Petition for Cloak (Discusion)

1) Write the Petition title in CAPITAL as well as in parentathese so that devs and moderators lookinf will immediately see that it's IMPORTANT +_+.

2) Remeber to ask a version for both Vanilla and one for entrenchment

3) If the devs don't want to do it..may they at least give us pointers as to how WE COULD DO I OURSELVES...please?

-ShadowMastiff2468-

PS: You have my full vote!

As i posted in the petition:

I think IC will add cloaking with the 2nd expansion, which is focused on diplomacy and no combat stuff. In one of the suggestion threads a "spy-ship" was mentioned. I think this is the prefect introduction for cloaking.

Good but in the meanwhile (expansion coming in LONG TIME) some of us have crazy ideas that just can't work because a valid cloak is unexisting

have you looked at the solarcloaking ability that is applied on ships by stars?

if you combine this fx with something like this:

entityModifier
    buffEntityModifierType "ChanceToHitAsDamageTarget"
    value
        Level:0 -1.000000
        Level:1 0.000000
        Level:2 0.000000

perhaps it is a functional workaround.

The asteriod belts use a similar ability to decrease the hit chance for all ships "ChanceToHitAsDamageDealer" with a value of -0.2 which means the chance to hit is reduced by 20%.

I got a more simple answer, get your notepad out and create your own!

I made my own don't worry! creating abilities is SOOO EASY!

It's the ship effects that remian....we still see the ship (even if he is phased out)

not for me

basic changes are easy, but if want to make something completly new its hard.

I used allways the modifier list from here: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/306405

But with entrenchment a lot changed and also i never found a complete list where the buff structure is described.

So it is a lot try&error work which annoys me a bit.

Mines were previously cloaked,  becuase of the obvious problem in cloaking in a game of this type it was removed and they were just given the "phased-out ability,  they are visable,  but cannot be targeted unless a scout disrupts the field

i personally like the fact that they removed cloaked mines.. it would become a battle on who had the most mines, scouts and scout killers.. and ofcourse.. everyone would pick vasari

i cant seem to think of another use of cloaking either...  invisable ships seem like a .. err ..  BAAD idea.. so where would you like the cloaking ability for?

there are some mods, such as the ST or even the SW mod that need it for universe issues (even B5 and SG mods would benefit from it) the point is that its something that would really help modders, they don't even need the abilitie in game as much as the possibilitie for it (which is something, that as you said, they had before).

Since (afaik) you can change the mesh on the fly in Entrenchment, why wouldn't you just replace the mesh with a blank one for the duration of the cloaking ability?

you can't change the Icon. For all intents and purposes, the vessel is still visible. Additionally, that doesn't actually make it invisible, it just shows up as a giant black cube.

Yes during the beta of entrenchment cloaked mines where a real pain in the a###. The scouts get killed by mines before it could detect them. But also the mine spaming was a problem. Now mines are limited and cost resources for all factions. This works much better.

I see your problem. Lets hope the 2nd expansion or a patch will change this.

the only problem that I see with cloaking is WHAT IS THE COUNTER or flaws in cloaking?

ie how can you detect the cloaked ship. it startrek there was the plasma emissions  in undiscoverd country, gravity distortion, distrortion of background star pattern, had to drop the cloak to warp, had to cloak after warping in, cloaking useing LARGE amounts of power in the ship, etc...

harpo

Well, I imigine, that you can't cloak during phase jumps, and that weapons are disable, what about giving the ability to detect cloak but with 25% accuracy?

I would imagine the Detect be given to Scouts, and as Mooster said, weapons disabled. I play Tau in DoW for the very reason that they have units that can attack while cloaked, and it is completely unfair. And maybe it wouldn't be that you can't cloak while jumping, but more that the enemy knows your coming, they just don't know what it is thats coming (or that 25% accuracy thing).

The Detect could also be given to a specific building, maybe as an upgrade to the Broadcasting tower (to give the more military minded of us an excuse to get it).

Thats why I made this thread, to think things out to make the devs lives easier, (and so the petition thread wouldn't get derailed).

I am only trying to prod the discussion in ways of balancing while allowing the potential of cloaking and in startrek the ships could move at low impulse/thrusters & maintain cloak

harpo

well the defiant, klingon and romulan ships can jump to warp while under cloak so...

bump for cloak

this has nothing to do with "balancing" it has to do with enabling a buff type the mods can figure out how to balance it

I'd like to see cloaking, but there are some serious issues that you can tell IC has been avoiding. I think the main issue is the idea of an 'invulnerable fleet'. Having cloakable ships that you need a "detector" to be able to attack is a bad idea (especially if the detectors are the weakest ships in your fleet, scouts) because that fleet will just attack whatever makes it vulnerable to become invulnerable again. There are no abilities in the game that make ships invulnerable without some sort of drawback. Also, being able to move while cloaked also creates problems. I can't say I would enjoy it if an enemy fleet could just cloak its way to my homeworld, theres just too little anyone could do to stop that.

On the otherhand, there are ways cloaking could work and affect gameplay in a different way. I've wanted some sort of cloaking to disguise the contents of my fleet before an attack, or mask ships defending a planet. I propose a tactical structure that cloaks all stationary, not attacking ships within a certain radius. That way ships can be fired upon once engaged and the structure could be destroyed to reveal the enemy fleet, while at the same time it prevents cloaking from being mobile, makes your opponent think twice about jumping into a system with these structures in them, forces reconaissance to be more than just jumping in a single ship and jumping back out, allows for ambushes and sneak attacks and most importantly makes it a little harder for your opponent to figure out what you're doing. All without being to OP.

first of all, there is already code for invulnerability. its "Invulnerability" and you can easily mod it to make it last however long you want. for cloak, all you have to do is set easy parameters, just like invul.

cant move, cant shoot, cant do anything really, just cloak.

but it would be really cool to move some ships into an enemy grav well and cloak them, and just wait.

Couldn't you just do a phase ability that doesn't disable movement, and that is disabled by enemy Scouts?

Seems straightforward to me.

if you wanted, but that isn't really "cloak" the way i would want it. i would even make mine have movement, except for phase jump, just can't shoot or use abilities. if it were for my mod

Justin, if you can make a ship invisible, with only the ship effects remaining?  Then let me know how you did it, please.

If it is the engine and weapon effects you are referring to as still "visible" then those particle effects which are used to show that in the entity file, can be removed, or blanked. The weapons fire will still happen, even if it isnt visible, and the ship will still move, even if the engine effect is not shown. This will effectively give you an invisible ship. With the phase out (with removing the boolmodifiers that disable engines, which will still then allow movement while phased out) making the enemy ships disregard the ship you will have an effectively invisible ship. 

-Teal

i have an idea, a little like removing the weapons effects and having the weapons still fire, or the engine effects and still having the ship move... about an "Invisible" ship. But i want to test it before saying anything.    Haha, if this works i will fall off my horse, and i dont even have a horse.   

Will let you know what happens though, okie? 

-Teal