Pushing the boundaries of stealth tech

[Roninsword]

Greetings,

I think I have been breaking boundaries in stealth tech for PvP. I will reveal more later in this thread, for now I am simply curious at your answers. Is anyone else doing this? What have you achieved?

Inquiring minds must know! :p

If someone is kind enough to release their design i will release mine.

Backstory:
For weeks now I have perfecting a ship and turret build that has allowed me to design a turret that can do 500,000 x .2 Ion damage, while remaining permacloaked/ perma radar jamming - even when the turret fires. This also includes a small turret that does constant damage to help negate shield regen in between shots.
This build also includes a scan, good thrust, and a slow cast warp.

I'm just realizing its true power.

Currently I have taken on ships with over 20 million shields, and eventually won - or they were forced to flee. Fighting anything under 10million almost feels cheap how easy it is.
Two of us have also forced a well designed pvp ship over 30 million shields to flee the scene with completely wrecked turrets and in danger of being popped. The fight took forever, and he did decloak us a couple times but you just recloak and scoot to another location out of scan range.

I imagine a fleet of these could take out any titan in the game, without him even fighting back. (Or seeing them for that matter, you are so agile it is quite easy to dodge scans + your range is insane)

What do you guys think? Have I done something crazy or is this well known? Because I have been on a lot of the MP server and I haven't seen anything close to my design.

 

[Winterhome]

That's definitely something crazy. The only way I can imagine it working is if it's made almost entirely out of power with very, very little in the way of shielding, thrust, etc. Most people aren't willing to sacrifice much for their cloaking and jamming - especially not their ship's hull.

brb making sure my swarm missiles still work well

 

[Keptick]

Don't turrets firing decloak the main ship? If not, then it might be a bug. Considering that a main ship decloaks when firing I figure that there's no reason for turrets not to. Definitely interesting though, I gotta admit.

There's a few tactics that can be used against a scheme like this. The first being to pop the scanner and drop swarms immediately after (I don't think that they stop tracking even if you recloak). The other is to drop drones and fire the scan (what I'd do). They'd instantly unload all their missiles into you, I seriously doubt that you'd have the time to recloak before they fired.

That or simply having multiple docked entities each equipped with a logic activated scanner to scan in succession (could almost offer permanent decloak with enough of them). That one's a bit cheap. But then again, so is instant recloaking

 

[Roninsword]

Don't turrets firing decloak the main ship? If not, then it might be a bug. Considering that a main ship decloaks when firing I figure that there's no reason for turrets not to. Definitely interesting though, I gotta admit.

There's a few tactics that can be used against a scheme like this. The first being to pop the scanner and drop swarms immediately after (I don't think that they stop tracking even if you recloak). The other is to drop drones and fire the scan (what I'd do). They'd instantly unload all their missiles into you, I seriously doubt that you'd have the time to recloak before they fired.

That or simply having multiple docked entities each equipped with a logic activated scanner to scan in succession (could almost offer permanent decloak with enough of them). That one's a bit cheap. But then again, so is instant recloaking

I believe to counter a drone ship i would simply install swarm missile chaff of my own. (i have just enough leftover regen to do this I believe)

you are correct though, I would fear the multiple scanner system ship, but besides you or myself, I haven't seen anyone come up with that :P
it also works better as a duo (ie: your friend jumps from scan turret to turret and you pilot)

 

[Keptick]

I believe to counter a drone ship i would simply install swarm missile chaff of my own. (i have just enough leftover regen to do this I believe)

you are correct though, I would fear the multiple scanner system ship, but besides you or myself, I haven't seen anyone come up with that :p
it also works better as a duo (ie: your friend jumps from scan turret to turret and you pilot)

Oh, I'd set it up on logic so that it's automatic :P

 

[SkaireKrough]

If someone is kind enough to release their design i will release mine.

There are already a few examples of cloaked ships in the 'Community Content' section ranging from outstanding designs to barely functional. To date they all look better than any cloak designs I've come up with. I'm interested to see at least a picture of your design, my best guess right now is it is either a fairly large single star reactor, a cloaked variant of a brick/doomcube (would not mind being proven wrong) or playing on a server with non-default settings for the cloaking energy.

Here is a picture of what I've come up with so far for cloaked ships that actually look somewhat like ships while still being functional (including minimal interior, exiting core doesn't put you outside the ship). They both are about the size and firepower of the standard Isanth Type-Zero. Just waiting for the pirate A.I. to be advanced enough to put them to use.

