It would be nice if we could turn off power to system we may not be using like shields.
This way for example if we are running a ship and want to use cloak we can reroute power to it.
It would allow for a greater variation in tactics.
Since one of the goals of the developer seams to be wanting to make small ships more useful or relevant in combat. This would be a far stronger option. It would allow for improvements to tactics like hit and run attacks.
If you want this to be more effective for small ships vs large ships you could simply increase the time to cloak dependent on the mass of the ship.
It might also be an idea to vary the level of cloaking dependent on mass. This would be more for PvP. While a rather small ship might cloak 100% a very large ship may only be able to achieve 95% or so. You wouldn't want to go below 95% or so because then the cloaking vs living people is next to pointless.
The power requirements for shields could also be reduced because the new advantages makes it more powerful of a tool for small ships.
It could also be tied to movement or velocity. As the speed increase the distortion created by cloaking of the background becomes more visible.
It might also be smart to turn cloaking on for bases and make it activated by logic.
This would allow individuals to have a fighting chance at getting started or surviving on their own. Especially on servers that require multiple people to create a faction.
To counter this a device could be created that could reveal cloaked objects with in X distance it could be an addon to the scanner. In short they couldn't simply find a base by scanning a system. They would pretty much have to follow someone to the base.
You could then think of the primary base of a faction the face of the faction the public sees. The one base that can't be cloaked but gains the invulnerability.
This would add a lot of cloak and dagger to the game.
This would be a strong enough change in the games dynamics to make it a ships worth based on a lot more than its damage ability or ships HP value. In short you could simplify stuff like power curves and the caps on them. Thus allowing greater interior building. The only cap then needed would be a block size dependent on server capability and performance levels of the game as the engine and server improves.
A new ordinance could be added to make the role of light craft attacking more valuable. It would be a consumable ordinance "Bomb" follows flight path of aircraft when released. Has range of only 100 or 200 meters. This would mean the craft would need to fly in close to use it. It should have an explosive charge like a shaped charge system blowing inwards in a cone. Fighters would be required to load at a larger ship or base. 1 or 2 bombs per block area.
##added##
Passive and Active systems originally discussed further down. The ability to turn off shields and other systems
Essentially allowing a ship to cut off power systems would allow it to hide better from passive radar or sensors. Passive sensor systems rely on radiation given off by the object or if possible alternate sources of radiation that can be predicted.
Active radar actually sends out its own return signal that reflects off the craft or object bouncing back. In military craft it can trigger an IFF(Identify Friend or Foe) transponder which will send back with the returning pulse an IFF code. This can be used to prevent shooting down or targeting you own craft. Such as not having swarms hit your own ship.
These could be tied into scanners as mentioned in the link above by adding additional modules that could be attached to the scanner.
Cloaking why it is harder for larger ships to cloak. Real science discussed here.
Multi target group firing system
They could have limited cloaking by several other means thus making small craft more suited for full use of cloaking and while allowing other craft to use it limiting their ability with it because of size.
That could easily been done by limiting the maximum cloaking effect while moving and using two points to measure to reduces its effect. Speed and mass of object. Instead of increasing power requirements they could have simply limited the alpha of the object.
Take the issue with cloaking. They can have several legit reasons larger ships actually would be harder to cloak. Its a larger canvas to cover without distortions being visible. We know we can uses lenses today to actually reflect light around small objects. Its fairly simple with a small object but the larger it gets the harder it is not just cost wise for lenses but simply the distortion of trying to refract light in such around such a large area. I am sure you are familiar with a prism and how light is split into its wavelengths. Well the fact is that is an issue with all lenses. The larger it is the greater the issue is. So if you refract light around a large area those colored beams no longer line up as closely as they would have. In short the effect would be about like looking at a 3D movie without the glasses. You remember the Red Blue lens glasses.
That issue primarily would cover using a cloaking field where light is bent around an object. It has limitation is you can only create a field that bends light in one direction. So someone behind the field or at another angle could see the ship.
Option 2 a projected hologram. This suffers the same distortion issues above and would require tremendous processing power and speed. The larger the mass the harder it gets.
Skin based cloaking. We are currently making thin display material today that can be literally pasted to nearly any surface its even flexible. There is a sky scrapper in the works that will use cameras on opposite sides of the buildings to capture the image and project it to the other side. This will improve as we are able to create nanite structural material. Current implementation takes a lot of processing power and for a large object it would be more visible especially moving because video would always be playing catch up. Even at 60fps if a ship is moving 25oKm/s that is a lot of distance covered in 1/60th of a second or frame.
The final method involves phase shifting using sub space as a means of cloaking. It would require massive amounts of power, the fields created when shifting would be strong enough to bend light and that would look something like heat coming off a road distorting the air.
The reason these effects are known is because science has already achieved a lot in much smaller scale. We also can do simple math such as need to see the issues of projecting a video from one side to the other.
