Cloaking, an Anthology

[tr0njonen]

Cloaking, an Anthology

Ever since I first downloaded Starmade, I have long desired a revamped cloaking method. So, initially, I was planning on submitting my own ideas for the system, however, most every idea I have thought of has already been submitted into the forums. So instead I decided to compile all other threads, and break them down into a few general ideas.

"Adaptive Cloaking":
http://starmadedock.net/threads/adaptive-cloaking.21660/
By: Magrim
"Completely Rework Scanning/ Jamming/Cloaking":
http://starmadedock.net/threads/completely-rework-scanning-jamming-cloaking.21672/
By: Blaza612
"A Way to Relate Jamming, Cloaking, and Scanning with Modules": http://starmadedock.net/threads/a-way-to-relate-jamming-cloaking-and-scanning-with-modules.21208/
By: Jaaskinal
"Cloaking/Jamming power idea":
http://starmadedock.net/threads/cloaking-jamming-power-idea.19980/
By: Kookster
"Cloaking, Should be Changed"
http://starmadedock.net/threads/cloaking-should-be-changed.19966/
By: leion247
"Cloaking and Radar Jamming Rework-With Computers and Modules:
http://starmadedock.net/threads/cloaking-and-radar-jamming-rework-with-computer-and-modules.19973/
By: Battle

Main Ideas
Power:
Each and every one of these threads involve lowering the power requirements of the cloak, because frankly, its absurd. The ways this can balanced out are plentiful, reduce top speed, make the ship more vulnerable to attack, add a Predator style shimmer effect, etc. But the overall idea is that the cloak should be detectable, or have a few major drawbacks, in exchange for requiring less power.

My Personal Favorite System:
My personal favorite idea, is as follows: First, reduce the power cost of the cloak significantly. Cloaked ships should have a shimmer effect When in motion. This would make cloaked capital ships problematic at best. If a cloaked ship is detected, and fired upon, the cloak is disabled and ALL systems are down for X amount of seconds, making smaller stealth ships safer to use.

Math, Math Everywhere:
Some of the more well thought out threads delve deep into the complex mathematics of the cloaking system. With ships mass, power gen., power cap, weapon systems, thrust, and how many times it could kill you, all factoring into the efficiency of the cloak. Although these are good ideas, they would likely be far more difficult to implement.

Direct Hit Captain!:
Several of the systems I have encountered deal more with the drawbacks of having the cloak active. Some are as simple as in my idea, disabling the ships shields and dropping cloak if hit, while other ideas are much more sever. Turning you into a giant thanksgiving turkey and making you die 50,000 times over if you're hit while cloaked. Others involve adding new blocks for detecting the cloak, or having a scanner do the job. Example: a stealth ship has 1000 cloak modules cannot be detected by a ship with 900 scanner modules, but can be detected by one with 1100 scanner modules.

Ideas? Additions? Praises to my glory? Feel free to comment

 

[Jaaskinal]

Just some slight clarification on my thread. (I know it's not all about mine but I feel like mentioning this) In suggestions I don't really try to talk numbers, but I do like concepts. If someone used a lot of cloaking modules (in my system, some of the others are different) then the power requirements would increase. The current balance is off, but it needs a re-work more than a re-balancing.

 

[Blodge]

The way I see it, the purpose of a cloaking device is to not be seen. If you add a shimmer effect, despite the bonus of looking cool and "Predatory", you can then be seen. If you then add on other penalties such as suffering 100% system-wide failure from getting hit by a single pistol round, I doubt anyone would ever bother using cloaks on anything other than static bases.

Which brings me on to what I think is the most important question in the cloaking debate: Why do people not want to be seen?

My reasons would be to do any of the following:
Scout an area or spy on someone with little to no chance of anyone realising you're there,
Complete a cargo run without hassle from Pirates (or The Man, depending on what you're carrying),
Hide an installation where something you don't want other people to know about is going on,
Sneak right up to an enemy ship/station, deliver a massive payload of damage (like a WWII submarine) and then get out of Dodge before they can fire back.

