Hi
Cloaking is really weird, and the main criteria of cloaking shouldn't be having absurd power requirements and rather having to have cloaking blocks with efficiency placed in the ship. How I think it should be:
Cloaking and radar jamming should be fused together. Radar jammer is just an obstruction to the limits of possible game-view. You can see way less then you would see in real life. Taking the possibility to track somebody with radar/hud is not really a nice thing. Another thing could be, something causes you to have your cursor do random movements, which will disturb you. The effect is: It becomes harder for you to aim. Contra: It is an annoying and bad mechanic, because it influences your control mechanisms. Radar jammer is similar to that. However, if you are cloaked, it makes quite a lot sense to be also stealthed from radar.
Based on the amount of cloaking blocks connected to a cloaking computer, the penalties of leaving stealth are reduced. There must be a reason why somebody would place or refuse to place cloak in his ship.
Note: There will be a twist to the listed values based on the amount of stealth module blocks connected to the stealth computer.
1. Firing will break stealth and set it on 10-40 seconds cooldown (based on ship mass).
Permanent stealth while in combat would be too powerful.
2. After leaving stealth, power regeneration is lowered to 20% for an amount of time based on mass (10-40 seconds).
This should promote hit-and-run playstyles where damage is dealt quickly. Also this encourages cloaking ships to focus more on power storage. However, ships with minimum stealth capabilities should use stealth only to be safe, and not to combat. That safety should have its price, but a rather small one.
3. Entering stealth increases all damage taken and block damage by a huge amount (like ~300%) for 5-20 seconds after breaking stealth (by hostile fire).
4. While in stealth energy net generation is reduced by ~80%.
The stealther is patient. Also his recharging energy which translates into damage should be lower.
5. Stealth requires some kind of warmup to be activated, meaning: They reduce power generation even while on standby. It should be like -25% to overall power generation. Maybe stealth could be completely deactivated (with right click), but this would require a long reactivation time.
This is a direct DPS malus... not everyone who can spare some room for stealth should take it because it might be useful. A ship should be dedicated to being a stealth ship.
6. Placing module blocks (similar to those effect computers/blocks) will negate penalties and define how dedicated the ship is to being a stealth ship. I imagine the following types of stealth classes:
a) The stealth bomber. A ship having a 100% module saturation.
b) The semi-stealth warship. They can use stealth to ambush weaker targets, but to engage a worthy enemy, they destealth from afar to get battle-ready. 50% module efficiency should be enough.
c) The civil stealth ship. They use stealth to avoid ambushes and enemies completely. ~30% module efficiency is enough here.
To the numbers: Module efficiency ranges from 0% of overall blocks to ~20% by 0% to 100%. Beginning from 0% - 100%, this will happen:
- The cooldown goes down by 0-80%.
- Power regeneration malus duration upon destealth lowered by 0-80%.
- Energy net generation reduction while stealthing is reduced by 0-80%. (This might decide if warping while stealthing is possible or not)
- Overall power generation malus is reduced by 0-60%.
Disadvantage: You still have to invest a lot of blocks into stealth.
This should grant more design options for ships of all sizes. Also: Counter with scanner. Scanner size defines the radius of automatic detection and detection upon activation. Range might be around 0.1 - 0.4km, double for active use.
Cloaking is really weird, and the main criteria of cloaking shouldn't be having absurd power requirements and rather having to have cloaking blocks with efficiency placed in the ship. How I think it should be:
Cloaking and radar jamming should be fused together. Radar jammer is just an obstruction to the limits of possible game-view. You can see way less then you would see in real life. Taking the possibility to track somebody with radar/hud is not really a nice thing. Another thing could be, something causes you to have your cursor do random movements, which will disturb you. The effect is: It becomes harder for you to aim. Contra: It is an annoying and bad mechanic, because it influences your control mechanisms. Radar jammer is similar to that. However, if you are cloaked, it makes quite a lot sense to be also stealthed from radar.
Based on the amount of cloaking blocks connected to a cloaking computer, the penalties of leaving stealth are reduced. There must be a reason why somebody would place or refuse to place cloak in his ship.
Note: There will be a twist to the listed values based on the amount of stealth module blocks connected to the stealth computer.
1. Firing will break stealth and set it on 10-40 seconds cooldown (based on ship mass).
Permanent stealth while in combat would be too powerful.
2. After leaving stealth, power regeneration is lowered to 20% for an amount of time based on mass (10-40 seconds).
This should promote hit-and-run playstyles where damage is dealt quickly. Also this encourages cloaking ships to focus more on power storage. However, ships with minimum stealth capabilities should use stealth only to be safe, and not to combat. That safety should have its price, but a rather small one.
3. Entering stealth increases all damage taken and block damage by a huge amount (like ~300%) for 5-20 seconds after breaking stealth (by hostile fire).
4. While in stealth energy net generation is reduced by ~80%.
The stealther is patient. Also his recharging energy which translates into damage should be lower.
5. Stealth requires some kind of warmup to be activated, meaning: They reduce power generation even while on standby. It should be like -25% to overall power generation. Maybe stealth could be completely deactivated (with right click), but this would require a long reactivation time.
This is a direct DPS malus... not everyone who can spare some room for stealth should take it because it might be useful. A ship should be dedicated to being a stealth ship.
6. Placing module blocks (similar to those effect computers/blocks) will negate penalties and define how dedicated the ship is to being a stealth ship. I imagine the following types of stealth classes:
a) The stealth bomber. A ship having a 100% module saturation.
b) The semi-stealth warship. They can use stealth to ambush weaker targets, but to engage a worthy enemy, they destealth from afar to get battle-ready. 50% module efficiency should be enough.
c) The civil stealth ship. They use stealth to avoid ambushes and enemies completely. ~30% module efficiency is enough here.
To the numbers: Module efficiency ranges from 0% of overall blocks to ~20% by 0% to 100%. Beginning from 0% - 100%, this will happen:
- The cooldown goes down by 0-80%.
- Power regeneration malus duration upon destealth lowered by 0-80%.
- Energy net generation reduction while stealthing is reduced by 0-80%. (This might decide if warping while stealthing is possible or not)
- Overall power generation malus is reduced by 0-60%.
Disadvantage: You still have to invest a lot of blocks into stealth.
This should grant more design options for ships of all sizes. Also: Counter with scanner. Scanner size defines the radius of automatic detection and detection upon activation. Range might be around 0.1 - 0.4km, double for active use.
