I say, we should get rid of Battle Cloak and Combat Cloak and make it like this:
One CLOAK ability. This ability is more effective depending on a ship's stealth stat.
All ships could cloak in battle. However, their cloak's effectiveness and the effectiveness of using cloak in battle would be different.
A BoP's high stealth rating would let it cloak within like 2 seconds. It could recover it's system's power and shields faster after uncloaking. Using it in combat would likely mean you'd take some damage but it's doable.
The effectiveness of the cloak would also be very good. Anti-cloaking measures would work for less time and possibly at a shorter distance.
Vor'cha Tier 5 on the other hand... it would take like 5 seconds to cloak in combat. You'd take pretty heavy damage if the enemy timed it right.
The effectiveness would not be all there. It's a big ship and it's harder to hide. Anti-cloaking measures would work for a long time on it and at a much longer distance.
This would also make the Raptor have a somewhat viable "combat" cloak. But at the same time let all ships with cloak do it. However, generally speaking the bigger ships would take large risks by cloaking mid-combat and could take heavy damage or even be destroyed.
A Vo'quv would take like 10 seconds. :O
Another hidden system not in the UI would be cloak systems.
Under certain circumstances your cloak will be weakened.
Example: Most Damage of Time effects might make your cloak easier to detect.
Massive damage (like 75%+) could make it less effective or even disable it.
Your cloak systems would come back online within 30 seconds once disabled or when you heal up to at least 50% or so.
Cloak detection:
Imagine the old submarine battles you see in movies. Everyone is silent. They know something is out there. Now maybe you don't have to be silent here but how about this...
When a cloaked ship gets within a certain range you detect a particle. This could be as simple as a beep that starts beeping to notify you.
Lets say ships like a BoP would beep at a close 1km. A Negh'Var maybe 6km. Just close enough so they could follow you but the Feds have a chance to try and catch you first (or Klingons if you're fighting the two cloak Fed ships).
This might add tension. Sometimes you hear a beep, you use your anti-cloak but find nothing. You know they're around... when will they attack? Why haven't they attacked yet!? What's going on!?!?!? WHY DOESN'T SOMEONE START SOMETHING!?!!?!?

So, anyways, those are my ideas.
Comments
The beep is also pretty nice.
Unsure about the rest.
What i would definitely drop is the attack bonus after uncloaking. We don't need a simulated surprise bonus coded in.
The surprise bonus comes from executing a good time uncloak and attack run.
I'm not for what Idali said about the attack binus. klingon ships are weaker in hull and shields and so the attack bonus makes up for some of that.
I would say a cloaking detection ability in the skills would be good, along with a set of consoles.
And it's called a ping, btw, not a beep.
:cool:
Trolling your own thread now? lol
Let me try to illustrate this with an example. The other day I was flying my escort in some FvK PVP. There was a very annoying BOP who kept battle cloaking. We had no science ship. Whats more, despite having a very good sensor stat on my escort for subsystem targeting, I had massive trouble finding this BOP despite them being incredibly gutsy and wandering around cloaked <1km from me.
I was literally close enough to crash into them to detect them, but they'd move a little bit away and disappear again. And because of how close I had to be to detect this BOP, I couldn't get my torpedoes lined up in time to fire before he moved beyond my sensor range again. The point is, If you're not a science ship, passive cloak detection is virtually useless, especially if they specced the appropriate skills to buff cloak.
BOPs already battle cloak, and that takes a 3s delay, moving that down to 2s makes it much harder to react in time to a cloaking BOP before they get away if you aren't a science ship that can chase them. Why do that?
And then giving raptors battle cloak with what appears to be roughly the same effectiveness as a BOP battle cloak? Do I need to explain that? No its not a perfect unbeatable tool, but its nothing but a buff.
Defiants, now that is just wildly unbalanced. The KDF still does not have a viable science ship for anti-battle cloak duties. The RSV and LRSV-R work on the Fed side because of their maneuverability. A battlecloaking BOP has to be caught after the fact, rarely can it actually be prevented, and pre-detection is virtually impossible no matter what ship classes you're facing. And to catch them, you need maneuverability, which is something no science heavy KDF ship has. So Defiants could battle cloak with impunity, basically, if they are smart about it.
