"Butt Cloaking"

[Durandal]

well there goes variety out the window for sake of "balance"

I'm not entirely sure how being forced to mount either a cloak or cloak disruptor counts as throwing variety out the window, man. The only difference between the way things are now is that you'd be able to keep a CM instead of losing one in exchange for a disruptor, same deal with a cloak.

As for 'all ships being able to counter everything', the idea was that it would come with a hefty nerf to the cloak disruptor making it use a much larger amount of batteries - maybe two or three uses per fight. It wouldn't be a thing you could just spam repeatedly during an extended engagement anymore.

It's not an ideal solution, but neither is making cloaks entirely useless (giving them core drain), or turning them into tools that allow people to effectively avoid blues 100% of the time, a-la old fighter cloaks, though I do think the charge time on cruiser and battleship cloaks needs to be toned down slightly.

The irony is that the only reason I'm engaging in this discussion is because the admin team is asking for viable solutions. The balance team is supposed to be on indefinite probation right now and not messing around with the meta of the game, so I'm not even sure why I'm throwing ideas out there.