Cloak & jam affect aligned astronauts

[Valiant70]

There are plenty of threads already about reworking stealth. That's not what this thread is about. With the upcoming crew system, having personnel onboard ships will become far more common. In the current state of the game, this would make stealth unusable because astronauts on ships are ALWAYS visible both to sensors and players' eyes.

Being aligned to a radar-jammed ship should hide an astronaut's sensor blip, and being aligned to a cloaked ship should make an astronaut's character model invisible.

 

[therimmer96]

There are plenty of threads already about reworking stealth. That's not what this thread is about. With the upcoming crew system, having personnel onboard ships will become far more common. In the current state of the game, this would make stealth unusable because astronauts on ships are ALWAYS visible both to sensors and players' eyes.

Being aligned to a radar-jammed ship should hide an astronaut's sensor blip, and being aligned to a cloaked ship should make an astronaut's character model invisible.

i think this should be reported as a bug id anything

 

[Awdred]

Yea, that would make stealth useless.

 

[Ithirahad]

This is basically a bug, or at the very least an oversight. Report it; this bug is technically already a problem.

 

[Magrim]

I don't know about you guys, but I think stealth is going to be even more busted when we get crews. Its hard enough building a decent stealth ship with no interior, let alone one that can accommodate a crew with workstations and such.

Oh, and +1 for fixing this bug

 

[Asvarduil]

I don't know about you guys, but I think stealth is going to be even more busted when we get crews. Its hard enough building a decent stealth ship with no interior, let alone one that can accommodate a crew with workstations and such.

Oh, and +1 for fixing this bug

I agree.

Speaking of my gripes with Jamming/Cloaking, I've had a few:

1. Jamming and Cloaking are often used together, since the point of both systems is undetectabilit. Why not just make them into the same block?
2. While we're at it, I think Jamming/Cloaking needs tuning. Right now, a perma-cloak ship pretty much can't have either an interior, or hull, of any kind. I think that, instead of Jam/Cloak being limited by power consumption, that it should instead modulate to the mass of the ship - a more massive ship requires more power to hide. This can make cloak ships useful - specifically, stealth fighters, which makes the Sensor System more useful - but without imbalanced stealth builds being a problem.
3. Let's assume #2 happens. Do docked ships (such as ship elevators) cloak/jam? I haven't tested it, because cloak/jamming is not a viable strategy on the kinds of ships I build - you actually can't maintain cloak/jam for more than a second.

 

[AnthonyHJ]

Jamming and Cloaking are often used together, since the point of both systems is undetectabilit. Why not just make them into the same block?

They serve very different purposes. Jamming is a cheap tool which helps you stay hidden as long as you are not seen, prevents missile locks and generally makes you invisible to automatic tracking systems. Cloaking is a system which adds to jamming by making you invisible to the naked eye, since a ship with a jammer can still be shot by anyone who is facing the right direction.

Maybe the cloaking block could include jamming functions, since you'll never use it alone as far as I can tell, but I can certainly see a case for keeping your jammer on all the time and only cloaking once you get close enough to be seen out of the window.

While we're at it, I think Jamming/Cloaking needs tuning. Right now, a perma-cloak ship pretty much can't have either an interior, or hull, of any kind. I think that, instead of Jam/Cloak being limited by power consumption, that it should instead modulate to the mass of the ship - a more massive ship requires more power to hide. This can make cloak ships useful - specifically, stealth fighters, which makes the Sensor System more useful - but without imbalanced stealth builds being a problem.

The current cloak works for me; it works as a tool for getting very small ships (scouting / spying probes) into an area safely, but doesn't allow for a fleet of massive 'Bird of Prey' type ships to uncloak and nuke a station. Cloaked dreadnaughts are just begging to be abused.
That said, I can see cloaks, jammers and warheads being quite an easy combination to abuse...

Let's assume #2 happens. Do docked ships (such as ship elevators) cloak/jam? I haven't tested it, because cloak/jamming is not a viable strategy on the kinds of ships I build - you actually can't maintain cloak/jam for more than a second.

Assuming you could ever get past the huge costs involved (maybe a lot of capacitors and very efficient reactors) then I agree that docked ships/turrets should also be cloaked.

 

[alterintel]

I agree.

Speaking of my gripes with Jamming/Cloaking, I've had a few:

1. Jamming and Cloaking are often used together, since the point of both systems is undetectabilit. Why not just make them into the same block?
2. While we're at it, I think Jamming/Cloaking needs tuning. Right now, a perma-cloak ship pretty much can't have either an interior, or hull, of any kind. I think that, instead of Jam/Cloak being limited by power consumption, that it should instead modulate to the mass of the ship - a more massive ship requires more power to hide. This can make cloak ships useful - specifically, stealth fighters, which makes the Sensor System more useful - but without imbalanced stealth builds being a problem.
3. Let's assume #2 happens. Do docked ships (such as ship elevators) cloak/jam? I haven't tested it, because cloak/jamming is not a viable strategy on the kinds of ships I build - you actually can't maintain cloak/jam for more than a second.

ISS Raven: It's got a hull, an interior, and a 6 second charge jump drive. Enjoy

 

[Asvarduil]

They serve very different purposes. Jamming is a cheap tool which helps you stay hidden as long as you are not seen

While the rest of your post I agree with, I do want to point out that this alone reiterates my suggestion for combining Cloak and Jammer into a single block. The sentence above agrees with me that one is useless without the other.