There may be more reasons than I can currently think of but, there should be a clear consensus of what everyone actually wants to *do* with their cloaks before deciding how to implement and balance a system for doing it.

 

[kah-doovi]

DISCLAIMER: I'm a noob, I don't play in servers because lag and I'm not 100% sure I'm not talking out of my ass.

The first idea that came to my mind would be that a cloaker consumes a set amount of energy and cloaks a fixed volumetric region around it. On one hand, maybe this is more likely to make huge ships overpowered, but on the other hand I think it'd be nice to have cloaking failing in sections (rather than all-or-nothing). Of course implementation might be too complicated, but thought it'd be worth putting out there.

After taking a quick look at all of those threads, I think like your favourite method best, even though I disagree a bit about the details. I think your way of disabling all systems when shot would render them equally useless in actual deployment. Because that would mean a single laser shot (i.e. from a very low damage, rapid fire weapon) could decloak a large ship. Then follow that with some missiles (while shields are still down) and that'd mean a huge hole (I think). So even with decent power cost, it'd remain prohibitive for large ships (because they're easier to hit). I think all ships should be able to cloak if they can spare the power, no matter their size.

I'd change your idea a bit by saying that if a cloaked ship gets shot, stored power goes down by 95% (to avoid knocking out shields) and regen + systems go down for X seconds, like you said. Additionally, firing weapons from a cloaked ship should instantly decloak it (though with no further penalties). If that's overpowered, alternatively cloaked ships should be forced to de-cloak and wait an X second cooldown before shooting.

No matter how these restrictions on bigger ships work, however, reducing the cost still begs the question: how? While I'm not experienced enough in-game to come up with a better equation than the one in place right now (I don't even know it, to be honest), based on the builds I've seen, I'd suggest that different blocks affect cloaking power consumption differently. Something like:

• Base consumption being directly proportional to mass (lower than now)
• Elementary stuff like hull blocks, core, thrusters being "free" (that is, no cost besides mass)
• Armour blocks cost extra per block, advanced armor costing more than standard.
• Systems also costing extra per block, including shields.

This comes mostly from a building standpoint, to allow stealth ships to have hulls, because the "naked" ships are kind of nonsensical to me.

 

[Reilly Reese]

TBH The current system is pretty decent. Cloakers act as scouts and can infact be hulled.

 

[tr0njonen]

So first off, I would like to defend the shimmer effect. Not only would it look nice, but it would also discourage stealth titans, now obviously the effect shouldn't be enough to make a stealth ships useless, but it should be enough to have people try to keep their scouts on the smaller side. Also I should have clarified in the main post, but it should certainly take a reasonable amount of damage for a ship to be dropped out of cloak. So no one can just walk outside with a pistol and disable a 100 meter scout ship. But I, at least, think the stealth system needs a revamp, the current system is far too restrictive.

 

[Ithirahad]

I'd say the shimmer effect should be the result of not enough cloaking modules. :|

If battleships and titans are able to cloak under any new system that gets past testing, Schine fucked up. That's not really a concern.

 

[Jaaskinal]

TBH The current system is pretty decent. Cloakers act as scouts and can infact be hulled.

It's much better after the mass update, yeah, but its still a little bit wonky that it doesn't work like any other system in the game. cloak and jam are just sortof odd. Their the only computers that don't need modules.

 

[Zyrr]

I'd say the shimmer effect should be the result of not enough cloaking modules. :|

If battleships and titans are able to cloak under any new system that gets past testing, Schine fucked up. That's not really a concern.

Not exactly. Capital ships that can cloak should exist but need to be built around that as a "fourth" design pillar; those being offense, defense and mobility, with ships being able to specialize in one, competently cover two and be par in 3.

