Cloaking/Jamming power idea

[kookster]

I originally posted this in a topic but i felt it merited its own topic. If you would like to see the original topic you can go here: http://starmadedock.net/threads/cloaking-should-be-changed.19966/

I think that cloaking/jamming power costs should start low and exponentially cost more the more blocks your ship has. I don't feel large capital ships should be able to realistically cloak/jam. The total block count needs to include any docked entities/turrets.

My suggestion:
- Cloak/jammer power cost should start low and exponentially grow based on you ships block count including all docked entities/turrets, potential calculation: ( Blocks * Blocks ) * 0.0001

Reasoning:
- This would give a really cool advantage for small ships and finally give some balance to a already large ship dominated game.

Examples:
10 block ship: .01 e/sec
100 block ship: 1 e/sec
1000 block ship: 100 e/sec
10000 block ship: 10000 e/sec
100000 block ship: 1000000 e/sec
1000000 block ship: 100000000 e/sec

Summary: This idea is to make it easier for small ships to cloak/jam and harder the larger your ship is to do such.

 

[Comr4de]

I mean, right now it's difficult to get a decent cloaker over 2k mass. I don't really see how that changes things. If anything, your suggestion changes things so that it's easier for large ships to cloak.

100,000 block ship: 1,000,000 e/sec

That's approximately 10-12k mass ship. Since the power regen softcap is 1m, this means that even larger ships will be able to cloak as opposed to right now.

 

[kookster]

I mean, right now it's difficult to get a decent cloaker over 2k mass. I don't really see how that changes things. If anything, your suggestion changes things so that it's easier for large ships to cloak.


That's approximately 10-12k mass ship. Since the power regen softcap is 1m, this means that even larger ships will be able to cloak as opposed to right now.

Feel free to suggest alterations to the equation. The main idea here is that smaller ships can easily cloak but as your ship gets bigger and bigger its exponentially harder to cloak it.

 

[srs008]

surface percentage...

how about instead of outright killing a "biggie", we force a redesign, like a ship requires say 40% of it's blocks to be "surface" blocks
(outer hull)
that means if you want to make a CLOAKING TITAN, you'll have to settle for a really flat design, or you'll need to be very inventive in
making sure your ship has SIGNIFICANTLY more hull then ANYTHING else in it's class.
this effectively means that your ship has to have 4 HULL blocks, for every 6 "other" blocks. (and they MUST be exposed to space)
since probably 10% of your ship is power... that means you have already used up HALF your block ratio...

as for the math side of it, that's simple. IF you achieve a 40% hull ratio, then the cost of running a cloak is reduced to 10%...
thats 14.5 power instead of 145...
radar jamming is 5 power.

the problem being, is that that automatically uses 40% of your ship, you'll need cloakers to actually cloak... and as i understand it,
you need a certain amount to achieve "efficient" cloaking in the first place.
i'm going to guess a additional 10%...
a cloaker without radar jamming is useless...
so now we have an additional what... 5%?
so already, we are sitting at 55%... and we have no power, shields, thrust, or weapons.

now the further away from "ideal" you go (as in less) the less it reduces operating cost. most ships will probably manage somewhere in the vicinity of 20% normal cloak power cost...
basically, a SMALL ship will meet the criteria simply by building a solid frame around it. but as you ship's size scale's up, the volume also increases... meaning that LARGE cloaking ships are going to look downright ugly mostly, as you'll need to essentially expose every corridor and every floor to space.
now when i mean exposed to space, I mean that a WEAPON must be able to FIRE and hit a block from outside without issue.
if a block is not in LINE OF SIGHT of space... then it's not counted. (think solar panels needing sunlight)

basically, this forces a ship's design to maximise surface area, meaning that the ships as they get larger, must also get flatter... as in wider... and/or longer... and/or HIGHER...
if your not aware, the longer/wider/taller your ship is, the harder it is to turn, requiring significantly more thrust to achieve maneuvering...
essentially, by choosing to cloak your larger ship, your giving up the limited hope you had of decent turning speeds.