Your ideas on cloak detection don't make a lot of sense. A BOP/raptor is not going to get within 2-3km if they aren't already planning to decloak and attack unless they are messing around, so any beeping detection is pretty irrelevant, because you are going to hear the decloaking noise before the beeping.
Further, cloak detection is entirely binary. Powers like PSW and CPB are going to knock someone out of cloak, if they are in range, period. But if they aren't, nothing whatsoever will happen and those abilities go on cooldown. If you know someone is within 5km and hit CPB, they are instantly decloaked, whether at 4.9km or .1 km. If they aren't there, you get no feedback, no message that says they were somewhere between 5 and 8km or anything at all.
Sensor scan is also very powerful and you will have a hard time being undetected within 5km if a sci drops sensor scan. Worse, if ships purposefully have weak cloaks they can sit outside 5km, knowing you are getting the beeping, making you waste your CPB. The idea actually promotes having a worse cloak because of that, to make cloak detection powers get wasted by gaming the system.
And not only that, but by making every cloaking ship have battle cloak, you make cloak detection powers need to work far more often. Think about it. Whereas before you just have to worry about a battlecloaking BOP, now you have to worry about every ship doing it. You can't detect them all, you can't counter each cloak. You can't because cloak detection powers have a very long cooldown compared to cloaking. Any ship under fire could run and battle cloak, and if you used CPB to find the last one, and its still on cooldown, you're SOL this time.
Now on the flip side, ignoring the other changes, why should any cloaks be made worse? A bigger ship may be harder to hide, but that is why you would just use a larger cloaking device, since it will fit nicely in a bigger ship. Realistically it doesn't matter much because a battle cruiser isn't going to approach until the attack is ready, and again they have no reason to battle cloak inside their weak-cloak range.
I also don't see any mention of how MES would work, nor do I understand why you would give the Vo'quv a cloak.
Big thumbs down to this idea, sorry. It ends up making cloaking much more powerful without addressing the problems and limitations of cloak detection.
The point was the illustration. BoPs would be faster at cloaking. Cruisers and stuff much slower.
At least three states:
- Fully Invisible
- Detected (Can not be seen, but mini map indicates cloaked vessel,)
- Visible
This should apply both to MES and Cloak.
Let's distinguish 3 different base cloak strength. Low (MES I), Medium (MES II), High (MES III, Cloak)
Low Cloak:
- Invisible at 10 km or higher, Detected witin 10 km to 5 km.
Medium Cloak:
- Invisible at 7.5 or higher, Detected within 7.5 to 2.5 km.
Strong Cloak:
- Invisible at 5 km or higher, Detected within 5 km to 0.1 km.
Skills and Aux Power would increase or decrease the range a ship can be detected at (depending on which side is better skilled and has more power).
2) Klingons could just be given more anti-cloak stuff. They are better at the tech. I don't see why they can't do just as well at cloak detection.
But I'm also not going to hunt around the map hoping to find a random cloaked ship. If I didn't get a chance to chase that battle cloaker, they could be anywhere by the time I get to where they were.
If the beeping works at too far a range or too close of a range its useless. And if it gives no indication of range, then its again, useless. If I get beeping and it could be a BOP at 1km or a Negh'var at 6km, what have I learned? Firing my CPB might be a complete waste. A BOP that close is going to decloak any second anyways. And if they deliberately game the system by full impulsing through my beeping threshold, then they can make me waste the CPB easily. It might work nicely with sensor scan, but nothing else, unfortunately.
Now, if it somehow gave indication of range, then it could also potentially be too powerful. If it tells you a ship is within 5km, then you can fire CPB or sensor scan and they are left wondering why they cloaked at all.
Why stay cloaked if you know they are going to know you're there? That close and you are ready to decloak and fire anyways. That is the problem, no one really gets that close until they are ready to open up. There is no other reason to be that close when you are cloaked. There is no reason to try and slip by a science ship. There is no purpose for cat and mouse or submarine warfare in this game.