Cloak/jammer and hulls

[Stakhanov]

Due to the current mechanic of cloaks and radar jammers draining more power with every block added to your ship , functional stealth ships tend to be minimalistic and also rather ugly.

To alleviate this , normal hull blocks should not require any extra power to conceal. This would also give some protection on otherwise exposed subsystems. The extra mass would still impact ship agility , as extra thrusters would cost power to cloak.

Hardened hulls would remain luxuries for the more visible ships.

 

[Alviss]

Think of the balancing though, Stak.

Does it seem proper that a ship that can perma a cloak and jammer can do so totally armoured? Why does it even need armour?

 

[Stakhanov]

Mostly this was to address the aesthetic issue of functional stealth ships made of nothing but flashy exposed modules ; also , to get the discussion rolling. Stealth can have its cost raised in many ways , and I think extra hull is a more interesting form of protection than generic shields - those may be changed to lose capacity , effectiveness or regeneration while cloaking/jamming.

Hull effectiveness is a more general topic , that requires a lot of attention. With properly working hardened hulls , the standard hulls of today would not look very appealing , even as the only method of protection.

Another solution is to add heavier , expensive and fragile stealth hull blocks to serve that purpose , to keep that issue isolated. The only cost is implementing lots of new blocks with special properties...

 

[Racr]

So as long as this only effects regular hull, not hardened it shouldn\'t be too OP.

 

[Nootau]

What about rather than altering hull, instead altering and making a new material, Plating. Plating has 0.01 Mass, 0% armor protection and 5 hitpoints. This is the bare basics of the materials that might coat a ship to protect the electronics from space dust in roleplaying terms. This will not offset balance significantly as it still gives mass, to stop people having many layers of it, while also offering a form of covering for astetic focused players. Does anyone see major flaws with this idea?

 

[Bench]

Perhaps go the way of most sci-fi and have the trade off. Yes regular hull should not cost anything to cloak amount or at least not as much as it does now. The drawback is that when cloak is active, shields are not and with the recharge rate introduced recently for shields, it gives an avenue where player can\'t just switch between them and expect shields to be at 100% straight away. I\'d love to build a decent Klingon Bird of Prey but with the current hull limitations I wouldn\'t be able to.

 

[Apollo848]

And with what Bench said. perhaps it could even say double the time it takes shields to go up? As if it was adding time to switch the power from the cloak to the shields, and then charge them.

 

[Sevvy]

I\'d agree with Bench - Active cloak = No shields, but it would be possible (and balanceable) if cloak energy consumption scaled with ship size, not mass. The limitations then, would be on the efficiency of your generator configuration.

 

[Tacotown99]

i think you should implment the stealth hull you need to a mabey 3 to 6 more blocks.

 

[Chosen Mimes]

What i think of would be some \"ultra-light\"-hulls. or hypodense-polymere-plating xD

They should cost the same as normal hulls but have about 25% of their armour.

In exchange they would be much lighter, maybe 50% or even weightless so the cloaker would not need more
energy to hide them. (remember they are only an aesthetic feature)

i too hate those ugly stealth ships, in most cases they are just a giant cross of power-cores.:/

 

[Stakhanov]

Mass remains a general issue with current hulls , though - they aren\'t remotely worth it mass wise.

Still , with no other changes you would only see hulled stealth ships if standard hull mass were decreased to 0.01 or less. A problem with hull with no mass is that you can just make giant volumes of the stuff , though...

 

[me2005]

Mass needs loads of blanacing; hulls shouldn\'t be the same mass as power blocks and weapons. I\'d think the way to go would be to leave the basic hull alone health wise and lower it\'s mass requirement substantially. Armored hull needs more health; and possibly the hull damage mechanic should change (so that it spreads damage around a little bit or adjacent hull blocks get a boost to HP or something).

Once those things are done, I don\'t see why anything would need to change in regards to the cloak power system. Shields dropping when cloaked would probably be good, but that might be possible to do organically by setting up power priorities and dropping shields when there isn\'t enough power available (cloak > weapons> engines > shields).

 

[Malkadir]

Add a radar signature to ships that depends on weight and size (based on x,y,z). Make cloak and jammer dependant on x,y,z size too: the smaller the ship, the easier to cloak and jam. To increase your ability to detect things you\'ll need radar blocks. Radar module would also permit a multilayer system : having only one block wont allow you to know the exact distance of another ship or if the ship is habited. In the end you could gather informations such as shields power, weapon power, energly level, etc.

Everyblock weight could be increased by x, cloak and jammer consumption reduced by x per block. Wedge and corner weight would be reduced to 1/2 of full hull, glass glass 75% of normal hull.Soil and dirt needs to have a lesser impact on yur ability to jam, making an asteroid ship an effective stealth ship. Of cooarse the defensive stats of said blocks need to be changed accordingly. Changes to thrusters are required, no matter what.

Those changes would drastically improve the viability of small and hulled ships while making huge ones impossible to cloak and jam. At some point the amounts of stealth/jamming blocks necessary to stealth your ship would be so high youd have to dedicate most of the ship to it.

 

[Stakhanov]

Positive mechanics with volume dimensions tend to encourage long , thin and therefore vulnerable ships ; the opposite would instead promote ugly bricks of modules with no flavor. You can make a beautiful ship out of module strings , you can\'t make a beautiful box.

Remember that hull wedges and corners are just as strong as full blocks ; they would be used on their own under your proposal , giving rise to urchin stealth ships. There\'s always something :p

 

[Malkadir]

Oh yeah I forgot that : lower the defensive stats of those blocks.