On the Subject of Cloaking

[rece ktore leczo]

What about:

• cloaking by invisible hull
• jamming by jamming system (similar as mentioned above)

invisible hull idea has many variations, few of them (could be combined):

• makes every block in the line behind it invisible (different orientations for this hull)
• makes some of the block behind it invisible - i.e. 10 blocks behind are hidden, to hide next ones players would need to use next layer of the hull blocks
• making all the blocks behind invisible but energy usage depends on the number of hidden blocks (linear or exponential growth)
• invisibility level could be adjust, to sacrifice some invisibility to have power efficient ship
• adding some overall cloaking value to the ship, which when surpasses some value make ship partially/completely invisible

For me the best combination would be invisible hull hiding every block behind it, every hull would have the same power drain levels increased by the number of hidden blocks (exponentially to prevent cloaked capital ships), with different levels of invisibility and ability to turn on/off the cloak.

And to explain better - invisible hull would only hide certain side of the blocks, not the whole block, so i.e. if we want to hide core, we have to surround it from 6 sides with cloaking hull (maybe even wedges+tetras to create round object)


And jamming?
Of course paired with the scanning system and both could have values calculated like pulse/power gen - the dimension size of the system would the most important factor in the equation.
Jamming efficiency would be calculated by dividing the system value over the mass of the ship and scanning efficiency would be based on the set (customizable) distance the system would work.
I vision customization of the scanning system with i.e. 3 sets of range profiles, where we can decide range borders of each profile (i.e. 0-500; 500-1000; 1000-2000) and percentage of scanning "strength" which goes for each range.
This way we could customize the sensors, so they would do the job necessary for us.

 

[Mork2]

The current cloaking system power requirements and energy generation system seems to be designed to limit you.

You can design a ship with perma cloak ship but you have a limited about of mass left over that still allows perma cloak, the more efficient your power design the more spare mass for other systems you have.

You can get a decent but not great weapons system and/or shield system into that remaining mass but then your ship won't have any hull mass to make it look nice. You can with sufficient effort layout the power system to look nice (there has been a few designs I've seen in videos that do) but its still mostly power blocks. Or you can have a minimal weapon system/shield system and some decoration to look marginally nice.

If you change the game system to generate more energy or reduce the cost of cloaking someone is going to use all the extra mass available to them for weapons systems. Then while you have a perma cloak ship with decent looks and weapon system someone else who doesn't care or can't make stylish ships (like me, I'm as artistic as a brick) will just mount the biggest weapons system possible and people will complain about cloaked ships being overpowered when they get ambushed from behind and killed before they can turn around and look.

At the moment perma cloak ships can attack smaller ships or any ship which doesn't have good enough shields and win. If you make it easier to make perma cloak ships then they will also be able to fit very good weapon systems and same sized non cloaked players will start complaining a lot about dying or everyone will end up perma cloaking and not fighting cause they can't see anyone unless there caught salvaging. So for multiplayer servers where you might have people running around killing other people this would be a bad thing mostly. Of course if you want to play that way you can alter your own server settings.

At the start of a new character on a server after I get a small amount of money I upgrade to a perma cloak ship with storage, 4 or 5 small salvager beams and a couple of small guns (its not nice looking) to run around with to salvage plex glass and stuff with until I can save up enough to buy or build a ship that can tank the pirate spawns on that server. I still keep this ship to run around between shops later. It is better than being killed while shopping.

 

[DrTarDIS]

I'm just going to point out that it is rather easy to make cloak/jam ship with hull that looks nice: you just have to understand docked power-transfer, modular ship design, and linear algebra. If you're interested, I can share some severely OP stealth ships that have hull and can wipe out anyone that doesn't understand how to read the mini-map. Or alternately, you can try and figure it out on your own knowing it can be done with the above tools.

R&D is fun; reality and virtual reality are ripe for you to tie in knots to get the effects you want.

 

[NeonSturm]

As much as I would like hull which hides everything behind, you can never make a ship completely invisible with this.
Hide black hull? now ppls see your interior lights :p

My idea for cloak cost would be more: count every block visible from the side/top/front (only first-layer/surface blocks)

• power drain = (side*top*front)^(3/2)
• ^(3/2) because area^2, volume^3 and power is dependent on volume.

