Dealing with "cloaked alpha OP" fears for the coming meta...

[Coyote27]

Several people have pointed out that, with the new power system, cloaked warships with high-damage one-shot weapons could well be extremely powerful and unbalanced, since they can strike without warning with oversized weaponry and the opponent could do very little to defend against it.
What can we suggest to keep this from becoming an unbalanced meta?

One thing that comes to my mind is this: Cloaking drains weapon charges. When cloak is activated, all weapons lose charge, and they remain uncharged while the cloak is active. Only when the cloak is dropped do they begin charging again. This could help prevent alpha strikes from surprise becoming a sure way to win, and it'd make sense thematically too perhaps as a ship in hiding might need to power down its weaponry to avoid heat/power signatures leaking out.

 

[Cluwne]

Several people have pointed out that, with the new power system, cloaked warships with high alpha damage could well be the new meta.

My ears are burning.

Scanners could possibly gain an autoscan function or just a very short charge time.
A good utility ship with a dedicated sensor suite in a fleet should already be a decent counter to surprise rear fornication tactics.
If Schine's words on stream are to be believed, perma-cloakers won't have the reactor capacity for strong stealth, leaving them susceptible to average-strength scans.
Now, non-permanent cloakers already have enough on their plate to worry about.
tl;dr compulsory scanning galore.

Cloaking drains weapon charges.

Your suggestion simply kills ANY kind of combat cloakers.
What's the point in using it then? Stealth cargo transports and spy drones?

It's not unbalanced if there's a good counter to it, and there is one.
People who "abuse" it are simply the ones who use it well and incorporate it into their strategies.
There's armor, shields, maneuverability and stealth - all of them are various ways to ensure the survival of the ship.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

What can we suggest to keep this from becoming an unbalanced meta?

How about like Klingon ships of old, they weapons don't fire when cloaked. As for when you drop cloak, whether systems are active could be controlled in several ways;

• perhaps a delay for weapons firing or not. I'm in favor of not, so you could still surprise the enemy.
• maybe weapons ready, but jump drive drained 25%
• or weapons and/or drive drained 10%-25%
• I'd prefer weapons fully operational and drive down myself.

 

[Cluwne]

Kill cloakers' weapons.

No, we kill their jump drives.

Stop beating around the bush and just say "kill cloakers" already.

Lone_Puppy
Your suggestion kills any kind of non-combat ship that uses cloaking.
Traders, cargo haulers, spy ships, stuff delivery - all that needs their JDs up and running.
The moment they drop the cloak they'll be turned into swiss cheese.

 

[Calhoun]

If Schine's words on stream are to be believed, perma-cloakers won't have the reactor capacity for strong stealth, leaving them susceptible to average-strength scans.

It's wrong. You can get stealth 5 (out of a max 6), duration maxed and jam and cloak with one reactor.

 

[Cluwne]

Guess that's where they should balance it. Altering the (perma-cloak vs stealth strength) capacity costs.
Seems like a reasonable enough drawback of perma-cloak that doesn't screw everything else over much.
Better than simply taking things like weapons and jump drives away.

 

[Mork2]

Well I did make a post about what you might be able to do with cloaking and one shot weapons.

A couple things that will keep it under control is the maintenance charge required to keep the weapon loaded ready to fire.

Cloaking itself from the dev video doesn't use power but needs a decent number of chambers attached to the reactor. The chamber sizes required scale with the reactor size. Perma cloaking uses up a bunch of chamber options so you limit what your stealth strength is at which is also through chamber options.

Also you can't tell when you have been scanned as your cloak and jamming functions don't stop. All that happens is the ship with high enough scan rating that scans you is the only ship that can see you. So you might be happily moving along stealthed only to get a face full of weapons fire unannounced.

 

[Nickizzy]

It's wrong. You can get stealth 5 (out of a max 6), duration maxed and jam and cloak with one reactor.

But you're still using them majority of your TP, that you could be used by other people to get super strong tank in AHP or shield. Or JD strength, or weapons damage, or speed(range control), or scanners.

 

[Coyote27]

The issue isn't so much that stealth is easy per se; the issue is that stealth combines with the way the new weapons work to make one-shot kills easy, because you only need just enough power to run your chambers and keep a giant weapon topped off enough to fire one time. Opponent ships using defensive effects are not going to factor into this, because there's no defensive effect that can shrug off 1 billion damage all at once.
This could still be a serious balance issue without stealth being included, it's just less of one because that one shot would not be as likely to hit unopposed.

 

[Mork2]

Well after the new power system is in they will obviously have to do a lot of balancing after all the players have a go at it. Also an easy way of nerfing large single shot weapons is to have a decent % of full charge as the maintenance charge to keep the weapon ready to fire....

 

[Nickizzy]

And what weapon actually kills a ship in one hit? Maybe checkerboarded, layered missiles, but besides that the burst damage will probably be from overdrive CC or something else that doesn't overpen or waste explosive damage.

 

[Cluwne]

Coyote27
Unless you use something like Pulse, 1M damage isn't that big of an issue.
Sure, you may get half of your ship blow up by a missile, but it could be shot down, meanwhile you're already alerted that you were attacked.
1M cannon will overpenetrate, doing little actual damage. Death Star-tier beam will simply cut through the ship as well.
So on paper it looks horrifying, but in reality this isn't really that big of an issue.

 

[Lancake]

It's wrong. You can get stealth 5 (out of a max 6), duration maxed and jam and cloak with one reactor.

