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Cloak timer scaling |
Kenny_Naboo
Marshal
Pitch Black
Joined: January 11, 2010
Posts: 3823
From: LobsterTown
|  Posted: 2011-02-10 22:50
Quote:
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On 2011-02-06 07:58, BackSlash wrote:
K'Luth Scout's, Frigate's, Engineer's, Supply's, and Transport's now have a cloak cooldown timer of 7 seconds. All other ships are unaffected.
[ This Message was edited by: BackSlash on 2011-02-06 08:03 ]
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Great. Thanks.
I would've preferred cloak time to be scaled according to hull class, but we can try this out for now. Was also hoping that Dessies and Cruisers get a slightly lower cloak cooldown too. Somewhere 10 or 11 secs.
Anyway, another question to bring to the table:
OK Cooldown is when you power up an object, and shut it down and it needs to cool or recharge. So, I can understand it when you've just disengaged your cloak, and it needs that 7 or 15 secs to recharge.
But how about decloaking? Should we exclude decloaking from the cooldown? It's the reverse of the above. If I power something up, I should be able to cut power to it immediately, don't I?
Thoughts?
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BackSlash
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003
Posts: 11183
From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2011-02-10 23:15
Gameplay and balance-wise, it's best kept this way.
I would have tied it into a more scaling system, but you end up with higher class ships having a low cooldown, or smaller ships with a higher one. I could solve this with decimals, but we avoid using ciel/floor operators wherever we can because they're costly performance-wise (and we try to keep everything as lean as we can for the sake of the server).
If needs must, I'll move to a static system, but I'd rather wait and see how this works first.
[ This Message was edited by: BackSlash on 2011-02-10 23:16 ]
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Kenny_Naboo
Marshal
Pitch Black
Joined: January 11, 2010
Posts: 3823
From: LobsterTown
| Posted: 2011-02-10 23:24
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On 2011-02-10 23:15, BackSlash wrote:
Gameplay and balance-wise, it's best kept this way.
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Do you mean the scaling, or the no-cooldown for decloak?
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Sens [R33]
Admiral
Joined: September 27, 2008
Posts: 1020
From: Edge of th...
| Posted: 2011-02-10 23:27
Cloak wasn't intended to be used as an escape mechanism when already engaged at point blank ranges. Main usage is supposed to approach enemy and positioning.
That being said, its still somewhat viable if you begin cloaking outside the enemy's weapon arcs.
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Azure Prower
Chief Marshal
Joined: March 14, 2006
Posts: 309
| Posted: 2011-02-10 23:57
Quote:
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On 2011-02-10 22:50, Kenny_Naboo[+R] wrote:
But how about decloaking? Should we exclude decloaking from the cooldown? It's the reverse of the above. If I power something up, I should be able to cut power to it immediately, don't I?
Thoughts?
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Good idea imo. I would rather a 30 second cooldown on cloak after decloaking, than a 15 second cooldown wait to decloak after engaging cloak.
You're visible to the enemy, I don't see much of an issue for it.
There are times I am floating out in space, waiting to jump in on a fight. Only to forget I am decloaked. Then I press V out of habit, only to find that I am cloaking when I was getting ready to jump. Having to be 30 seconds out of a fight for a simple button press is quite inconvenient and irritating.
It's like giving ICC a 30 second defense mode cooldown and they can't jump while using it.
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Kenny_Naboo
Marshal
Pitch Black
Joined: January 11, 2010
Posts: 3823
From: LobsterTown
| Posted: 2011-02-11 00:58
Quote:
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On 2011-02-10 23:27, Sens wrote:
Cloak wasn't intended to be used as an escape mechanism when already engaged at point blank ranges. Main usage is supposed to approach enemy and positioning.
That being said, its still somewhat viable if you begin cloaking outside the enemy's weapon arcs.
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It isn't. If you cloak at point blank range, your sig still takes some time to go down to 0. And even after you fade away, you;'re still close enough to the enemy that he can blind fire and locate you. Ergo, you will still take significant damage while breaking off the engagement.
If I wanted to break contact from point blank range, I usually short jump out and then cloak.
Back to the matter, I was suggesting being able to decloak again immediately after cloaking.
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BackSlash
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003
Posts: 11183
From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2011-02-11 06:17
I'm confused, as this is how it works now...
Cooldown only applies when you deactivate a device, so you're free to use the cloak immediately after cloaking, even though the display shows it is in a state of 'cooldown'.
Try it, hit V immediately after cloaking.
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Enterprise
Chief Marshal
Joined: May 19, 2002
Posts: 2576
From: Hawthorne, Nevada
| Posted: 2011-02-11 07:52
Quote:
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On 2011-02-10 23:27, Sens wrote:
Cloak wasn't intended to be used as an escape mechanism when already engaged at point blank ranges. Main usage is supposed to approach enemy and positioning.
That being said, its still somewhat viable if you begin cloaking outside the enemy's weapon arcs.
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This doesn't work in practicality anymore.
The same way ICC isn't really a defensive faction anymore and the same reason UGTO isn't reall a mix of both anymore. Things have switched around.
UGTO is all about get in your face damage, tank until armor runs out (due to good weapon arcs), then run. Or fighter spam, that works well.