since a SCANNER can now DECLOAK a ship, this makes a cloaking titan a VERY stupid thing to do, as if it's uncloaked while lining it's target up, they WILL be able to out maneuver them. AND hit them hard too.

essentially, this means that if a large ship wants to stand a chance at fighting, they need weapons that can hit anywhere..
as in TURRETS... or they can use either damage pulse or HEAT SEEKERS... which are FRIENDLY fire weapons...
so by choosing to cloak the large ship, the player has now made it almost impossible to actually participate in combat, UNLESS
they are without any friendlies in proximity...

so a large ship is essentially handicapped to poor maneuvering, poor weaponry as a consequence... it's 4:10 block ration means it has the EQUIVALENT system potential of a ship at least half it's size, maybe as little as a quarter...
that effectively means that a cloaking titan, is no better then a battleship/cruiser in most fleets.
sure it may decimate some small fry, but all in all, it quickly becomes a liability instead of a useful asset.

a small ship, say a little bigger then the Isanth zero... could cloak, be fast, fairly well armed, and even have no impact on the design.
in short, cloak = small, or one hell of a headache.
also remember docked ships affect your ship's mass... so they could also kill your bonus if they cause you to fall below that 4:10 ratio.

 

[shadowulf]

srs008, I've seen the devs keep to a simple idea. That idea is keep the game playable without too many complicated systems that new players have to learn. That being said, I agree cloaking/jamming need a little tweeking as of the HP update. Now, I can build a shuttle sized craft that looks good and cloaks/jams. There is already a limit to the size of an effective cloaker, save for those who have extremely efficient docked reactors. I suggest a simple solution; make power draw a curve, as thrusters already are, so as mass increases, so does draw.

OP, I'd make the curve you suggest harsher for anything past, say, 10k blocks, so you can have a decent size cloaker, but it gets much harder, but still doable, at higher mass. Also, cloaking should not be allowed while weapons are firing or cooling down, making it a risk vs reward tactic for armed stealth ambushers, as they use high alpha damage primarily, and the cool down is a penalty to pay if you can't kill with one shot. (Its EXTREMELY hard to kill a ship with a single shot now, even more so if you have to be so power efficient you can permacloak/jam). Also, jump drives should have similar restrictions as well, but that's for another thread

 

[srs008]

my post is aimed at more "extreme" instances, my brother is building a "titan" (i doubt it's actually a titan class, but it's damn huge anyway)
and it's missile array easily decimates a modified Isanth zero blueprint I created (rebuilt power generators, and filled the side "rooms" with shielding)
well more precisely, it wipes out a wave of them in a single barrage.
fighters are simply outmatched by this massive behemoth.
not to mention the poor pirate station nearby.

since said ship is not even 1/4 finished, and i'm still to apply weaponry to it, it's "missiles" currently consist of a "mass" of single missile tubes.
very little damage, and tons of flying projectiles. (and drags his machine to a literal standstill for a second or five)
since this array is able to decimate so thoroughly, a array that a small (cruiser?) has in higher concentrations...
it raises the point that small ships need a balancing point, since creating a decent power system is beyond many players, that also means that power is already a serious issue in many designs (stargate's daedalus class remake comes to mind here, very nice big ship, but I still deleted over 3/4 of it's power blocks and actually INCREASED it's generation.)
smaller ships kind of don't have the room to make a REALLY good power core,
or have a REALLY poor design that doing so is prohibitive)
which is where the ratio is in play, since the cloak now costs 3X that of a radar jammer, (instead of something like 10X)
since both systems already scale by size drastically (i think the power cost is per block)
essentially, to achieve full cloaking, you have to run the radar jammer, which is 5 power, and the CLOAK. with the ratio in mind at best efficiency, that's 14.5+5=19.5...
now 19.5 power per block is not all that much right?until you scale it up in size, by the time you move from a fighter/shuttle size ship to say a small cruiser, the power cost would already be dramatically increased simply by the block count.