Chamber capacity values are not adjusted yet to fit balance. It's not yet determined if we'll allow this much of stealth and scan strength on the same reactor.

Guess that's where they should balance it. Altering the (perma-cloak vs stealth strength) capacity costs.
Seems like a reasonable enough drawback of perma-cloak that doesn't screw everything else over much.
Better than simply taking things like weapons and jump drives away.

Correct, this would be the 1st step to attempt to balance it. Followed by altering the scanner's functionality to be more effective (or less) to make sure cloaked ships can be countered but are not underpowered because of it.

My own concern is that a small reactor with a small high strength cloak, would allow you too much. You could potentially go anywhere, undetected (unless you get countered) and then switch to your big, combat reactor.

While I'm totally OK with a stealth only reactor and then a combat only reactor, I'm not OK with the potential size difference. A few mechanics or penalties would need to close the gap in size, in what shape or form that takes, I don't know yet.

 

[Coyote27]

Coyote27
Unless you use something like Pulse, 1M damage isn't that big of an issue.

Billion with a B. Pulse secondaries and overdrive tertiaries on the largest weapon that you can support passively, and fire from close range without warning.

 

[Cluwne]

Billion with a B.

Oh dear.
Pulse or not, the Cannon and Beam will overpenetrate and waste the excess damage, along with energy spent.
Now, missiles, namely Missile+Pulse+Overdrive torpedoes, are dangerous, but you can only fire them once and you have to be damn sure they hit their mark.
But even then you only strip the shield and a layer of armor or two. You'll need regular high-DPS weapons to finish off your prey.

My own concern is that a small reactor with a small high strength cloak, would allow you too much.
You could potentially go anywhere, undetected (unless you get countered) and then switch to your big, combat reactor.

I guess I have to remind you that there's supposed to be a "power-up" period for chambers before they start applying their effects, leaving effect-dependent ships in a highly vulnerable state immediately after the switch.
Add the same period to power generation and you'll discourage switching mid-combat, while doing pretty much nothing to pre-combat switch for, say, a spec ops stealth fleet that's preparing to attack.

 

[Lord Daro]

My own concern is that a small reactor with a small high strength cloak, would allow you too much. You could potentially go anywhere, undetected (unless you get countered) and then switch to your big, combat reactor.

While I'm totally OK with a stealth only reactor and then a combat only reactor, I'm not OK with the potential size difference. A few mechanics or penalties would need to close the gap in size, in what shape or form that takes, I don't know yet.

I think that some point someone else from shine wrote, that the minimal size for ALL chambers on a ship was supposed to be dictated by the size of its biggest reactor. (If I remember correctly)

 

[Lancake]

I guess I have to remind you that there's supposed to be a "power-up" period for chambers before they start applying their effects, leaving effect-dependent ships in a highly vulnerable state immediately after the switch.
Add the same period to power generation and you'll discourage switching mid-combat, while doing pretty much nothing to pre-combat switch for, say, a spec ops stealth fleet that's preparing to attack.

Thanks for the reminder, but doesn't change much with the huge possible size difference. You can move and coast to a target, switch to your 100 stealth reactor on your huge ship. Get close unnoticed then switch to your 100 000 block combat reactor.
You just used a tiny tiny tiny, cheap reactor to be fully invisible to get close to a target...

Yes the chambers take time to spool up. but the power regeneration does not.
A ship without chambers is still fully functional and can fire its weapons and use its thrusters, provided it has enough power for them. Without the chamber buffs it will be less strong, but still very much capable of shooting and moving.

 

[Cluwne]

However, if it's using a tiny reactor it can't use it's main advantage - the element of surprise coupled with a devastating alpha strike, since weapons require an upkeep charge.
I suggested a similar spool up time for power gen as well - something to discourage reactor change in the middle of battle.

 

[Lancake]

However, if it's using a tiny reactor it can't use it's main advantage - the element of surprise coupled with a devastating alpha strike, since weapons require an upkeep charge.

Sure, but you can use this to passively hide any of your ships with minimal amount of blocks needed too. Almost any ship could fit a tiny stealth reactor used to keep it fully cloaked (and high strength so harder to counter). That sounds plain wrong to me.

I suggested a similar spool up time for power gen as well - something to discourage reactor change in the middle of battle.

That would help, but also make reactor switching even less viable in combat for 2 equal reactors. You could tweak the spool up time with the reactor difference size with switching, but that just makes it more complicated and it still encourage you to make sure all your reactors are a similar size.

 

[Drakkart]

Checks again - nope these are new posts... funny how the concerns repeat them selfes since the original suggestion was ripped apart the first time... - oh maybe because they hardly changed anything yet.
Anyway, It is going to roll out and we are gonna test it and exploit it to the max. Vagyr will keep their exploits to themselfes while everyone else participates in try to make the game better untill the fanbois shut us off calling us ...
What i actually wanted to state is that schine has not done any number crunching yet... - which i consider a big mistake... Anyway disabling options for players like "weapons can not be used in stealth" is not exactly balancing, it just banhammers stuff out of the possible route to go - options the players are given. I really wonder why after so many years people still come up with ideas that render entire feasible build options pointless... like the game is to difficult already. if you are afraid over dieing virtual deathes play sim city or cities skylines (which i consider superior.) noone able to harm you there... If you can deal with game imbalances yes they are going to happen as the game is still considered alpha. I still like the idea of the power system delivering power and the effects with their effect blocks provide effects... and those consume power... way more logical if you ask me... Anyway good to see some life back on the forums... We will rub the imbalances in their faces, don't worry...