base…)
It’s not as powerful an agent SNA as Scout at Double, nor as reliable as Agents @40. If you do take it, try to name all your new characters with at least 10 agent rank to increase your odds of receiving stealth on someone useful. And don’t be surprised if you name 10 characters without receiving stealth.
It can be a painful experience to say the least.
OTOH, you might be the lucky player who names that epic 40 Agent with 40 stealth we all dream of…
As others have said, in KS it is not worth spending your valuable starting points on stealth for individual characters because it costs too much. The Stealth SNA might be useful if you can get into a game with quality players on both sides and the neutrals split evenly. It seems in most games of FA and KS these days, it is hard to get a good game that will go 20 or more turns. For the stealth SNA to really be effective, you need a longer game, because you will want to hire and retire agents until you get stealth with them. It isn’t worth the points if you are just going to settle for the standard 2 or 3 characters that on odds you would get with the first 10 or so that you name. So you need a longer game. So I would say in a grudge game yes. In a single player game that you are joining alone, maybe not. In a single player game that you are joining with friends, maybe.
I can say that if you ever get into one of those epic games that lasts 30 or more turns, having stealth is nice. I would say it is more crucial for the double scout nation than it is for the assassination nation. High stealth is about the only thing that will find other characters with stealth. I have seen 70+ agents without stealth scout at double and still find free people male or female. If that character had 30 stealth or better, chances are that they would find everyone in the hex unless they were doubled.
But if your typical games only last about 12 to 15 turns, most of this does not matter.
To illustrate how effective the stealth SNA can be in the right Environment, here is my character roster of KS 650 gunboat game I just finished playing Line of Morlaen:
Of the 23 characters I had when the game ended on turn 25, the following were stealthy agents (ranks without artefacts):
ag 91 stealth 31
ag 88 stealth 26
ag 84 stealth 10 (starting char that came with stealth)
ag 82 stealth 34
ag 66 stealth 34
ag 63 stealth 34
ag 55 stealth 28
ag 49 stealth 23
ag 33 stealth 32
in Addition I had recruited Ji Indur and Enna San Sarab who come with stealth. Furthermore I had 3 agents without stealth which mainly did scouting.
So it is possible to get a number of stealthy agents on the board, but I did retire A LOT of ag 40s…
Dear Bernd,
I have started up my first KS game and have some questions for you
Is there any way I can contact you on email ?
BR
Murazor AKA
Kim Andersen
Sure Kim, you got a private message.