Cloaking Device, Re-looked at.

[worldstrider]

As a supporter of Turk's view that there is no reason not to just simply discuss it...

I have only played with cloaks on Tekagi's but they are not the "great unbalance" everyone assumes.

There they are "hard coded" to the specific ship--no removable cloaks that can be transferred and apparently this helps differentiate cloak mod cheaters too.

The delay time before cloaking and de-cloaking begins and the amount of time to reach full in|visibility is variable and can be set as the admins determine.

Guns do not fire while cloaked and additionally, guns can be left not fireable for a variable period of time after de-cloaking completely.

So the server-side controls do most of that and are set by admins.

There it is "second string ships" and just a few with cloaks and there is a substantial delay before guns can fire.

Throw the single-player cloak version out. You have to chose ships to be practical. It shouldn't be "all" or all the ones SP allows.

The Arrow and Spatial would be two good choices for cloaking ships here (I think).

Downside is it can cause a problem if not set up properly and it does allow people to spy, fly and trade unmolested for the most part.

Mines will 'track" to a cloaked ship and that's one way to find it. bullets still hit it and if you look carefully firing you can sometimes find them.

Gatelanes and system gates and docking rings still open and close and light up--so its a giveaway.

They show on long range scanners but not in system--except for a split second when you enter and leave a system.

The sound effect is very cool and it fades pretty much like you saw in SP.

not advocating them here just explaining what I know of how they work. One thing I don't know and have been curious about is if energy use can be used with them so they "run out" if you don't have enough power. if so, heck they are very practical.

Even if we can't play them its fun to think about some.

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