 

[takethispie]

I use a perma-cloak & perma-stealth as starter ship, it doesn't have high damage but it's powerful because it can destroy pirate station :3

 

[aceface]

can do 500,000 x .2 Ion damage, while remaining permacloaked/ perma radar jamming - even when the turret fires. This also includes a small turret that does constant damage to help negate shield regen in between shots.

pics pls

 

[Panpiper]

I suspect you've buried a turret inside your cloaking/jamming ship, using a secondary internal ship dock on which to dock the turret. You've completely covered the turret and left only a very tiny aperture through which it can fire. By aligning the aperture correctly, you can get the turret AI to fire. Meanwhile the rest of your ship somehow maintains it's cloak, probably due to the turret firing not triggering the breaking of cloak due to the secondary docking mechanism.

There are several tricks for engaging that, most ships of course not being prepared to do so. The simplest of course is to simply have a ship that can regenerate 600K shields in 45 seconds. Another is to have multiple logic activated scans on docked platforms (perhaps doubling as power reactors) within a ship. Finally the foil to this sort of attack is swarmers. If a swarm gets launched while the turret aperture is facing the target ship, I expect the full swarm will vector on the turret, track it and hit any putatively cloaked ship in the way. It is not terribly difficult to mount a swarm barrage that will decimate any conceivable permacloaked ship. And of course one can always simply manually activate one's scan and then hit the swarm launch right after, before the permacloak can recloak. The swarmers should all get lock.

Any errors in that thinking?

 

[Stakhanov]

Mass , dimensions and number of docked ships must be disclosed before such a design can be compared to others.

My last tested design proved unacceptably ineffective after the last update. A 300 mass permacloaker of 40m designed for a competition , it features a few bits of armor and not much in shields. While its weapon and thruster blocks shield its power lines , it doesn't take much fire before the cloak breaks. It was designed to combine stop effect weapons with cloak , to immobilize duelists (including cloakers) and manoeuver out of their line of fire with high thrust.

Due to lag issues and a nerf to stop effect , it can't even destroy a properly flown isanth without taking damage. Pitiful performance compared to its unhulled 8-turret version (back when they could fire cloaked)

 

[Lecic]

This definitely sounds like a bug that this is functional.

Anyway, the solution to this kind of ship is simple. Break your cloak and jam with scanners, then launch swarmers. This thing almost certainly has very minimal shields, so I doubt it'll take much of a hit.

 

[QuantumAnomaly]

So, as far as I tested, which granted was a couple of updates ago, before the new hud, scanners could not be activated via logic or pulse clocks. Has this changed?

 

[Lecic]

Has this changed?

No.

 

[QuantumAnomaly]

No.

Thanks, just making sure, since everyone seems to have the idea to build a docked entity with a scanner. Myself, being in a faction war on my server, would LOVE to keep cloaked spies outta my base when I'm not online, but alas, not something one can do.

 

[Panpiper]

I've never built such a docked scanner myself. I just assumed it was possible because Drakkart appears to have done just that here:

http://starmadedock.net/content/internal-scanner-powermodule.2101/

 

[QuantumAnomaly]

passive effect modules and weapons can be utilized remotely by a logic system (power transfer beams, push effect as a passive, or full blown weapons with secondary and effect functions). Scanners, cloakers, and Radar jammers cannot.

 

[Drakkart]

flight mode, cursor keys, select, right slot, click, tada a scan. or as i do it get out of your core walk 5 blocks over get into the other core activate the scanner and head back... requires ship design that keeps the power scanner module close to the core.

but why again do you need a scanner?

 

[QuantumAnomaly]

flight mode, cursor keys, select, right slot, click, tada a scan. or as i do it get out of your core walk 5 blocks over get into the other core activate the scanner and head back... requires ship design that keeps the power scanner module close to the core.

but why again do you need a scanner?

Yes, but that means it still isnt an automated scanner. The issue is cloaked ships. Take my example:

At war with another faction, have plenty of defense turrets at my homebase, but I dont want them snooping around when I'm offline. An automated, logic based scanner, could be set up to fire "in sequence" to keep scans going off every .5 seconds on a loop (using multiple scanners and a clock). That way, if someone in a cloaked ship tried to snoop on my base when i was offline, they'd load the sector, which would turn on the clocks (since they were on when I logged off, they retain their state) de-cloaking their ship, and bringing my defense systems to bear on them.

Alternatively, you could have a small docked entity on your ship that does the same thing (constantly scanning), keeping people from radar jamming and cloaking while you PVP. However, in the current state of the game this isnt viable since scanners cannot be hooked to logic.