On 2010-08-14 09:06, Lonectzn wrote:
The recharge would have to be quick. Enough damage can actually break the cloak before the ship is fully cloaked, and even after that blind firing may do the same.

Consider these situations:

A single K'luth is cloaked, cloak strength at 100%. K'luth deactivates cloak (module deactivates right away but has delay before can fire), fires once, cloaks again without being hit, just the same as current system.

A K'luth ship is tracked down, decloaked and dictored by some UGTO. Cloak module is deactivated and begins recharging while the K'luth takes fire. The K'luth must survive at least until cloak recharges.

Five K'luth engage five UGTO. UGTO focus on the lead dreadnought. More UGTO enter and the K'luth decide to break off. The four not under fire are able to cloak without issue, the one under fire decides not to, as it would be broken before they fully cloak. The K'luth under fire swings around a planet, buying a few seconds without being hit - and engages the cloak. The UGTO commence blind firing and tracking.

On 2010-08-14 04:01, Lonectzn wrote:
I was just reading the K'luth feedback thread, and read about the proposal to introduce a cloaking timer. This actually gave me an idea about how the cloak could be balanced, within current game mechanics. Basically we change the cloak into a shield. When active, the ship is cloaked and the shield is active. Since the cloak is effectively a shield it will be the outer armour. If the ship gets hit it loses strength, and if it reaches zero the cloak turns off. The shield strength is weak, but with a fast recharge. The ship can't engage the cloak again until it reaches 100% (or 50%, however it is chosen).

This does give the K'luth ship slightly better defences when cloaked, however this is completely made up for by the fact that ICC and UGTO can now effectively strip a K'luth of their cloak. The cloak basically becomes a first strike tool, and not so much a godlike escape button. You can still cloak in combat (damage won't drain the shield when cloak is inactive, as with normal shields), but you need to make sure you're not taking too much fire when you do.

The main benefit is that you are able, if you wish, to safely decouple cloaking from signature mechanics (make cloak time dependant only on mass not sig, stopping eccm pinging and sensor plat farms) and make other changes. You could turn beacons into area of effect EMP bombs which drain the cloak. Add a sensor class module (swappable with eccm) that fires a smaller, weaker version of the same charge.

Cloaking right now ties too strongly into signature, it's very messy and not very easy to change. This would give far more flexibility for devs to adjust how cloaks are used in combat and outside it. It would be a big change to how K'luth would play - less safe flying alone, not able to fly into enemies without caution. They'd be forced like ICC and UGTO to fly together, but would have a highly strengthened first strike ability. It would also be more intuitive - if star trek taught us anything, it was that cloaks can be disabled from concentrated fire.

Since it's tied to a shield strength, you could just make it weaker for a particular ship if you feel it's too strong. Or maybe make some ships have much stronger cloaks, make something like the Parasite more useful. It will address the biggest complaint about the K'luth - that their cloak is too good an escape tool, not just for first strikes.

On 2010-08-25 22:57, Reznor wrote:
Add a scout only cloak detector: Problem solved.

Kluth become detectable when the scout uses this certain (possibly high cooldown?) device. But then we still all moan because noone wants to get out of dreads and into a scout .

On 2010-08-25 22:57, Reznor wrote:
Add a scout only cloak detector: Problem solved.

Kluth become detectable when the scout uses this certain (possibly high cooldown?) device. But then we still all moan because noone wants to get out of dreads and into a scout .

On 2010-08-26 17:37, Lark of Serenity wrote:
okay...

so at the moment 4 kluth dreads can destroy an LS in a matter of seconds, thats with the limited ability to detect them inbound as is.

so the proposed change would give them even more first strike capability, as you just mentioned lulzy.

this doesnt solve any problems, it exacerbates existing ones.

again, i do like the premise, but it would mean very heavily changing the game and making kluth totally different. a first strike faction cannot have the firepower the kluth do. theres a very big difference between hit and run and first strike