If you're talking about draw distances, that's unreliable anyhow, because different machines with different specs will be able to support different draw distances. Put another way - if you're running the game on a low-spec machine, every other player effectively has Cloaking by default relative to you. Combining cloak and jammer into a block mitigates the hardware advantage, and puts more emphasis on this game's primary mechanic - cleverly building a better starship.

As far as Birds of Prey...you should have to be a creative builder who understands the mechanics inside and out to get something like that to work...and, that should be a significant challenge. Cloak dreadnoughts for me would be 'second ragequit' material.

 

[alterintel]

While the rest of your post I agree with, I do want to point out that this alone reiterates my suggestion for combining Cloak and Jammer into a single block. The sentence above agrees with me that one is useless without the other.

If you're talking about draw distances, that's unreliable anyhow, because different machines with different specs will be able to support different draw distances. Put another way - if you're running the game on a low-spec machine, every other player effectively has Cloaking by default relative to you. Combining cloak and jammer into a block mitigates the hardware advantage, and puts more emphasis on this game's primary mechanic - cleverly building a better starship.

As far as Birds of Prey...you should have to be a creative builder who understands the mechanics inside and out to get something like that to work...and, that should be a significant challenge. Cloak dreadnoughts for me would be 'second ragequit' material.

At Danger of Hijacking this Post:
A bird of Prey is pretty much impossible right now. It's too big to be cloaked without docked reactors, and it's too small to hold enough docked reactors to cloak it. Now a Romulan Warbird / D'deridex Class, with enough skill somebody could probably pull that off.

 

[AnthonyHJ]

While the rest of your post I agree with, I do want to point out that this alone reiterates my suggestion for combining Cloak and Jammer into a single block. The sentence above agrees with me that one is useless without the other.

That was not my intention. I think that a cloak without radar jamming is pointless, but that's about as far as I will go.

Even ignoring draw distances and screen resolutions for a moment, radar jammers give a definite combat advantage to smaller ships by making them harder to track and impossible for AI to get one of their instant missile locks. I suppose the real question is this; what do you even want to achieve with a huge stealth ship?

 

[Dellexe]

One thing to balance large cloaked ships could be that your shields have to be inactive in order to be cloaked. Many sci-fi universes have this as a rule, you can either be shielded, or you can be cloaked. As another balancing factor it could take some time to switch from cloak to shields and vice versa, 5-10 seconds or so.

As far as the "Why do you want a huge stealth ship?" question, my answer is simply: BECAUSE IT'D BE COOL. If proper balance is put in place (like shields/cloak being mutually exclusive), there's very little, if any, harm in having large ships being able to cloak. I want to have a massive ship materialize out of nowhere to scare the hell out of my enemies, but I also want it to be balanced so as to not be abused.

 

[Dire Venom]

One thing to balance large cloaked ships could be that your shields have to be inactive in order to be cloaked. Many sci-fi universes have this as a rule, you can either be shielded, or you can be cloaked. As another balancing factor it could take some time to switch from cloak to shields and vice versa, 5-10 seconds or so.

As far as the "Why do you want a huge stealth ship?" question, my answer is simply: BECAUSE IT'D BE COOL. If proper balance is put in place (like shields/cloak being mutually exclusive), there's very little, if any, harm in having large ships being able to cloak. I want to have a massive ship materialize out of nowhere to scare the hell out of my enemies, but I also want it to be balanced so as to not be abused.

Players can currently spam detect, or can have docked scanners to easily keep you out of cloak without much effort on their part. Also sometimes cloaks will bug out and drop for no reason. While I agree with your suggestion some other mechanics will need to be refined as well

 

[faylew1012]

therimmer96 OMG Roflmao Your sig is hilarious!

Players can currently spam detect, or can have docked scanners to easily keep you out of cloak without much effort on their part. Also sometimes cloaks will bug out and drop for no reason. While I agree with your suggestion some other mechanics will need to be refined as well

Do you mean scanners can activate through logic, or did i missunderstand you? If scanners can do that then there is no point in having a cloaked ship.

 

[Dire Venom]

therimmer96 OMG Roflmao Your sig is hilarious!

Do you mean scanners can activate through logic, or did i missunderstand you? If scanners can do that then there is no point in having a cloaked ship.

I tried that sometime ago, but I don't think they can be triggered via logic.
Scanners will un-cloak/un-jam a ship of any size, but have a cooldown. However, if you have multiple docked entities WITH scanners, every 10 seconds or so switch to one, activate the scanner then back to your main ship. Takes very little effort and prevents recloaking/jamming indefinatly while your turrets obliterate them

EDIT: I however love having insane power storgae on my multi-million block ships. it allows me to cloak my titan for a good 20-60 seconds Great for trolling new players

 

[faylew1012]

I tried that sometime ago, but I don't think they can be triggered via logic.
Scanners will un-cloak/un-jam a ship of any size, but have a cooldown. However, if you have multiple docked entities WITH scanners, every 10 seconds or so switch to one, activate the scanner then back to your main ship. Takes very little effort and prevents recloaking/jamming indefinatly while your turrets obliterate them

Oh, ok sound like it's a bit unbalanced to me and by a bit I mean immensely.

 

[Dire Venom]

Sadly a lot of servers enforece a 'no armed cloakers rule'.
The max size of a cloker is capped unfortunatly :/ and thus theyre often only really used for getting from A-B- without trouble.
Maybe cloak and jam systems should have slave blocks :?? E.g make it like the jump-inhibitor?
I would love to see cloakers used more often for info gathering, or following players back to find their base.

On that note, I think there should be a limited ammount of time to 'Trace' a jump (Could use scanners??)e.g recent jumps show up on the scanner