Read by Council Another tweak to Cloaking...and Scanning

[Magrim]

A change to the cloaking mechanic is needed, especially when fleets hit. I have thrown my 2 cents out there before (check sig) but I think that idea was overly complicated. So I've come up with another take on it, that while based on my previous suggestion, is simplified and different enough to warrant a new thread. Besides necroing is sometimes annoying.


The cloaking computer needs modules. I think most can agree with that. However I still maintain that the number of modules needed / power draw should not be tied to the mass of the ship. I feel it should instead be based off of the surface area to volume ratio. It shouldn't be calculated using the actual SA:V but that of a cube equal in volume to your ship. The reason is, people would attempt to decrease the ratio by building stealth cubes and spheres, and it puts players on equal footing by not forcing an 'optimal' design on anyone.


They way it works is this; As the SA:V ratio increases, the percentage of modules needed also increases. At a certain point (determined by the devs) the percentage of modules needed in your ship would be more than 100%, which of course is impossible to achieve. This is to combat stealth titans.


Another area I feel needs to be addressed is that of being scanned while cloaked. Currently your cloak drops the instant you are scanned. I never really liked this so what I propose is a cloaking field that can be drained and scan resistance. If you put the recommended number of modules on your ship you will have a to-be-determined base resistance to being scanned and a 100% field strength. If you go above that number you will increase your resistance and field strength up to a cap. I think field strength could be soft capped at 110% while resistance hard capped at 99%.


Scanners will passively scan the sector they are in and slowly destabilize / drain any cloaking field within that sector. Without a field strength of 100% or greater, any cloaked ship will start to become opaque. If a player is in the scanner performing scans the field will drain much faster. It should be noted that no matter how weak a scanner is and strong a cloak is, the scanner will eventually drain the cloak.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on it. I feel like this would be a neat mechanic to bring into starmade and it's different enough from other systems we have to add to gameplay, instead of being a copy / paste of something we already have.

 

[jgames666]

A change to the cloaking mechanic is needed, especially when fleets hit. I have thrown my 2 cents out there before (check sig) but I think that idea was overly complicated. So I've come up with another take on it, that while based on my previous suggestion, is simplified and different enough to warrant a new thread. Besides necroing is sometimes annoying.


The cloaking computer needs modules. I think most can agree with that. However I still maintain that the number of modules needed / power draw should not be tied to the mass of the ship. I feel it should instead be based off of the surface area to volume ratio. It shouldn't be calculated using the actual SA:V but that of a cube equal in volume to your ship. The reason is, people would attempt to decrease the ratio by building stealth cubes and spheres, and it puts players on equal footing by not forcing an 'optimal' design on anyone.


They way it works is this; As the SA:V ratio increases, the percentage of modules needed also increases. At a certain point (determined by the devs) the percentage of modules needed in your ship would be more than 100%, which of course is impossible to achieve. This is to combat stealth titans.


Another area I feel needs to be addressed is that of being scanned while cloaked. Currently your cloak drops the instant you are scanned. I never really liked this so what I propose is a cloaking field that can be drained and scan resistance. If you put the recommended number of modules on your ship you will have a to-be-determined base resistance to being scanned and a 100% field strength. If you go above that number you will increase your resistance and field strength up to a cap. I think field strength could be soft capped at 110% while resistance hard capped at 99%.


Scanners will passively scan the sector they are in and slowly destabilize / drain any cloaking field within that sector. Without a field strength of 100% or greater, any cloaked ship will start to become opaque. If a player is in the scanner performing scans the field will drain much faster. It should be noted that no matter how weak a scanner is and strong a cloak is, the scanner will eventually drain the cloak.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on it. I feel like this would be a neat mechanic to bring into starmade and it's different enough from other systems we have to add to gameplay, instead of being a copy / paste of something we already have.

I like this idea, but I was thinking perhaps making a cloak capacitor and cloak regenerator with computer. This way the capacitor will give you an amount cloak field power, and the regenerators will regenerate that. However, make it so regenerators can only regenerate while uncloaked and the larger the mass of the ship the more cloak power is used per second to keep it cloaked. Also, then allow scanners to uncloak the cloaked vessel if it is in range of the scan, but for this to work properly scanners need to be not a sector-wide scan, but they need to have a scan range that starts very small, and then becomes larger the more scanner antennas one has on a vessel.