This way for example if we are running a ship and want to use cloak we can reroute power to it.
It would allow for a greater variation in tactics.
Since one of the goals of the developer seams to be wanting to make small ships more useful or relevant in combat. This would be a far stronger option. It would allow for improvements to tactics like hit and run attacks.
If you want this to be more effective for small ships vs large ships you could simply increase the time to cloak dependent on the mass of the ship.
It might also be an idea to vary the level of cloaking dependent on mass. This would be more for PvP. While a rather small ship might cloak 100% a very large ship may only be able to achieve 95% or so. You wouldn't want to go below 95% or so because then the cloaking vs living people is next to pointless.
The power requirements for shields could also be reduced because the new advantages makes it more powerful of a tool for small ships.
It could also be tied to movement or velocity. As the speed increase the distortion created by cloaking of the background becomes more visible.
It might also be smart to turn cloaking on for bases and make it activated by logic.
This would allow individuals to have a fighting chance at getting started or surviving on their own. Especially on servers that require multiple people to create a faction.
To counter this a device could be created that could reveal cloaked objects with in X distance it could be an addon to the scanner. In short they couldn't simply find a base by scanning a system. They would pretty much have to follow someone to the base.
You could then think of the primary base of a faction the face of the faction the public sees. The one base that can't be cloaked but gains the invulnerability.
This would add a lot of cloak and dagger to the game.
This would be a strong enough change in the games dynamics to make it a ships worth based on a lot more than its damage ability or ships HP value. In short you could simplify stuff like power curves and the caps on them. Thus allowing greater interior building. The only cap then needed would be a block size dependent on server capability and performance levels of the game as the engine and server improves.
A new ordinance could be added to make the role of light craft attacking more valuable. It would be a consumable ordinance "Bomb" follows flight path of aircraft when released. Has range of only 100 or 200 meters. This would mean the craft would need to fly in close to use it. It should have an explosive charge like a shaped charge system blowing inwards in a cone. Fighters would be required to load at a larger ship or base. 1 or 2 bombs per block area.
##added##
Passive and Active systems originally discussed further down. The ability to turn off shields and other systems
Essentially allowing a ship to cut off power systems would allow it to hide better from passive radar or sensors. Passive sensor systems rely on radiation given off by the object or if possible alternate sources of radiation that can be predicted.
Active radar actually sends out its own return signal that reflects off the craft or object bouncing back. In military craft it can trigger an IFF(Identify Friend or Foe) transponder which will send back with the returning pulse an IFF code. This can be used to prevent shooting down or targeting you own craft. Such as not having swarms hit your own ship.
These could be tied into scanners as mentioned in the link above by adding additional modules that could be attached to the scanner.
Cloaking why it is harder for larger ships to cloak. Real science discussed here.
Multi target group firing system
They could have limited cloaking by several other means thus making small craft more suited for full use of cloaking and while allowing other craft to use it limiting their ability with it because of size.
That could easily been done by limiting the maximum cloaking effect while moving and using two points to measure to reduces its effect. Speed and mass of object. Instead of increasing power requirements they could have simply limited the alpha of the object.
Take the issue with cloaking. They can have several legit reasons larger ships actually would be harder to cloak. Its a larger canvas to cover without distortions being visible. We know we can uses lenses today to actually reflect light around small objects. Its fairly simple with a small object but the larger it gets the harder it is not just cost wise for lenses but simply the distortion of trying to refract light in such around such a large area. I am sure you are familiar with a prism and how light is split into its wavelengths. Well the fact is that is an issue with all lenses. The larger it is the greater the issue is. So if you refract light around a large area those colored beams no longer line up as closely as they would have. In short the effect would be about like looking at a 3D movie without the glasses. You remember the Red Blue lens glasses.
That issue primarily would cover using a cloaking field where light is bent around an object. It has limitation is you can only create a field that bends light in one direction. So someone behind the field or at another angle could see the ship.
Option 2 a projected hologram. This suffers the same distortion issues above and would require tremendous processing power and speed. The larger the mass the harder it gets.
Skin based cloaking. We are currently making thin display material today that can be literally pasted to nearly any surface its even flexible. There is a sky scrapper in the works that will use cameras on opposite sides of the buildings to capture the image and project it to the other side. This will improve as we are able to create nanite structural material. Current implementation takes a lot of processing power and for a large object it would be more visible especially moving because video would always be playing catch up. Even at 60fps if a ship is moving 25oKm/s that is a lot of distance covered in 1/60th of a second or frame.
The final method involves phase shifting using sub space as a means of cloaking. It would require massive amounts of power, the fields created when shifting would be strong enough to bend light and that would look something like heat coming off a road distorting the air.
The reason these effects are known is because science has already achieved a lot in much smaller scale. We also can do simple math such as need to see the issues of projecting a video from one side to the other.
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