Cloak Overhaul

[friendofvampires]

I'm hoping if there is a possibility it's still very difficult to pull off. A stealth ship should be unable to stand up to a "regular" ship of similar mass in a one on one fight, just for balance reasons. A cosmetic option to improve the look of a ship without improving its chances in combat would definitely be nice though.

Saying that, after a bit of thought I might be for a curved power cost for cloaking, where upto a certain mass it's cheaper to pull off. Means you might be able to get your Bird of Prey type ships working fairly effectively, but cloaking still wouldn't be overpowered.

As far as i know a cloaking ship CANT hold up to a similar sized ship already, considering it has to be mostly reactors

 

[Valiant70]

Here are my ideas based on what I've seen in the thread so far. The premise is that a cloaking device is something like a superconducting energy field that consumes little power unless disrupted.

• Weapons: Cooldowns freeze and you cannot fire while cloaked.
• Passive effects: Down while cloaked, but automatically reactivate upon decloaking
• Shields:
  • Shields remain charged (keep the same charge %)
  • do not regenerate while cloaked
  • Weapons bypass the shields of a cloaked ship (this is because the shields must be decoupled to hide from sensors).
• Power: Cloak takes up all your energy recharge. Stealth ships must run on capacitors while cloaked. In addition, cloak slowly drains capacitors based on ship mass. This drain increases exponentially with mass.
• You may jump while cloaked, but the drive takes longer to charge (uses the same total energy to charge, just takes longer to consume it). Perhaps 4x as long would be a good number.
• Thrust: Operates as if your ship has half as many thrusters, being both slower and more power-efficient. EDIT: By "slower" I mean slower acceleration. I thought this was obvious.
• Undocking: Server-optional warhead balance setting: When an entity undocks from a cloaked ship, the mothership's radar blip is revealed for 3-5 seconds.

The effect: A ship of any size may cloak, but must have sufficient capacitors to allow it do do any useful maneuvering while cloaked. Large ships will have a rough time mounting enough capacitors to stay cloaked very long, and won't be able to maneuver much under cloak due to the exponential power scaling of thrusters.

 

[bigmonmulgrew]

Don't really like the idea of being slower while cloaked, if you cloak to escape combat it leaves you easier to hit for a while. I like the undocking thing though. Liek the capacitor idea too. I think however the energy usage should increase based on what your doing, charged jump drive increases usage, full throttle increase usage etc

 

[Valiant70]

Don't really like the idea of being slower while cloaked, if you cloak to escape combat it leaves you easier to hit for a while. I like the undocking thing though. Liek the capacitor idea too. I think however the energy usage should increase based on what your doing, charged jump drive increases usage, full throttle increase usage etc

"Slower" in my post isn't in reference to speed but to acceleration.
[DOUBLEPOST=1434817008,1434816750][/DOUBLEPOST]My general idea is that you can't recharge anything (shield, power, weapon cooldowns) and that everything happens more slowly to minimize "emissions" (scifi reasoning - it's like submarines trying to be quiet). That's why jump takes longer, etc. Cloaking to escape is a tradeoff of speed and sustainability for stealth.