cloak drain (weapon energy)

[Ursus]

Okay, after the previous discussion threads about cloaking, I've come up a solution that seems to address all parties' concerns.

The idea is to use weapons energy for cloaking, with half the available energy being used to enable the cloak, and also a constant drain effect that reduces the available weapon energy over time (similar to the way shield generators consume power over time). Fuel can be used to reduce the energy drain by half, but does not modify the initial cloaking process. Energy taps installed in the weapon slots can be used to reduce the energy drain *and* speed up the cloaking process by about 5% each, capped at 50% for 10. Fuel+taps together would cut the cloaking time in half and eliminate the drain effect entirely. Shields would no longer be affected by cloaking.

Using weapon energy provides a couple of interesting opportunites for pulse weapons to drain the energy pool (but only after the shields are down). For example, if you know a target has a cloak, you can use pulses to keep it drained of energy and prevent it from activating the cloak. Or as another example, if you know there's a cloaked ship is in the area, you can hit it with pulse weapons to cut its available energy, and make the cloak cancel out quicker.

The tradeoff to this is that the attacking ship needs to have pulse weapons equipped, which means giving up raw firepower for the ability to counter a cloak. Also, the pulse damage has to be high enough to drain the energy pool sufficiently for the desired effect (a set of debs wont be able hold a battleship in place). Most caps dont use pulse weapons now, so they would have to be added to the loadouts and regular turrets reduced. Same for liners and transports and freighters--they would also need to add them to be useful. A gunboat would need to have a couple of pulse weapons to get the shields and core down fast enough, and could no longer use a full-turret setup. Bombers might need to use the EMP torpedo (maybe not with full EMP guns--have to check the numbers) or may need to rely on a partner ship for pulse damage. Fighters typically have pulses weapons already but the drain damage is very low and probably insufficient for anything bigger than a gunboat, but might work well in teams (need to crunch numbers).

Another factor here, is that entering cruise would cause the cloak to turn off--unless the ship had fuel and a full set of taps--since entering cruise causes the energy pool to drop. This means you can only use impulse and afterburner while cloaked, unless you fully commit to cloaking with fuel and 10 taps. Recon ships and cloak-running transports are still possible, but everybody that wants to use cloak for combat has to be more prudent since they wont be able to lolcloak and cruise away.

Another interesting aspect to this is that an attacker could not dump weapons on a target and then immediately cloak, since they would not have sufficient energy to do it. They would have to forgo an attack, or wait for energy recharge after an attack, which adds another interesting element to it.

Using fuel and/or taps adds more dimensions. If fuel cuts the energy drain in half, then you can give up cargo to get extended claoking periods, which is similar to the way it works now. Similarly, the idea for weapon taps would give a tradeoff between offensive capability and cloak duration. Fuel and a full set of 10 taps lets you run cloaked until the fuel runs out, but you cannot shoot anything or carry much cargo. Conversely, if you only needed short periods of cloaking (such as avoiding a hostile), then you could opt not to carry fuel or use any taps, but cloaking process takes longer and you wont be able to cruise away.

As said up top, in order to balance this out a little better, the current shield drain should be eliminated. This way, the attacker would need to lower the shields before they could get into the weapon energy pool, which would give the target ship a better chance at escape.

Overall this seems to provide a pretty rich variety of gaming options. It allows ships to use cloaks for short-range escape if they commit to being passive (not firing any weapons, or not even having them), but does not allow them to cloak-and-cruise. Hostile ships can still use cloaks for surprise attacks, but cannot immediately cloak and escape. Attackers can prevent a target from cloaking if the attacker commits to using pulse weapons, which reduces their damage output and gives more opportunity for the target ship to escape (unless teams are used--then you will have one pulse and one firepower). Overall just a lot more options and no more guaranteed escape.

One issue that needs to be sorted is that cloak devices must be balanced for the ship classes, since the power generators are different. This means, fighters, bombers, freighters, transports, gunboats, cruisers and battleships must have class-specific cloaks. Although there is a lot of variety in those classes, averages for the classes should be acceptable.

edited for clarity

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Discovery 24/7 Negotiating Tactics:

[Snoozzzer]

I read your post, really I did. and I counter with NO. No, no, nono, nono, no. Why you ask? Because cloaks are now the only way people can run away from a fight. There is no other frigging way if your opponent is half awake to not die. I'm sorry, but I'm sick of blue messages always popping up.

If you were to remove CDs, then we can start talking about rendering cloaks useless.

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