Decloak tech

Ardbeg · Post by **Ardbeg** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 3:55 am

Give fed ships a decloaker tech. It takes 3 turns to use and takes 10 seconds to work. The fed ship is free to perform any action it wants, but if it leaves sector the decloaking process is terminated unsuccessfully (like refresh all). As soon as a decloak is initiated, all cloaked ships in sector get a warning message on their CS telling them how long until they are decloaked.

This will basically have no impact at all on active cloakers, but makes lurking at ports dangerous for someone not paying attention and prevents logging off anywhere. As has been pointed out elsewhere, the cloak should not be effective invincibility, it should be a combat tool to be used wisely.

Shtoopid · Post by **Shtoopid** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 4:22 am

Before the inevitable "that ruins cloak", two points. And one for the xp crowd
1.
Cloak needs a little ruining, its unbalanced as hell.
2.
Time scale could be increased, idea behind this is to stop cloak from being a parking tool. Perhaps 2 min, and you need at least 2 ships IS the whole time.
3.
High XP and cloak are currently intertwined, the whole point of high xp should not be cloak and if cloak wasn't so badly broken it wouldn't be. The point of high xp is that if you fight a lower level ship, you have a better chance of winning. Thats what xp is for, and if you have 500k ship that is supposed to be a hunting ship, it can slaughter an MS of a normal level. So really, your high xp advantage is still there. Thats all it was meant to be anyway. Too much importance is placed on xp as it stands, nobody does anything for fear of losing it, and the game cant afford the limited number of people there is playing sitting around when they could be doing.

Purify · Post by **Purify** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 4:51 am

I don't like it and i've never been a cloaker.....

One of the dreams of players in SMR is to trade up to a top XP cloaker so no one can decloak you.... many attempt to follow this dream and few succeed.... to take this ability to park unprotected but in complete safety i think is wrong.... You work hard for your XP... it can be taken from you in brutal situations why take away the one sweet thing from it???

Right now there are two schools of thought of how SMR should be played.... One believes that high XP is the ultimate tool in the game.... it should be used and exploited as much as possible... Another that believes XP isn't all that important and that alliance coordination and planet galaxies are the ultimate tools of the game... I don't believe either theory is right or wrong, its just two different ways to look at the game... To make a change that so greatly effects one school of thought and not the other is unfair..

Harry Krishna · Post by **Harry Krishna** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 5:07 am

In beta for a while, there was a modification to the cloak that would allow cloakers to be seen by those within five levels below their level at some small % of the time. I don't remember the formula, and at any rate it needed adjustment, but it worked well to the extent that it added a weakness to the cloak beyond higher level or hitting mines.

Shtoopid · Post by **Shtoopid** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 5:11 am

But only one school of thought gives you that invincibility. No other path can attain that. You are saying that a drastic change is being made, but in the end all it is doing is providing an equality. A super high exp cloaker should be very hard to kill but not impossible, just as a parker on a lvl 70 should be very hard to kill, but not impossible.

Shtoopid · Post by **Shtoopid** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 5:17 am

Also why not have it that players can attack a cloaked ship but at 1% of normal accuracy. The ship would remain cloaked unless it decloaked itself(triggered) The idea being that ships can fire randomly if they detect a cloaked ship is. Could perhaps put a button in that allows scanning of current sector and if a ship is present a fire button that incorporates those special rules. That would make a high lvl cloaked ship sort of like a planet. A lone ship with 600 turns would have real trouble taking it down and if two or more parked in a sector would increase that(but if one can be decloaked then normal rules would apply). Change the numbers if mine dont work, I didnt do any real calcs on em just threw out the concept.

Purify · Post by **Purify** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 5:25 am

You are just looking at the top cloakers in this game....

But you don't see the amount of work they did to get there.... sure they are the best hunters in the game and thus none of them were really hunted while trading but they also had to systematically kill the other top traders so they alone would be up there... it is a lot of planning and imo boredom to accomplish this...

I think the dream of this 'invincibility' is what a lot of new players strive for... and yes they usually never make it, but its a dream that is pursued and thus makes people play...

Getting rid of this in any way is foolish..

Smor · Post by **Smor** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 6:50 am

Purify wrote:You are just looking at the top cloakers in this game....

But you don't see the amount of work they did to get there.... sure they are the best hunters in the game and thus none of them were really hunted while trading but they also had to systematically kill the other top traders so they alone would be up there... it is a lot of planning and imo boredom to accomplish this...

I think the dream of this 'invincibility' is what a lot of new players strive for... and yes they usually never make it, but its a dream that is pursued and thus makes people play...

Getting rid of this in any way is foolish..

this is so true...

when i started to play i remember watching mar pwning in his dc... i was watching him like god...

then anx, then dw, then...

oh yeah, i was like: 8), i want to be just like that.

i had slow connection, was fighting dominant alliances like dc and crus, building and mining, quiting and returnign to game, but still all that time,

i dreamed it, i believed it, and thanks god i lived it too.

dont say u wouldnt like to be where we are now. it is privilidge that everyone can fight for. i dont see my or orcas name in cloack shop. its not reserved for us. u all have access to it.

Post by **DWill** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 7:12 am

Shtoopid wrote:But only one school of thought gives you that invincibility. No other path can attain that. You are saying that a drastic change is being made, but in the end all it is doing is providing an equality. A super high exp cloaker should be very hard to kill but not impossible, just as a parker on a lvl 70 should be very hard to kill, but not impossible.

Trust my you aren't invincible. Trade high and get yourself a DC and see how easy it is, I happened to get one shotted in mine. Such a drastic nerf to cloaking is just simply an over reaction however you put it. Purify is right when he says cloaking is the dream of a lot of new players and the good thing about it is that it is avaiable to anyone who goes evil. If you want to balance the techs make the others more useful (DCS please!!!). I noticed Curufir "accidently" (rightfully so too if you ask me, unless it was really just a good accident

) made the jump drive a little more useful and accurate based on exp and maybe his creativity can help the other techs. IG or other techs may never be as useful as cloak, but thats ok because cloak is avaiable to over half of the traders, and what it boils down to is how you use it that makes it so effective.

Post by **Azool** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 10:13 am

I'm going to post this here because its a shorter thread.

Just as a compromise for the couple of posts I've read.

How about having a failure chance (50%?) if there is another player or scout drone in the sector you are trying to cloak in?

Maybe having a % chance to de-cloak when entering a sector based on scouts/other players present?

Just a little something to throw in the discussion