another cloaking thread

[Kingofanime]

I read a recent cloaking suggestion thread, then did a search and skimmed over a couple more, then felt inspired to write my own. Here it is...

Cloaking is free. It has no energy per second cost. But, all power generation is disabled when cloaked, so you have to rely on power storage.

When you are cloaked and someone nearby uses a scanner. It reduces your stored power by 50% of the total (because you are consuming power to maintain the cloak)

The cloaking system will have cloaking modules that you fill your ship with. A minimum of 10% of a ships block count will need to be cloak modules for the cloak system to be functional. The number of cloaking modules to total ship size ratio, will have 2 effects that improve as your ratio goes above 10%...

1. more modules will make your thrusters consume less energy while cloaked.
2. more modules will reduce the power loss when your ship gets scanned.

Having a very high amount of modules, lets say 50% of your ship, would allow it to survive many scans and travel quite a distance before needing to "surface". But, it would severely reduce your combat capabilities. Having a small amount of modules, such as 10%, would allow you to lie in wait and ambush passing ships. But you couldn't travel very far while cloaked.

Firing your weapons will uncloak your ship. When uncloaking, there will be a 10 second cooldown before you can re-cloak.

Also, the reason the cloak module benefits begin at 10% (and don't function under that percentage) is because I consider the 10% minimum investment to be a penalty to purposefully weaken cloak-able ships in order to make non-cloaking ships slightly stronger.

I'm aware that titans could cloak under this system... but, I feel like they would have to sacrifice enough combat capabilities that it might be okay. Not to mention that any small ship could easily uncloak them.

Radar jammers will be removed and their functionality added to the cloak device.

 

[TBterra]

it makes for some interesting changes to cloaking. it makes all sizes of ships capable of infinite cloak as long as they are still/glide

it also means that permacloak scouts cannot exist, and that the effectiveness of cloaks (for scouts) will be determined by 3 main things: cloak modules, power storage, power regen for fast recharge of storage

i highly suspect that freighters will use this sort of cloak, get upto speed, activate cloak, then drift to the destination while cloaked

 

[JinM]

I like the idea to reword the cloaking system. I just feel, that cloaking should be easier for small ships, merely free for ships below 100 mass (like starting from 20% of systems), and for big ships hardly possible. If you are a big ship it should be something like: sacrificing more than 60% of systems to be cloaked longer than 30 seconds, and full cloak only with like 80% of systems usage.

 

[Deserea]

I like the idea to reword the cloaking system. I just feel, that cloaking should be easier for small ships, merely free for ships below 100 mass (like starting from 20% of systems), and for big ships hardly possible. If you are a big ship it should be something like: sacrificing more than 60% of systems to be cloaked longer than 30 seconds, and full cloak only with like 80% of systems usage.

its impossible period for large ships now so far as i know.

Trying to cloak a 100k mass ship is just impossible(as far as i know)
but currently cloaking anything larger than a small fighter isnt really practical(again so far as i know) due to the massive power drain

 

[pesce rocks]

Thank you and please go and make this a reality

 

[spaceEngineer]

Radar jammers will be removed and their functionality added to the cloak device.

Explain what you mean by this? I like having separate cloaking and radar jamming capabilities.

I do agree cloaker/jammer should have modules that change the effect (jammer could use the antenna block), but I am on the fence about the power consumption change.

 

[Kingofanime]

Explain what you mean by this? I like having separate cloaking and radar jamming capabilities.

I do agree cloaker/jammer should have modules that change the effect (jammer could use the antenna block), but I am on the fence about the power consumption change.

As far as I know, you have to use a radar jammer and cloaker both at the same time to be completely invisible. I'm unable to test it in single player to know for sure. Radar jammers could be kept around or removed... but either way, the targeting cursor hiding function needs to be on the cloaker, if it's not already.

 

[spaceEngineer]

ahh ok. I get it. As a side note radar jammer just reI smoves the targeting blip as well as removing it from navigation. Cloaker makes the ships blocks themselves invisible, those two I can garuntee. If i remember correctly AI will shoot a radar jammed ship, but not a cloaked ship regardless of jamming. (radar jammed ships cant be locked onto with missiles not sure if that applies to swarmers tho) you seemed unsure of the jamming vs cloaking so I thought id give my two cents.

perhaps aux reactors could still function at a reduced rate?

I support this even tho perma cloak/jam would be impossible.

 

[Kingofanime]

perhaps aux reactors could still function at a reduced rate?

I support this even tho perma cloak/jam would be impossible.

Emptying your auxiliary power storage into your regular power storage would be okay. But the constant "ON" power generation for aux reactors would be disabled while cloaked. You won't be able to perma-cloak/jam, but you will be able to make a cloak-able attack frigate. And be able to decide the balance you want between fighting ability and how far you travel and manuever while cloaked. More cloaking modules will weaken your ship, but also allow you to cloak mid-battle and run to fight another day. While allowing the enemy ship the option to scan for you, or randomly patrol the area, hoping to spot you when you're forced to uncloak due to you running out of power.

 

[Calhoun]

Aux reactors make this interesting.

For example, You are nearly out of power, so you dump your Aux storage. This refills your power, and then you turn your Aux off. Aux still regenerates its internal storage while off, so the next time you're nearly out of power you can just dump storage again, and again, and again.

 

[Kingofanime]

Aux reactors make this interesting.

For example, You are nearly out of power, so you dump your Aux storage. This refills your power, and then you turn your Aux off. Aux still regenerates its internal storage while off, so the next time you're nearly out of power you can just dump storage again, and again, and again.

That might be acceptable... I mean Aux power storage recharges pretty slow. So if you were trying to perma-cloak with it, you would be in energy-conservation-turtle-mode. It might also allow you to refill you power tank to counter scans. With lots of cloak modules, power storage, and aux reactors, it would be like a specialized cloak ship.