ICC is all about keep as much distance if possible, if not, drain all our energy and weapons as fast as you can then run the second shields hit zero.
Kluth is all about cloak, fire as much as possible in 15 seconds, then cloak again until repaired by AHR. Repeat. Run when neccessary (out of AHR, too low hull, no ammo, etc.).
If you really want cloak to be entirely about positioning an approach and bring Kluth back in line with hit and run you:
Find a way to dramatically increase fore armor on all Kluth ships. Increase the cooldown cloak timer to 1 minute, and boost damage output, while at the same time nerfing or even relegating beacons to entirely something else, and removing ECCM ping entirely. Otherwise the whole system won't work. Bonus points if you let Kluth jump cloaked.
Otherwise now its more like, hit, cloak, and hope you don't get manually spotted.
Anyways, since none of the above suggestions would ever happen, (and cloak definitely not being about approach and positioning except on the first attack), I agree completely with Kenny's suggestion for scaling cloak by hull or implementing a statocloak timer for each class. Perhaps even introducing variants of cloak (Light Cloak which reduces signature much slower, but has a short cooldown time. Medium which is a balance of both, and Heavy which reduces signature fast but has a long cooldown).
All thoughts. But Kenny is still right. Kluth small ships don't stand a chance compared to their counterparts, except at range (which Kluth aren't even meant for, lol irony). Only Dreads don't really feel it because they can take at least some of the heavy damage from human vessels. All alternative tactics for cruisers down to frigates for combat roles are contradictory to Kluth strategy as a whole, and the people that actually fly them (since small ships are still vastly inferior on all factions compared to their larger counterparts) are actually newbies, you can't expect that kind of adaptability.
This is a big contradiction in this game that makes one wonder why the average player count remains stable but does not grow (despite still getting new players). It takes much more skill to use a lower ranked ship than a big one. But ten times more so on Kluth.
-Ent
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Azure Prower
Chief Marshal
Joined: March 14, 2006
Posts: 309
| Posted: 2011-02-11 07:57
Quote:
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On 2011-02-11 06:17, BackSlash wrote:
I'm confused, as this is how it works now...
Cooldown only applies when you deactivate a device, so you're free to use the cloak immediately after cloaking, even though the display shows it is in a state of 'cooldown'.
Try it, hit V immediately after cloaking.
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Ahh thanks for clearing that up.
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BackSlash
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003
Posts: 11183
From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2011-02-11 09:51
@Ent, it used to be that all K'luth small ships dominated their human counterparts to the point where the performance was considered that of one or two hull levels above the rest.
The cooldown solved most of this, but as Kenny pointed out, it was a tad harsh. 7 seconds seems perfectly adequate now, and should help.
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Dakili
Fleet Admiral
Joined: June 07, 2007
Posts: 86
From: Quebec
| Posted: 2011-02-11 11:28
The real problem or thing I don't like nowadays is the cooldown once you went out of cloak for shooting or doing any stuff. I don't really mind about the 15 seconds for recloaking but when I'm trying to attack someone and I get out of cloak and have to wait a certain time (think its like 5-6 seconds not sure) It really destroy the idea of "surprise attack" since they attack me before I do...
Just wondering if you plan to do any changes on that, and if not would like to know why you've put it 
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BackSlash
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003
Posts: 11183
From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2011-02-11 11:59
You have to wait exactly 1 second before you can attack. It's no-where near 5-6 seconds. It's there to help prevent sync issues.
[ This Message was edited by: BackSlash on 2011-02-11 11:59 ]
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Kenny_Naboo
Marshal
Pitch Black
Joined: January 11, 2010
Posts: 3823
From: LobsterTown
| Posted: 2011-02-11 13:33
Quote:
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On 2011-02-11 06:17, BackSlash wrote:
I'm confused, as this is how it works now...
Cooldown only applies when you deactivate a device, so you're free to use the cloak immediately after cloaking, even though the display shows it is in a state of 'cooldown'.
Try it, hit V immediately after cloaking.
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Hmm, OK. I didn't know that. Will try.
Quote:
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On 2011-02-11 11:59, BackSlash wrote:
You have to wait exactly 1 second before you can attack. It's no-where near 5-6 seconds. It's there to help prevent sync issues.
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I believe that is in ideal conditions. But when you're being spammed by sensor plats and ECCM, will your ability to fire out of cloak still be delayed until sig reaches its base value (or modified base value depending on ECCM)?
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Dakili
Fleet Admiral
Joined: June 07, 2007
Posts: 86
From: Quebec
| Posted: 2011-02-11 14:01
Quote:
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On 2011-02-11 11:59, BackSlash wrote:
You have to wait exactly 1 second before you can attack. It's no-where near 5-6 seconds. It's there to help prevent sync issues.
[ This Message was edited by: BackSlash on 2011-02-11 11:59 ]
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Not sure about that one. I was with my hive today and it took 3 maybe 4 seconds before i could start shooting/sending figthers or everything. One second I wouldn't really mind.. but.. I'll go look it up later again.
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BackSlash
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003
Posts: 11183
From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2011-02-11 14:45
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On 2011-02-11 14:01, Fleet Admiral Maxwell House wrote:
Not sure about that one. |
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I am. ECCM/ECM affects cloak/decloak timers.
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