Quote:I think this will make what is already functional, more complicated and be far more work than will be worth in the end. A few tweaks to the light cloak and making it available to SHF's would be good to expand its use beyond bombers.
Fighters, gunboats, half of freighters and battlecruisers can't use cloak as it is - quite a half of ships you meet ingame. On the other hand, liners/transports staying in cloak for hours is something wrong.
Perhaps, adding some kind of scout ship, which can use nomad/wilde like cloak, but won't have significant regens/weapons can fill the role of cloaking liner.
All gunboats can use cloaks, all cruisers and battlecruisers can use cloaks. I have used a Sagarmantha with a cau5 armor and large cloak and still had a few minutes of cloak time. if i had axed the armor, it would open it up even more space for fuel. Its the same with all these combos, you typically sacrifice high level armor for your cloak, so all these ships that 'can't' use cloaks, can, just not with super jacked up armor on top. Now, people will mount cloaks and no longer need to sacrifice cargo space for fuel, and can slap that cau8 on with a large cloak and get the same guaranteed cloak time.
And as stated, liners and the likes (with no armor) could get a max of about an hour. I get about 8 mins. To me, we make our sacrifices for the cloak time we get, and use it as we can, some for intelligence, or in my case, simple short term stealth. I don't see it as excessive when I can only do so much damage, its the same with a freighter. Most ships that can get that long with a large cloak, are transports/liners that also sacrifice battle ability, and are greatly compromised when not cloaked. as well, they're only so capable of offensive action. Its not like anyone has the ability to cloak for an hour on their battleship right now.
EDIT: I will throw in that no one seems to have considered supporting a cargo space buff on ships like GB's so they could use cloaks more practically. The medium cloak was pretty much made with the GB in mind, but its true, even without armor, you're looking at 2-3 mins of cloak time, including charge up, which leaves little room for error. That's why I use a pelican as a gunboat basically, i can actually cloak for decent time, but have a fraction of the armor of a GB, and maybe somewhat comparable firepower (with no heavy weapons, also referred to as the 'poor mans gunboat, and rightfully so). I would be using a GB instead if it had like 700-800 cargo spaces, so it could mount a UAU8 and get 5-7 mins of cloak time instead. If they buffed GB cargo space, the medium cloak would have a whole new life breathed into it, and you'd see real cloak piracy take off. For some reason, the devs (i guess?) decided they didn't want the GB used for that, without being SEVERELY disadvantaged. The cloaking system is fine, its the ships that need to be re-adjusted. Like raising the light cloak cargo limit to allow SHF's.
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