[Nuke]

i like all the stuff people have been doing with the cloaking feature, i cant wait till its in the official scp. but noone has talked about how to go about how it will work. here's my idea:

add a cloak gauge to the ets. it will default to 0% when the game loads. as you add energy to the cloaking device from your other systems you begin to cloak. the ship is not visible at 100% power to the cloak. if power is about 50% the ship is semi visible. also as the ship's cloak gauge is increased the radar signature decreases, the target dot will start to flicker and eventually go out. this adds the potential of having some interesting gameplay.

[karajorma]

Its a bit pointless to do this unless the AI is upgraded to take cloaking into account. Until that happens it won't handle any differently from stealth (i.e mostly handled by SEXPs).

[Solatar]

I think cloaking should only be for certain ships, like maybe the Pegasus and Ptah. SO we should add a tag or something to the ships .tbl entry.

[phreak]

i've always thought the sexp route would be better until the AI can do something.

[JC Denton]

And you can use the "key-pressed" sexp to have the player turn cloaking on and off.  Just have a repeat count of 5000 or something so it works more than once.

[Bri_Dog]

I think that for the player craft cloaking shouldn't be Sexp controlled. For AI ships yes, some scripting would be needed.

[Solatar]

Maybe we could do both, sort of like stealth. We have stealth sexps, and stealth flags.

But we would need to have an ai upgrade to make the ai acutally use the cloaking.

EDIT: If your wingmen have the right ship, you could order them to cloak via the comms menu. Or by a keyboard shortcut.

[Nuke]

solatar has a good point, versitility is a good thing. my point is that cloaking should require its own power bar on the ets gauge. in order to use cloak, you must divert of power from your other systems. for a complete cloak you must divert all power. half power cloak makes lockons slower, makes your skip semi transparent, limits the range at which the ship can be spoted on radar, and make missile hits less likely.

[JC Denton]

I'm of the opinion that it'd be better with a simple on/off switch instead of the gradual phasing like Nuke is saying.  Under cloak, we can simply have weapons not fire (cloak == game thinks gun energy/missile count is zero), and afterburning would effectively nullify the benefits of cloaking, which would be invisibility to both sight and sensors.

[Nuke]

fine, make it startrek-esque. i think something new and original, such as a phasing cloak would be better gameplay wise.

[SadisticSid]

A phasing cloak was seen in a Next Generation episode. Hardly 'new and original' as you put it. ^_^

I'm in agreement in turning off weapons, shields, and guns while the cloak is enabled (while cloaking, under cloak, and decloaking). Using the afterburners could force a decloak or damage the cloaking device, perhaps.

Sid.

[IceFire]

Originally posted by SadisticSid
I'm in agreement in turning off weapons, shields, and guns while the cloak is enabled (while cloaking, under cloak, and decloaking). Using the afterburners could force a decloak or damage the cloaking device, perhaps.

Sid.

Agreed...you want to be invisible to everyone...fine, no other perks

[Nuke]

not that kinda phase you dumbarse. i mean a gradual cloak, that incremints the level of sensor/visual distortion based on how much power you have allocated to the cloaking device.

[TrashMan]

It does make sense. You could fire while cloacked, but since all the power is directed tocloacking, you would ran out of juice right fast. Same for afterburner. But you could loose shileds while cloacked....it has to have a downside.

*fighters with 10000 weapon energy are NOT advised:D

[Lynx]

Hi!:)

I think the cloak should function only for certain amount of time, then the fighter drops out of cloak because the energy reserves are depleted, and the cloak's energy has to reload slowly, like the gun energy or the afterburner.

[StratComm]

Originally posted by Lynx
Hi!:)

I think the cloak should function only for certain amount of time, then the fighter drops out of cloak because the energy reserves are depleted, and the cloak's energy has to reload slowly, like the gun energy or the afterburner.

I like this idea; have it recharge at a set rate (albeit fairly slowly, you wouldn't want to be phasing in and out of cloak all the time) and more energy devoted to cloak (from weapons, shields, and engines) would increase the amount of time you could use it and speed up its recharging.  This way you incorporate the power alotment without phasing, and there are consequences to using cloak all in one.

[Galemp]

You could always make it so the afterburners, weapons, and shields don't recharge at all while cloaked. It would be akin to setting the ETS to 0 for all three systems.

[KARMA]

or you can have a distorted cloaking while firing/using afterburning, like if ship is fading in and out while you press the trigger, with a fading radar signature too

[Galemp]

Fuzzy red blip instead of no blip, while afterburning and firing... and you'd have the disadvantage of finite AB and weapons energy. Sounds good!

EDIT: Post 3100. I never noticed when I made 3000 posts. I need to get a life...

[Nuke]

i think it would be cool if you could fire when cloaked, however doing so will partially decloak you. when you cease firing the cloaking device gradually recloaks you over a couple seconds. same should go for afterburners. i still think the variable cloak thing has potential for some awesome gameplay.

a new ets is a must though, the more gauges you have, the less power to go around. power is a concern to any ship with a cloaking device. when cloaked your shield, weapon, and afterburner energyshould slowly drain. thus the longer you stay cloaked, the more vulnerable your ship will be when you decloak.