Cloak/jamming e/sec power reduction

[zminator15]

I think this would be a good thing to implement, especially for larger ships. Granted there will be the whole, "Let make an entire fleet of perma cloaked ships", debate but I still think this is very doable.



For cloaking e/sec reduction the formula could be somthing like this:

-E/sec reduction = (((number of cloaking blocks - 1) ^ 1.5) *.01) / number of groups of cloaking blocks

This equation would also have a cap on it. If the output is greater than or equal to 50.00, set it to 50.00, so the max it will reduce is 50%



For jamming e/sec reduction the formula could be something like this:

-E/sec reduction = (((number of jamming blocks - 2) ^ 1.25) *.01) / number of groups of jamming blocks

This equation would also have a cap on it. If the output is great than or equal to 25.00, set it to 25.00, so the max it will reduce is 50%.



I think these are reasonable equations because for very large ships, you would have to get 400-600 blocks of each in singular groups in order for it to be effective, which is a good chunk of space.

Thanks for looking and any feedback or better equations would be awesome. Lets find a good balance to make this a reality for the game.

 

[der_scheme]

Haha, I just wanted to open a thread myself. I was trying to build a nice stealth ship and with every failed attempt I did more calculations. I now have a pretty good understanding of how this stuff works.



Fact: Cloaking mechanics are broken. Did anyone of you ever manage to build a ship that can permacloak _and_ has a hull? No? See. (Explanations will follow later. It is possible, of course, but won\'t win a beauty contest)

I\'m not with you that power is the problem. The real problem is that having a hull on a stealth ship is being penalized instead of awarded as it should be. There\'s plenty of reasons why a stealth ship should have a hull:

1. Currently, stealth ships look like crap.
2. Hull reduces the Radar cross-section.
3. It seems to be a fair assumption, that shield generators, power lines, power tanks, thrusters, weapons and all the other stuff I didn\'t think of would emit some kind of radiation or other interferences. Hull would act as a shield, _reducing_ a ship\'s visibility.
4. Hull keeps the air inside.
5. Hull does protect personnel and vital parts from space junk and radiation.
6. ...

So, having a hull should be awarded somehow. Ideally there were hull configurations that would benefit stealth. However, such computations are expensive, it would limit creativity, and it probably would be easily exploitable (like the \'valid doors\' for villagers in Minecraft ). Checking if vital parts were shielded would also be expensive, even if done via a projection in every direction. Additionally it would have to be done everytime a block is destroyed in a space battle.



It would, however, be a huge step forward if hull would yield a smaller penalty. It could take no or much less (like 1/10) power to make hull invisible, greatly reducing the penalty (general cloak energy consumption would probably have to be increased, though). A hull-award formula could look like this: Power_usage\' = power_usage * (75 / a^num_hull_blocks + 25) / 100, where a would be some constant near 1. This would reduce the power usage of cloaking down to a cap of 25%. No, this would not be OP (I currently assume that in this case hull would count towards the mass value used by cloaking).



Finally, some facts:

• The power cap at 1 million does limit a stealth ship to 6666 blocks.
• The smallest 1 million energy generator known to mankind itself has way more than 6666 blocks.
• Probably fact¹: The most compact, fully hulled stealth ship that could still somewhat operate would be 57m long, 13m wide and 12m in height. It would be a cuboid with a total mass of 550.3 (without weapons, thrusters or shields). It produces slightly more than 1 million e/s.
• The longest would be somewhere around 1000x3x3.
• The most efficient power generator contains 594 blocks (the peak is somewhere between 594 and 594.5).

¹ There is no software available to mere mortals that won\'t timeout or run oom while trying to solve the necessary equations.



Edit: (Sorry for keeping this topic updated by editing all the time)

The problem with aesthetics is that cloak ships are mostly limited to a cuboid form, because intersections greatly reduce power generator efficiency (due to additional blocks needed to avoid crossing other lines) and take a lot more hull to cover.

 

[Dire Venom]

Either your going for a very small ship or a very large ship. Small ships seem to be the only reliable perma cloack jamers.
However my latest project has 3 million blocks. 20 billion power storage, and 16 mill energy per second. On a full tank it can cloak and jam for about 20-30 seconds, but takes a few minutes to regen fully.

