My Take On Stealth Mechanics

[der_scheme]

Most of you will agree with me when I say that stealth mechanics are broken. My main concerns are design limitations such as in size or shape, and in the penalization of hull. Two reasons why stealth ships without hull should be undesired:

1. Hull is the main decoration component on ships.
2. It makes not much sense technically. Since the cloaker hides ships visually, it most likely would also have to somehow counteract, for instance, radiation generated by active components. Thus, a ship with hull would in fact be harder to detect and take less power, respectively.

Also, it is a common strategy in many sci-fi universes that shutting down systems makes cloaking easier. Not even talking decloaking when firing or hit.

Here is how we solve this: We turn jamming and cloaking into effect systems, as has been suggested many times before.

Sensor Jammer
Rename the Radar Jammer to Sensor Jammer.
Let's keep this mass-based. Like every other effect system so far the jammer gains efficiency by meeting a certain ratio between the number of effect vs. the number of ship blocks. Jamming is only successful if a 100% efficiency is maintained.

I imagine that (imaginary) sensors would detect ships by various means, one of them being their mass signatures, meaning a heavier ship would be easier to detect. In that context not only the mass-based mechanics make sense, but also the new name. Radar is such an antiquity.

Cloaker
The cloaker's functionality is more complex. You probably have noticed how the game is displaying an estimate of the current power consumption below the power bar. This gave me the following idea: A ship can maintain its cloak if its power consumption lies below a threshold determined by the number of cloaking modules.

This is consistent with common mechanics in science fiction, where ships usually have to decloak for operations like firing and have an easier time hiding when remaining still. Also, a successful hit will likely make a ship decloak.

Impacts on gameplay
Obviously, since the power-heavy cloaking is not mass based anymore, people could not only start building actually good looking stealth ships, but real stealthy ones. Instead of being forced to build a ship the size of a corvette, even stealth shuttles would be a possible outcome.

Most other things wouldn't change much, since power stability was and will remain an issue. However, my system punishes spikes in power consumption, requiring more sophisticated piloting skills.

I don't know how big of an issue permacloak disintegrator mines are, but I'm guessing very small. My point being that, taking my system without modifications, large structures would be ridiculously easy to cloak, at least. However, they would still be detectable, unless equipped with a jammer which in turn punishes big.
Also, since nobody likes permacloak dreadnoughts, a logarithmic (or similar) scale for cloaker efficiency could be considered.

 

[El_Poulpy]

I always wanted to make a phantom Tie replica so i support turning jamming and cloaking into effect systems

 

[Viridis00]

It's really a hard call when it comes to cloaking because of balance. I feel like these mechanics would make it too easy to slap a cloaking device on a ship, but modules should be considered 100% for both systems at this point. It's the numbers that really need hard consideration. If this system were to be in place we'd still need some harsh curves in my opinion.

 

[Cybertooth]

This makes sense, and I can't imagine that reworking the radar jammer and cloaker isnt planned, im sure its on the cards (might be far down the list though).

This thread did make me think though, does anyone know if the new sensors can detect a ship with an active radar jammer or not?

 

[PizzaPress]

Someone suggested(and I concur) that the power drain should just be negative regen(canceling out power regen, causing power drain if negative), thus ensuring that lag spikes won't decloak you.

 

[der_scheme]

Someone suggested(and I concur) that the power drain should just be negative regen(canceling out power regen, causing power drain if negative), thus ensuring that lag spikes won't decloak you.

Just for clarification: When I'm talking about "spikes in power consumption" I don't mean lags, I'm talking about the power drain by movement, effect usage, (combat) shield regeneration and the like. In the current system, you only have to be careful to not let your reserves drop to zero, effectively just staying below some rather large average consumption value. In my system the time span for averaging is not several seconds/minutes, but maybe even only a split-second.

That way, even removing the force-decloak on firing could be considered, since really dangerous weapons would make you decloak due to power spikes anyway. I don't want to focus on that, however, (that's why it's not in the OP) I'm merely stating the possibility here.

It's really a hard call when it comes to cloaking because of balance. I feel like these mechanics would make it too easy to slap a cloaking device on a ship, but modules should be considered 100% for both systems at this point. It's the numbers that really need hard consideration. If this system were to be in place we'd still need some harsh curves in my opinion.

Well, the point is that ships with low power consumption should be easier to cloak, while those with high power consumption should have a harder time to do so. This promotes non-aggressive usage of stealth technology, like scouting and smuggling, and demotes stealth in combat.