Discussion: Ammo-based Cloaks

[aerelm]

Unfortunately, no. Equipment ammo limit is set per equipment, not per ship.

[Trogdor]

As for the concern raised about the large cloak, most of the opposition appears to come from people who own and regularly utilize "permacloak stalkships", i.e. larger transports filled with fuel, able to stay cloaked for unreasonably long time and stalk ships such as suppliers of "hidden" POBs with no risk. Removing that ability is one of the main two reasons behind making cloaks ammo-based (the other bein making it useful on gunboats and below), and even though the ammo limit is still under consideration (We've even considered up to 1000 ammo limit on the large cloak, which would give it ~15 minutes of effective cloak, but frankly that seems a bit too excessive), granting any ship the ability to cloak for anywhere around 15 minutes (half the time of an "average" trade route) or more would turn said class into a "permacloak stalkship" again, which is what we're trying to avoid. So, even though some people have been trying to compare Discovery cloaks to real-life stealth ships, that's not really a valid comparison because in real-life, interaction is not the goal, so a piece of equipment entirely nullifying the need for interaction would not be considered a bad thing "out there", but goes against the very basics of this mod and server we play in.

Any actual number suggestions is welcome, with the above taken into account.

I agree that 'permacloak stalkships' need to go, for all of the reasons you just mentioned.

And I think Sindroms had a good idea. I agree with Sindroms' suggestion regarding 'more cloak classes'. This would allow you to balance the cloak's length with other factors, such as the time it takes to warm up that ship class's cruise engines, whether that class has thrusters, etc.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Cruiser/BS take much longer to warm up cruise engines than transports, yes? Therefore, they are less likely to be able to successfully pursue a transport supplying a base, and therefore their cloak can be balanced to last longer.

If this is insufficient, maybe you could make the cloak effect fall off if you jump to another system? This would surely kill the 'zero-risk base-supplier stalker'. If he jumps right after the transport, he'll be noticed on the other side. So he'd have to wait, giving the transport time to get away.

Assuming that issue can be sufficiently put to rest...
For caps, I think 15 minutes is the absolute minimum usable cloak time I would accept. I think 20 would be more appropriate, and I would like it to be longer, but I recognize that cloaks can be abused if the time is too long. However, caps need extra time to maneuver, get to where they want to be, observe conditions, think, form a plan, talk to allies, then execute. Or if their objective is recon, they need enough time to get in, do whatever they want to do, and get out before time runs out. So, yeah, 15-20 min minimum. Maybe 15 min for Cruisers, and longer for BS?
For medium-size ships like gunboats and transports, 8-12 minutes? They're the in-between, because they're more maneuverable and don't have the 'advanced warship' infrastructure that justifies longer times. A little bit of cap tactics, a little bit of fast attack.
For snubs, 5-8 minutes. They're the fast attackers that get in the vicinity of target, cloak, sneak up on them, then attack. But even lacking the infrastructure for long cloak times... it ought to be long enough to do stuff besides escape from a fight.

Anything less and these devices simply aren't useful enough to justify the loss of a CM launcher.

I might be in a group, and want to be able to roleplay with my group whilst sneaking around. I don't want to feel like I don't have time to roleplay, because I need to squeeze as much as I can out of every precious second of cloak time.

IMO cloaks are for tactical missions. Not 'avoiding interactions' necessarily, but influencing encounters to your advantage, or adding to your own character's story. This is counterbalanced by the fact that once a fight starts, you don't have that CM dropper. So you either need to make sure you establish that advantage and then spring your attack, or realize you don't have an opportunity and bail.

Flinx had a good idea too. Abandon the concept of fuel, and just have cloaks run on timers, while they keep your ship's powercore drained. Heat sinks, inRP. Your cloak lasts until your heat sink is at full capacity or you cancel it, and then there's a cooldown time while you vent the heat before you can use it again.
Then you'll avoid a lot of problems, like 'why can snubs refill a BS's fuel supply', and 'where should we sell fuel', and 'what do we do about caps uncloaking right behind people and dumping their full powercore down peoples' pants?' And... then maybe I could accept having shorter cloak times.

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[lIceColon]

WHAT IF we keep the current cargo based cloak fuel system but we add a piece of equipment called the "fuel tank"?

The fuel tank would of course contain ammo based fuel, but since it is a dedicated fuel containment system it would provide 3x the fuel (for mk1), 2x the fuel (for mk2) and 1.2x the fuel (for mk2a). (the numbers of course need to be adjusted for balance, but the general idea is that dedicated fuel tanks offer higher fuel capacity than the cargo hold but takes up space in the cargo hold)

An mk1 tank could take up 40 cargo space and provides 120 cloak ammo capacity.
An mk2 tank would take up 100 cargo space and provides 200 cloak ammo capacity.
An mk3 tank would take up 400 cargo space to provide 480 the capacity.

You could further balance this out by making the fuel tank hardpoint visible and easy to destroy.

The benefit of this is of course forcing you to set aside dedicated cargo space for fuel tanks, while allowing people to still use the cargo space for carrying fuel (albeit less efficient in terms of cloak time)

[Oldum]

After reading aerelms and Trogdors post over and over again, the problem that causes cloaking almost impossible to balance out is the fact that BS and Large transports share MK 3 , Cruisers, some BCs and small transports ( and GBs ? ) share MK2 and snubs ( except for some heavy heavy bombers and SHF ) have mk1. However since the purpose and capabilities of these ships are pretty much different ( fe. a Lib. Carrier and a Mastodon ) the same camo parameters can't be applied to both of them, cause imo. a battleships should have the equipment and the capability to hide for an extended time ( survailance, recon, or just staying out of sight till reinforcements arrive ) however, transports ( since I don't think they are made with military grade tech , or at least most of them aren't ) should not have the technical capability of using such an equipment for hours.