For instance, a cloaking capital ship could cloak very well, however the term "very well" is defined, or it could cloak and have good alpha, good defense, good mobility. The basic idea is that is it not able to cloak well and ALSO be well armed and armored, or any other combination of the three in addition to cloak.

 

[Ithirahad]

I mean effective capitals. It should absolutely be possible to cloak a ship of any size, but as they get larger it should get harder and harder to add other things that work well, to the point where... What's the point in spending tons of resources on something huge that doesn't really do much.

 

[Blaza612]

I personally like the idea of a small shimmer effect, but hate the idea of being shot = INSTANTANEOUS DEATH FROM THE PITS OF HELL

Seriously, having your systems knocked out is a bit stupid. I would say that it reveals where the player is, it doesn't decloak them (It would be funny to see something shooting into space without context :p) but the player and any other players nearby who saw (By saw, I mean were in the same sector) the shot land would have the ship revealed on nav, and an outline on cloaky ship appear for them.

And also, for my thread, I realized i haven't updated it to the more preferred system, but discussion leads to a percentage of your ship needing to be cloaky modules to be successful cloak, and equal/higher percentage of scanners to be able to beat said cloak. This way, it's balanced so that both big and small ships can be just as well cloaked equally, making for much more even/fair gameplay. So I would recommend changing that part in "Direct hit captain!" :p

 

[Ithirahad]

Having your systems disabled would be bad, but I don't find dropping shields to be unreasonable...

 

[Reilly Reese]

I personally like the idea of a small shimmer effect, but hate the idea of being shot = INSTANTANEOUS DEATH FROM THE PITS OF HELL

Seriously, having your systems knocked out is a bit stupid. I would say that it reveals where the player is, it doesn't decloak them (It would be funny to see something shooting into space without context :p) but the player and any other players nearby who saw (By saw, I mean were in the same sector) the shot land would have the ship revealed on nav, and an outline on cloaky ship appear for them.

And also, for my thread, I realized i haven't updated it to the more preferred system, but discussion leads to a percentage of your ship needing to be cloaky modules to be successful cloak, and equal/higher percentage of scanners to be able to beat said cloak. This way, it's balanced so that both big and small ships can be just as well cloaked equally, making for much more even/fair gameplay. So I would recommend changing that part in "Direct hit captain!" :p

Having your systems disabled would be bad, but I don't find dropping shields to be unreasonable...

How about it resets your jump drive regardless of where you were hit and stuns your recharge rate for shielding?

 

[nightrune]

You really only need to disable shields when the cloak is up, and drop the power requirement some. Maybe it just disables most of the weapon systems under cloak. Stealth should really be in the game as a counter to massive titans

 

[NeonSturm]

I think cloak

1. Makes a ship 3x as good when choosing when and where to engage fights
   
2. Should not penalize for using basic hull
3. Cloak (and jam) should not be all or nothing, instead reducing the detection distance.
   • Ships could fade visible at 0.9x detection distance and into background colour at 1.1x detection distance + disappear from the HUD.
4. You should be able to charge/discharge the cloak/jam to change your signature's size (as described below).

0% would be the maximum scanner range.
50% is outside the range of most weapons

between 50% and 100% your ship system's efficiency decreases

by the factor which weapons increase in efficiency squared (offence * defence)​

100% cloak at point-blank-range should completely disarm your ship (still good for mines).

The point-blank-range should be the size of the antenna from it's centre.

A metal-detector loop would detect you when you try to sneak into a hangar :p
But you can use a Warhead to disarm it - perhaps there can be less intrusive EM-warheads which do only temporary damage.​

Perhaps let a ship require more cloakers the more energy it uses or produces when filling the capacitor?​

 

[psteiner]

I'd say the shimmer effect should be the result of not enough cloaking modules. :|

If battleships and titans are able to cloak under any new system that gets past testing, Schine fucked up. That's not really a concern.

And on top of all that, you also have to think performance wise. "shimmering stuff" would defiantly be a: taxing and b: not really 100% necessary.