one reason why i think this system is needed so badly, is that sooner or later, (if not already) cloaking + radar jamming is going to cause weapons to NOT be able to find targets. which means people are going to jump on the cloaking bandwagon as more then a funny joke.
my method makes a player trade their ship's increasing size for cloaking efficiency, as it get's larger, the benefits quickly become negatives. before long, building a large cloaking ship becomes a exercise in futility. a titan that can cloak is all well and funny, but considering it'll be outmatched by ships in the next three lower size classes... it kind of defeats the whole "big cloaking deathbringer" idea.
Ideally something the size of say the new derelict ship should be the point where it becomes a "issue" to have cloaking.

that key point being, is that i'm not actually stopping a person from doing it, i'm making it a really stupid thing to do for tactical reasons.
remember that the titan is outclassed quite heavily to begin with in my scenario, but many people also have internal "walls" to protect key systems.
this ratio makes a player design a ship that has to expose almost HALF it's blocks to space, sure you can "cheat" and make small "corridors" of say 3X3 system blocks surrounded by a hull... but that also means your ship has easily accessed systems...
a few lucky shots could expose your power generation or storage... maybe the jump and thrusters...
or even the shields... suddenly your ship is seriously crippled, and unable to flee.
that is the danger imposed by the ratio.
as your ship's size get's smaller, less blocks are needed to tip the ratio, in small craft, creating new "wings" may tip the balance to the ratio.
that's why i suggest the ratio.

what's really sad... is that we are actually arguing the same point.
my "ratio" is simply a formula to achieving the power curve, except that i'm adding a nasty "catch" in requiring ships to adhere to a hull to systems ratio...

 

[kookster]

Ok what if instead of basing the power off of block count/mass what if it was on the size of the ship. Since cloaking is bending light it should be harder the bigger the ship is. so say you have a 5x5x5 ship that has nothing in the middle would be just as hard as a 5x5x5 ship thats 100% filled. Then base the scaling of power to go up exponentially so its next to impossible for huge ships, but much easier for smaller ships.

 

[BDLS]

We need a tl;dr rating icon
Just kidding friends

How about simplifying it and just have an increasing curve based on total systems blocks, so cloakers can still have hull but be penalized for having a silly high alpha weapon system, too many shields, thrusters, etc

Don't forget the cooldown on deactivation

 

[kookster]

Ideas / thoughts:
I am just going to list all the cloaking ideas I have had. Keep in mind some of these would not be good together:

- When your ship gets hit while cloaked you get de-cloaked
- Can't have shields on while cloaked
- Cloaking power based off block count.
- Cloaking power based off mass.
- Cloaking power based off ship size.
- Cloaking energy cost goes exponentially up the larger your ship is.

I think the following would be a good combination of ideas even for large ships cause of the downsides/risks. If you did all of these I think it would be ok to allow large ships to cloak.
- When your ship gets hit while cloaked you get de-cloaked
- Can't have shields on while cloaked
- Cloaking power based off ship size.

 

[shadowulf]

An easy way to nerf re-cloak/jam time would be to add cool downs based on block count of the ship, and neither can activate while there is a cooldown on the hotbar

 

[kookster]

I like that, so summary of ideas now:

- When your ship gets hit while cloaked you get de-cloaked
- You're shields stay down while cloaked. Meaning that you have 0 shields and they will have to be regenerated once uncloaked.
- Cloaking power based off ship proportions ( IE x, y, z ).
- Cool down on cloak/jammer based on ship size.

If enough people like this idea I will change the main post to this.

 

[ltmauve]

- Cloaking power based off ship proportions ( IE x, y, z ).

I'd actually say that basing the power after the ship's HP might be the best option.

- Cool down on cloak/jammer based on ship size.

Mass? Dimensions? Armor HP, maybe?