 

[zminator15]

I completely agree that the problem is with hull amounts and lack of bonuses

 

[Deleted member 301635]

There\'s a previously suggested way to deal with this: Stealth Hull.

How it should work: Power required to jam = (100 - ((h/m) x 7.5))%

h is the number of stealth hulls on the ship.

m is the ship\'s mass.

The stealth hull would have the same amount of health/armour as plexglass, and hopefully a hexagonal texture (because everything\'s better with hexagons).

This still encourages small ships, as they have more surface area to mass, but still allows for interiors and hull.

 

[NeonSturm]

Each storage block can store 5000 energy if you have enough...

With docked reactors - do they count towards e/s requirement? (EDIT2: not in the public)

But at some point you can get 1 million regen and storage on 7x7y121z reactors (about 6\'000 blocks = 900\'000 consumption, a bit less than half are storage.) But I don\'t know about how many power-drains you need.
EDIT:

I made a 5x4y249z: 506 mass, 101 thrust (42 blocks), 9 shield blocks, 2 blocks are jammer/cloaker, almost (a bit below) 1 million regeneration AND 1\'250\'000 storage (1.25 seconds)

I don\'t know what is your problem?

3x4y337z, 400 mass, 850k storage, 966\'700 regen w/o other blocks. Maybe 450 mass is the most efficient...


From my General Discussion Post


I\'m not with you that power is the problem. The real problem is that having a hull on a stealth ship is being penalized instead of awarded as it should be. There\'s plenty of reasons why a stealth ship should have a hull:


You need 4 hull to cover a single power strip in - it greatly decreases your dodge abilities too!



My Thoughts - Why is it not just do:


jamFactor = 0.33 * (( (1- wantedHullBlocks/allBlocks) *reward )) * (1+ unwantedHull/allBlocks *penalty)

cloakFactor = 0.67 * (( (1- wantedHullBlocks/allBlocks) *reward )) * (1+ unwantedHull/allBlocks *penalty)

cost = 0.75 * (cloakFactor&cloakActive(11111)) * (jamFactor&jamActive) //How many % power blocks do you want on ships? (except hull! see above)

cost *= (1 -reactorBlocks/allBlocks) * powerRegeneration * wantedMaxDrain(0..1) + (powertankBlocks/allBlocks) * maxPowerStorage / wantedMaxSeconds

result = (cost * reactorBlocks) * usedPowerRegeneration/max (last tick)

result += (cost * shieldBlocks) * usedShieldRegeneration/max (last tick)

result += (cost * thrustBlocks) * usedThrust/max (last tick) [*2 (on collision)]

result += (cost (break c) * used((weapon/salvage/etc blocks)) ) //between last and current tick

result *= 1+ ( powerLevel/maxPowerLevel - wantedStorageLevel(0..1) ) *adjustFactor




The last one is a try to give the code dev the ability to penalize you while you are above certain power level and reward you for being below it, thus cloaking ships are not either perma or not, but decloak with lower combat ability.

WantedStorageLevel breaks wantedMaxSeconds (for time-limited cloak/jam with power tanks) if it is not 0.5 and adjustFactor too high.

 

[Qweesdy]

Hi,

I think cloaking and jamming could benefit from being a little more realistic.

\"Jamming\" mostly means absorbing radio waves and not allowing them to be reflected back; and \"cloaking\" mostly means absorbing or bending light. These things should depend on the surface area of the ship (not its mass or size - consider a hollow sphere vs. a solid sphere with the same diameter).

Sadly, \'surface area\" would be expensive to calculate. A faster approximation would be adequate (e.g. \"2 * (width*height + width*length + height*length) e/sec\" or the surface area of the ship\'s bounding box).

In addition, cloaking and jamming should also involve suppressing or hiding any other tell-tale signs; like sound, heat, electromagnetic noise, etc. These other tell-tale signs are caused by power regenerators, thrusters, shield generators, computers, etc. All of theese things should increase the cost of cloaking and jamming far more than passive blocks. I\'d split blocks into 3 categories - expensive (power generators, thrusters, shield generators), average (power tanks, computers, weapons, docking enhancers) and passive (hulls, decorative panels, glass). Then I\'d calculate an additional cost of cloaking and jamming with something like \"(3 * number_of_expensive_blocks + 1 * number_of_average blocks) * 20 e/sec\".

