Beating Cloaking

[D-Car]

Using this entirely visual method, you\'d get people click-spamming it constantly once a ping comes back positive. They can\'t see everywhere around them at once and they\'ll try to find the visual signal for where the cloaker is. Much better to keep it in the GUI as part of a list of what\'s around you.

 

[D-Car]

This brings up another question. If you\'re cloaking and I\'m firing randomly trying to find you, when my weapon lands a lucky shot ... should I see a shield-hit effect when you\'re cloaked? If so, then should my turrets automatically start firing in that general area?

 

[Zxaber]

I would say that yes, there should be a visual effect from a shield hit, or the explosion of it hitting hull in the event of no shields. However, AI turrets wouldn\'t auto-fire. That would be one advantage to player-controlled turrets.

Though if you can guess their location and movement, you might be able to land an energy siphon, and they\'d decloak quick enough after that for all your AI to see.

 

[TheSuperintendnt]

You need massive amounts of power to cloak even a small ship, and adding ANYTHING but power modules just increases that demand. My first (and only) cloakable ship was a small perma-cloak Fast Attack Craft (Nameless), but its more of a Fast Recon Craft(FRC) as its more focused on speed, with limited protection(shields only, no hull). But I equipped it with a D1000 and 4 AMCs with just enough power to let me take down a Isanth-VI, its no threat to even my smallest combat vessel, as their designed to take the puny damage it can deal. It seems to me that the only limit they need is ship size, as a cloak able combat vessel over 100-200 mass (basically a Corvette) seems a bit ridiculous.

 

[Nootau]

http://star-made.org/content/apate-ares-classed-predator This is my first larger Cloaking ship, far from optimal, but it is stable.

 

[TheFireRodan]

Or if someone was looking through a cloaked ship it could slightly ward the space behind it. So if you were looking carefully enough you could see some slightly shifting stars and would know that there is something being cloaked.

 

[MrFURB]

I think something as simple as giving cloaking/jamming a cooldown once deactivated could solve the problems of people using combat cloaking to turn the tables too massively. They can still cloak a few times in a fight, but once they uncloak they\'re comitted to the engagement until it comes back up.

 

[TheFireRodan]

would that be necessary? I cant figure out how to make a ship that has my usual setup of 400+ damage antimatter, an sd-bb missile and salvage cannon of same power, and a good amount of shields and thrusters capable of doing 1 megameter/h work with cloaking devices. 4000 blocks and 100000 power/s doesnt work out.

 

[MrFURB]

Cloaking takes 1,000 power/s per mass, and radar jamming takes half of that. Ships that can cloak, jam, and continue to move and engage in combat are usually the ones made specifically for that.

 

[TheFireRodan]

which is why it isnt OP

 

[LoLzboi]

Only utterly massive ships would have any hope in any sort of hell to have cloak and weapons available to them. Thus the only real threat to having cloaked ships would be that they are relaying data to an ambush fleet hiding within a planets atmosphere (obviously with jammers so you could not see them from a glance or detect them). So the cloaking ability is rather balanced at this point (in my own opinion), since cloaked ships would tend to be recon only vessels.

Pinging does make sense, but should be the more rough version of detection. Space stations would have the resources to pin a targets exact location and mark it for 30 seconds while the fleet mobilises to defend the station, while vessels would simply be unable to meet the power demand and only be able to register an unknown signature. The ping ability should also completely drain all power from a vessel, causing a measurable amount of risk in setting it off since a vessel will not have the ability to properly defend itself for a short amount of time, effectively making it \"dead in the water\". Thus cloaked ships will see that the fleet is pinging (since ships will be stopping or drifting randomly) and will decide wether it is worth the risk to stay. Also if possible multiple pings from multiple locations should refine the search, or having a certain amount of ping blocks within X radious provides an increase in ping power making it easier to find the exact location.

Rippling of space where a vessel is cloaked also would make cloaking more of an art, having to weave inbetween and behind the enemy fleet in order to keep from having an alert captain spy a ripple infront of them and test the space with fire. So in essence any alert captain could spy a cloaked vessel, and would force cloaked vessels to take more careful angles to avoid detection.

Cloaking would also burst bright orange and be turned off if hit by enemy fire. This would allow any fighters in a given battle group to easily see and respond to a positive hit on said cloaked vessel. Sure this is a bit unfair to a cloaked vessel, but they should have been more cautious.

Cloaked ships should be able to fire missiles while cloaked, but not antimatter cannons. This is because missiles give off a very bright light and leave a tracer giving any competent captain the direction of the attacker. While antimatter cannons simply come and you have no idea where they come from (unless it is a non stop barrage). Missiles also cannot puncture through shielding, so cloaked ships would be more of a support roll in any sort of combat scenario and not the main target.

These are just my ideas of what could be implemented in the grande game of cat and mouse, please utterly destroy them if you don\'t agree.

P.S. All those whose ideas I took and molded I give you thanks

 

[krakk]

Uhhh... I dont know where you guys have been, but cloaking is extremely overly difficult to achieve already. I dont understand the need for a hard counter for cloaking, when the energy requirements to achieve any lasting cloak means that 90% of your mass is power generators which will lose their ability to sustain cloak if a single power block is knocked out from under the nonexistant armor and weak shields.If you got killed by a cloaker, its cuz youre either an idiot, flying a ship 10x smaller than him, or flying a massive behemoth which took the cloaker 30 minutes of constant hits to bring your shields down.

 

[krakk]

if youve ever made a cloaker, you should know 2 things:
1. your cloak/jammer will randomly turn off at the worst possible time every single (*^*(&$(*%^)*(ing encounter

and 2. you will still show up on nav even though you are jamming.

cloaking needs serious fixes, not nerfs. I know theres a lot of players on here who want to build the UBERBATTLESTAR9001 WITH INFINITE SHIELDS AND A CANNON WHICH CAN DESTROY PLANETS IN ONE SHOT!!!! but get over it when a smaller cloaked ship can stay on your tail bc youre running around without any support craft to protect you. As it is, theres no balance issue - only glitches which makes cloakers near useless.

 

[MrFURB]

I believe cloakers have a good set of tools to engage targets not meant to fight fighter/bombers. If there\'s a capital ship without turrets, a cloaker can engage opposite from it\'s field of fire while keeping radar jammers on. If the enemy attempts to turn around, either maneuver back behind them or cloak and disengage freely.



Under the same rules, cloakers are great for hunting mining/salvaging craft that think they\'re in safe space. That\'s what I use my 60 mass stealth interceptor for, and I love it.

 

[Streetpass4993]

Has anyone thought of just creating minefields

 

[mtech47]

Don\'t do it