So I'm with Trogdor on ( if it's possible to make) having different cloaking devices for the different classes could be the start of this whole balancing thing, since then , when there is no fear of ppl explointing the fe. 20 minute cloaking ability of the BS cloak on a transport , cloak charging times, ammo/battery - I think we should call it batteries - consuming and all that could be calculated. For each ship class individually, taking other stats of that class into consideration. ( cruise engine start, cruise speed, etc. )

Sidenote: Pardon my grammar, I'm at work and I still suck at fast writing in english

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[Thyrzul]

I personally find no issue with transports being reused as surveillance vessels, their overall vulnerability seems to be a fair tradeoff for their capabilities to stay cloaked for longer than usual, if we compare them to caps. While I find the terms "perma-cloak ship" and "cloaking for hours" qute exaggerated, I agree that 15-20 minutes of maximal cloak time could be toned down a bit. I could imagine a Cloaking Device Mk4 created for use over 1,5k-2k cargo (idk what's the upper cargo limit for caps), and then said device could have different commodity consumption rates to balance out specifically transports.

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[Oldum]

I personally find no issue with transports being reused as surveillance vessels, their overall vulnerability seems to be a fair tradeoff for their capabilities to stay cloaked for longer than usual, if we compare them to caps. While I find the terms "perma-cloak ship" and "cloaking for hours" qute exaggerated, I agree that 15-20 minutes of maximal cloak time could be toned down a bit. I could imagine a Cloaking Device Mk4 created for use over 1,5k-2k cargo (idk what's the upper cargo limit for caps), and then said device could have different commodity consumption rates to balance out specifically transports.

Beg your pardon, but what vulnerability ? The thing is , it stayes cloaked for ~ 30 minutes, runs around freely in any system it wants, then leaves on the designated exit without having to use a single sheild battery. I might be watching a different movie, but I don't see the vilnerability in that, since cloak can not be "countered " in any ways.

If you are trying to point the fact out that they have less armor and guns, well, that's why those are transports and not a military warship I guess

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[SnakThree]

DELETE

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[Zayne Carrick]

Can cloaks run on Shield Batteries?

It's great idea! But some adjustment to cloak type is needed. Something like small cloak will consume 1 battery for 2 seconds, medium one 1 battery for 1 second and large one 2 batteries for 1 second.

[lIceColon]

I personally find no issue with transports being reused as surveillance vessels, their overall vulnerability seems to be a fair tradeoff for their capabilities to stay cloaked for longer than usual, if we compare them to caps. While I find the terms "perma-cloak ship" and "cloaking for hours" qute exaggerated, I agree that 15-20 minutes of maximal cloak time could be toned down a bit. I could imagine a Cloaking Device Mk4 created for use over 1,5k-2k cargo (idk what's the upper cargo limit for caps), and then said device could have different commodity consumption rates to balance out specifically transports.

Beg your pardon, but what vulnerability ? The thing is , it stayes cloaked for ~ 30 minutes, runs around freely in any system it wants, then leaves on the designated exit without having to use a single sheild battery. I might be watching a different movie, but I don't see the vilnerability in that, since cloak can not be "countered " in any ways.

I shouldn't have to point this out to you... but you can always counter enemy intelligence by having your own intelligence. You can't have it all, but you could always get your own cloaktrans and level the playing field lol

[Oldum]

I shouldn't have to point this out to you... but you can always counter enemy intelligence by having your own intelligence. You can't have it all, but you could always get your own cloaktrans and level the playing field lol

That is not the part I ment , rather the fact that transports don't trade anything off for being able to stay cloaked for a long time,

fe. a Bison with a cau8 has 4000 units of cargo space left, slaping on the cloak leaves an aditional 3550 , and as far as I can count, even with the 3/sec fuel type , that leaves 1123 seconds of effective cloaking time... which means a cau8 transport , which is not so much fun to mess with will stay cloaked for 18.71 minutes ... if it uses MOX , then taking the natural decay of it still leaves about 56 minutes of active cammo .... I only calculated decay roughly , ~1/min , fuel would be enough for 58 minutes of effective cloak, but it loses about 60 units during cloak charge and while cloaked.

on the other hand, let's take the Liberty Carrier , with a CAU8 has 1500 cargo space, then with the cloak it has 1050 , which leaves ~18 minutes of active cloak. ( with using mox and roughly losing 18 units while charging and being cloaked.) With using other fuels, it's even less , ~5.8 minutes of effective cloak.

I admit, the Lib Carrier has 980k base armor , while the Bison has 140k , but the Bison has a thruster , is way smaller then a carrier , more agile and takes less time to enter cruise ( not sure about this though)

Let's take a look at the Order Recon Cruiser ... it's recon only in it's name ...
It's almost pointless to start and count, since without an armor , it has 500 units of cargo space, from that the cloaking device takes 200 already, so it can mount an AU8 at best, which leaves 288 units of empty space. So that means it has ~ 3.5 minutes of effective cloak time with MOX , and 1.6 minutes with other fuels ...

Nuff said right ?

Edit: fixed the maths part, I misscalculated the carrier a bit , now it's allright.
Edit 2 : I know the Bison can't equip a cloak, but I wanted to illustrate things with numbers.

Edit 3: The biggest transport that can pull this off is either the Luxury Liner, having the same stats like the Bison, or the Colonial Transport with 300 less cargo, so ~ 5 minutes less time to hide.
The first ship that can us it and would make sense is the Firefly with 3500 cargo space ( with a CAU8, MOX : 44 minutes , Other fuels: 15.2 minutes.)

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