 

[Ithirahad]

Meh, it'd just be a shader effect. Not much more performance cost than just rendering the ship in the first place, or rendering shield hits. (Also, identical performance cost to the pre-jump-drive shimmer effect.)

 

[Blodge]

I think cloak

1. Makes a ship 3x as good when choosing when and where to engage fights
   
2. Should not penalize for using basic hull
3. Cloak (and jam) should not be all or nothing, instead reducing the detection distance.
   • Ships could fade visible at 0.9x detection distance and into background colour at 1.1x detection distance + disappear from the HUD.
4. You should be able to charge/discharge the cloak/jam to change your signature's size (as described below).

0% would be the maximum scanner range.
50% is outside the range of most weapons

between 50% and 100% your ship system's efficiency decreases

by the factor which weapons increase in efficiency squared (offence * defence)​

100% cloak at point-blank-range should completely disarm your ship (still good for mines).

The point-blank-range should be the size of the antenna from it's centre.

A metal-detector loop would detect you when you try to sneak into a hangar :p
But you can use a Warhead to disarm it - perhaps there can be less intrusive EM-warheads which do only temporary damage.​

Perhaps let a ship require more cloakers the more energy it uses or produces when filling the capacitor?​

I really really like the idea that more cloaking modules = shorter detection range. It has that quality of scalability which Schema finds so delicious :D
[DOUBLEPOST=1448676794,1448675830][/DOUBLEPOST]OK, how's this for a compromise on the shimmer effect?

When a cloaked ship is hit by any weapon, the ship remains invisible but the shield damage shimmer effect remains visible for a lot longer than normal (say 30 seconds). This would allow any weapon in the game to act as a "detection" device. All you have to do is maintain your fire on the target, hitting it once every 30 seconds, and it's cloak becomes nothing more than a useless power drain. This means that a player would then be at a disadvantage until they manually disengaged the cloak, rather than have it automatically fail and you instantly get your power-gen back. Also, large slower ships would be much easier to keep de-cloaked, and smaller, more agile ships should find it easier to avoid getting hit long enough to resume invisibility.

 

[psteiner]

I really really like the idea that more cloaking modules = shorter detection range. It has that quality of scalability which Schema finds so delicious :D
[DOUBLEPOST=1448676794,1448675830][/DOUBLEPOST]OK, how's this for a compromise on the shimmer effect?

When a cloaked ship is hit by any weapon, the ship remains invisible but the shield damage shimmer effect remains visible for a lot longer than normal (say 30 seconds). This would allow any weapon in the game to act as a "detection" device. All you have to do is maintain your fire on the target, hitting it once every 30 seconds, and it's cloak becomes nothing more than a useless power drain. This means that a player would then be at a disadvantage until they manually disengaged the cloak, rather than have it automatically fail and you instantly get your power-gen back. Also, large slower ships would be much easier to keep de-cloaked and smaller, more agile ships should find it easier to avoid getting hit long enough to resume invisibility.

Seconded

 

[NeonSturm]

I really really like the idea that more cloaking modules = shorter detection range. It has that quality of scalability which Schema finds so delicious :D
[DOUBLEPOST=1448676794,1448675830][/DOUBLEPOST]OK, how's this for a compromise on the shimmer effect?

When a cloaked ship is hit by any weapon, the ship remains invisible but the shield damage shimmer effect remains visible for a lot longer than normal (say 30 seconds). This would allow any weapon in the game to act as a "detection" device. All you have to do is maintain your fire on the target, hitting it once every 30 seconds, and it's cloak becomes nothing more than a useless power drain. This means that a player would then be at a disadvantage until they manually disengaged the cloak, rather than have it automatically fail and you instantly get your power-gen back. Also, large slower ships would be much easier to keep de-cloaked, and smaller, more agile ships should find it easier to avoid getting hit long enough to resume invisibility.

Makes minefields useful. They de-cloak ships.