Remove the cloak on Battleships

[AeternusDoleo]

Additional options:
- Lowering cloak device hitpoints so that one or two missiles will make it fall off. After that it's just a matter of aiming nova torpedos or BS missiles for the right hardpoint to neuter a BS's ability to cloak. Cloaks are set at the CM hardpoint, so you'd need to aim for the rear.
- Power core drain the second you initiate cloak, much like cruise chargeup drain. This will prevent decloak, one-liner, and vaporise tactics which have no counter (and are considered by the devteam to be undesirable). The ideal situation will be to give transports enough time to run, on thruster, to get sufficient distance between themselves and whatever uncloaked before the uncloaker can power up most of it's weapons.

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Wide awake in a world that sleeps, enduring thoughts, enduring scenes. The knowledge of what is yet to come.
From a time when all seems lost, from a dead man to a world, without restraint, unafraid and free.

Mostly retired Discovery member. May still visit from time to time.

[Starsunder]

- Power core drain the second you initiate cloak, much like cruise chargeup drain. This will prevent decloak, one-liner, and vaporise tactics which have no counter (and are considered by the devteam to be undesirable). The ideal situation will be to give transports enough time to run, on thruster, to get sufficient distance between themselves and whatever uncloaked before the uncloaker can power up most of it's weapons.

Won't that make cloaks useless for all combat? Any ship uncloaking in combat not only has no shield, but also no energy to recharge those shields OR fire their guns?

Will cloaks end up as a totally defensive device which, when you try to use while running away, the enemy gets to shoot off, because of the location of the hardpoint?

In this case, since cloaks will only be used to run away, cloaking in combat should count as a PvP death, equivalent to emergency docking, because:

A blue message means your character's ship exploded in RP. If he escaped by docking or in any way that counts as "pvp death", his ship didnt explode in RP. In that case people can't claim bounties, can't claim they destroyed his ship, can't tell him to shut up because he's dead (although he still has to leave the system he "died" in within 10 minutes), and IRP the person who escaped can claim that he is alive and well and his ship intact and that the people who tried to kill him failed.

Note: This is the view of someone who has never used a cloak before.

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[Veygaar]

Power core drain is good, it does not make it completely ineffective in combat, but doesn't allow a "/l1 *uncloak* *dual LM* Bluemsg" type situation.

You can still fly behind enemy lines and attack them from behind while the battle goes on in front, you can uncloak with some distance between you but still closer than if you had been uncloaked.

A cloak will still give some advantages while not being absolutely "better" than a CM in all aspects.

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Veygaar for Admin Moderator 2013!!!

[Jim.Solo]

- Power core drain the second you initiate cloak, much like cruise chargeup drain. This will prevent decloak, one-liner, and vaporise tactics which have no counter (and are considered by the devteam to be undesirable). The ideal situation will be to give transports enough time to run, on thruster, to get sufficient distance between themselves and whatever uncloaked before the uncloaker can power up most of it's weapons.

Won't that make cloaks useless for all combat? Any ship uncloaking in combat not only has no shield, but also no energy to recharge those shields OR fire their guns?

Not having a cloak capable Battleship means I technically don't know what I'm talking about, but won't shield batteries recharge the shield after they de-cloak?

How about a compromise, leave enough power to ge the shields up when they de-cloak, but not enough to fire weapons (well not all of them, if you open fire, your shields will not charge up )

That way you can surprise your enemy fleet, watch them panic and then fire off the Mortar's at close range

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[Ursus]

- Lowering cloak device hitpoints so that one or two missiles will make it fall off. After that it's just a matter of aiming nova torpedos or BS missiles for the right hardpoint to neuter a BS's ability to cloak. Cloaks are set at the CM hardpoint, so you'd need to aim for the rear.

do they even take damage? they dont have models, so I dont think they have hitboxes, not sure if they take splash damage from explosions

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Discovery 24/7 Negotiating Tactics:

[TonyRistar]

Cloaks should have a myriad of uses. Unfortunately, the most common one is:

*rp in system chat, find a target, announce intentions*

*Decloak suddenly, shield batteries bring shields back up, guns destroy target before any reaction possible.*

This is what makes cloaks a QQ device. The easy fix is to perhaps remove the ability to shield battery up cloak downed shields. Have them be like shields when cargo is jettisoned in vanilla. Until the shields are back 'online' they cant be regenned. (IF that is possible). Otherwise, you wind up in a situation where the cloak ship will always have the upper hand due to instant blue messaging. This makes for a PVP landscape, not an RP one. Honestly, cloaks should be much more efficient on smaller ships (example freighters get no cloak love, battleships get forever, yet come uncloaked with full firepower...not very useful for anything other than blue messages)

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[Knjaz]

Additional options:
- Lowering cloak device hitpoints so that one or two missiles will make it fall off. After that it's just a matter of aiming nova torpedos or BS missiles for the right hardpoint to neuter a BS's ability to cloak. Cloaks are set at the CM hardpoint, so you'd need to aim for the rear.
- Power core drain the second you initiate cloak, much like cruise chargeup drain. This will prevent decloak, one-liner, and vaporise tactics which have no counter (and are considered by the devteam to be undesirable). The ideal situation will be to give transports enough time to run, on thruster, to get sufficient distance between themselves and whatever uncloaked before the uncloaker can power up most of it's weapons.

Implement both of these, and cloaks won't have a use whatsoever, on capital ships.
Implement second, and Battleships will start using jumpdrives instead.

Implement first, and you'll return Heavy vs Light balance to the screwed levels, like it became after cruise drain nerf a year ago.

Cloaks should have a myriad of uses. Unfortunately, the most common one is:
*rp in system chat, find a target, announce intentions*
*Decloak suddenly, shield batteries bring shields back up, guns destroy target before any reaction possible.*

This is what makes cloaks a QQ device. The easy fix is to

Stop q_q'ing and act cautiously, when someone starts to "RP in system chat and announce intentions".


Seriously, guys. In a balance thread before, where it was proposed to lower fighter skill level requirement to make it more noob friendly, people went NO WAY.

Now, when people's capital ships are getting killed in game because they don't have a single idea about "tactics" (it's a general term in this case, and I put everything into it), are not willing to learn and instead go and qq on forums, we're, suddenly, getting a general consensus from active posters (but not in the poll results, though) that Developer interference is required?

Even taking into account that all these tactics and stuff is lightyears behind in terms of how hard it's to learn them, compared to the actual snub skills?

What the hell?

[West]

Gonna agree on this. Good Light BS can dodge fire from heavy even from 1k, med from 1.5k
Heavy BS have no way to come close to enemy before taking huge ammount of damage.
And how cerbs works, not helping that. With all prims setup you could dissipate your fire to actually hit enemy, now you can't.
Cloaks now helping heaviers to really kill lights. and omg when you decloak in enemy fleet you dead in seconds, unless you hunt lonely target that was stupid to leave group.

And c'mon.. when you last time saw decloaking pirate to kill trader? ROFL.. they use it to run away, not to insta poor trader for no profit and usage of fuel.

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[TonyRistar]

For me its not the usage of a battleship to uncloak on another battleship that comes up as a problem. Its seeing a transport get vaped by a capital ship due to uncloak and super shot mechanics.

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