Basically; the cost to cloak could be twice the cost to jam; and the cost to jam would be something like: 2 * (width*height + width*length + height*length) + (3 * number_of_expensive_blocks + 1 * number_of_average blocks) * 20 e/sec.

The end result of all this is that weak ships (not much power, thrust, shields, docking areas, etc) are easier to cloak.

 

[der_scheme]

There\'s a previously suggested way to deal with this: Stealth Hull.


I\'ve thought about some special type of hull myself, but seriously, what\'s the point? It will benefit cloaking, but what drawbacks does it have (except for withstanding fire for 1ms less long than hardened hull)? Why can\'t normal hull do this job?




You need 4 hull to cover a single power strip in - it greatly decreases your dodge abilities too!


That number decreases with the number of parallel power strips. Beforementioned 57x13x12 ship has 55 power lines and utilizes 50 rows of hull to cover them (+ the hull for front and rear).


My Thoughts - Why is it not just do:


Do you have some explanations for me?

• What are cloakFactor and jamFactor? They\'re not used in the following code.
• What are wanted/unwanted hull blocks?
• The energy required to maintain the cloak should depend on the energy regeneration?
• The result is the energy required to maintain cloak?
• All in all: I have a background in Computer Science, but I also do currently have a huge question mark above my head. :D

I don\'t think the combat ability of ships should be lower on decloaking. Also that would penalize small ships more than large ones.




and \"cloaking\" mostly means absorbing or bending light.


Phase shifting!


These things should depend on the surface area of the ship (not its mass or size


Yes! Greater mass probably would be easier to detect, since gravity and stuff increase with an object\'s mass.

 

[NeonSturm]

What are cloakFactor and jamFactor? They\'re not used in the following code.


Maybe deleted a line accidentally. Fixed.


What are wanted/unwanted hull blocks?


Unwanted: Hardened, Wanted: Stealth hull. (If armor is calculated before shield damage to make stealth ships weaker for example or to penalize 51k hp hulls (rebel alliance server has these))


The energy required to maintain the cloak should depend on the energy regeneration?


yes. but active thrusters, regenerating shields and regenerating power should count too.

The fewer of your maximum you use (or the shorter the time) the better. Flying at higher speeds should be penalized while cloaked, but not impact your uncloaked abilities (full useage).


The result is the energy required to maintain cloak?


Cloak and jam. Dependent on how you multiply cost with jamFactor/cloakFactor.


I don\'t think the combat ability of ships should be lower on decloaking. Also that would penalize small ships more than large ones.


Actually not. 1 million power regen cap, more power required for evasion

 

[Daxwern]

if this is convered in all those fancy dot points and maths equations above then that is fine, but the reason why claoking and jamming is so heavily e/sec reliant is to stop very large ships from doing it, and to be honest it is quite realistic how it is currently set, it also means that someone has to be more strategic in building ships that cloak/jam. and as for the e/sec, its fine just how it is, if schema wants to change it for what ever reason then he probably has the best reason beyond \'im just sick of having to put in so much power for only 2 mil e/sec\' ive heard it too many times before, i just build ships, and it never has bothered me, i kinda like the three things as they currently are. if they change they change, if not, it makes no difference to me

 

[NeonSturm]

It is all about: We don\'t want ugly ships, but we want to cloak/jam.

Not-ugly ships need hull. Thus have more mass.



How to balance nice looking RolePlay ships to make them cloak and not buff cloaking battlecubes?

Well, just count the active systems (shield, power, weapons, thrusters, ...) and not encurage hardened hulls.

 

[zminator15]

The cost of cloaking currently is twice the cost of jamming. Cloaking is 100e/sec per block and jamming is 50e/sec per block

 

[zminator15]

You make a very valid point Daxwern. I was just putting this out there as a suggestion for a \"coolness\" factor for bigger ships, even if it never gets implemented

 

[PhysX]

Black hull should require less power to cloak than say a white hulled ship, Space is naturally black and devoid of white.

Someone once said,\" The thing about black holes is, they\'re black, and the thing about space is, it\'s black, so how are you meant to see them?\"

Do not comment about how it\'s the debris around the blackhole we can see...

 

[NeonSturm]

Do you mean something like: black hull makes you invisible, white protects you from sun a bit more (immune in all adjacent, but not the sun sector itself?), ...?