Big ships have only about 45-60 % efficiency with docked reactors, thus will have a much harder time compensating not only for cloak but also for weaker thrusters while cloaked.

 

[matheod]

I think energy consuption should depend of the speed, something like :

Energy_used = (0.25+0.75*Current_speed/Max_Speed)*Current_Energy_Used

I.e. if ship stopped, it would only use 25% of the current energy, if the ship move at 25km/h (assuming 50km/h is the max), it would use 62.5% of current energy, and if at full speed the current energy.

This would allow ship to use less energy by moving slower, and also to hide while not moving to have a very slow energy consumption.

 

[matheod]

An other possibility would be to add an "overheat" system. I.e. when used, cloak create heat, and after a temperature is reach, the cloak stop working for a little time. To cool cloak, two possibility : simply wait without use them, or add cooler which consome energy. We can assume that cooling enough cloak to prevent him to create heat would cost 50% of the current energy cost. But also make cloak now use 50% less energy).

I.e. Now cloak consume half energy than current consumption, but will overheat if used too long. Exept if we add cooler (and avoiding the overheat problem would make cloak use the same energy than current, but it would be possible to add less cooler to make overheat take longer to happen).


So now little ship could be invisible for a little time with a lesser energy cost, while big ship could add cooler and enough energy refill rate to be always invisible.

 

[matheod]

A last possibility could be to allow cloak and jammer to use lesser energy, but add a new block allowing to scan surrounding area and allow to detect invisible/jammed ship with a time depending on energy used.

So now a ship could use very few energy to be invisible while being very vulnerable to scan, or use max energy but being invulnerable to scanner block.

The formula could be this :

We can choose to reduce down to 20% the energy consumption. While scanning having 0.1 * the % energy consumption to fail each second.
I.e. if we use the full energy, the scan would always fail so the ship would be never detected. If we use the minimum energy (20% of the current energy), the scan would have 8% chance to detect the ship each second, requiring an average 12 second to detect the ship. But the ennemy ship have of course to use the scan, which required some energy Succefully scanned ship would stay visible until the scanner is turn off.

 

[MossyStone48]

matheod Please avoid double and triple posting. If someone has not responded to your previous post please edit your last one instead.

 

[matheod]

matheod Please avoid double and triple posting. If someone has not responded to your previous post please edit your last one instead.

As it was 3 very different idea, I prefered to do 3 posts, to allow people to tag (Agree, Disagree, etc.) each post separatly to see quickly which idea people like and which idea people doesn't like.

 

[MossyStone48]

Please do not.
If they like / dislike a certain part and not the post wholesale then they can say so with quotes and @ annotations. Those who mark a whole post altho only differing with one part of it are rather few and this isn't a popularity contest. It's a forum. On the internet.

 

[Coskateer]

I do think that a mechanic that offers more preference to cloaking smaller ships would be a good idea, be it the usage of scaled power consumption past a certain mass threshold and a reduction below that threshhold, or a system that specifically penalizes ships with more power generation over less (another way of limiting the size/power of an invisible ship), but also agree that counterplay is preferable to numbers-based gameplay adjustments.

I'd like to see detection systems that get a "Detection Chance Per Unit of Mass" bonus per block that consume a relevant but not overwhelming amount of power that would give vessels of midsize or higher good chances to detect other vessels of midsize or higher while allowing smaller scout ships with little ability to swap blows the capacity to avoid detection and have purpose without sacrificing all aesthetics.

I'd be interested to see what adding an exponent at mass thresholds and reducing baseline power consumption on ship cloaking would accomplish. Hopefully we would see snub to heavy fighter sized stealth ships and many fewer exploitative (in my personal opinion) invisible mammoths.

 

[NeonSturm]

Offtopic WarSong: I would like the ability to separate posts into arguments if just to avoid things like this and be able to give feedbacks without having to post and repeat arguments / add clutter.

I like ^(3/2) because peoples want to be a strong ship look much larger. Currently 10% scale increase give 30% volume increase and 100% scale increase gives 700% volume increase.

But I also like ships to use active scanners which consume energy and maybe broadcast their own location in order to detect cloak.


How about another idea: active cloak consumes no (or very little) energy but reduces your power recharge to 20% efficiency?
That would reduce the number of storage blocks you need for upkeep cloak and thus decrease the possible burst damage as well.
It would also be a very nice solution for RP-ships.