That's because of how the missions and code are designed. Either everyone gets an alpha strike or no one does. It's not really workable to have it designed for some people to get without branching mission objectives every time use of a cloak is possible.
Now... That could be done in theory but it would involve creating mission branches that trigger for certain ships and not the actual cloak power.
Of course. And I agree. So make those options happen. But don't break a fundamental canon ability like cloaking just to appease some and annoy others. Make it work in a logical and reasonable manner that makes sense, not break it to uselessness or turn it into a "flavor" ability. But Cryptic should not be taking the lazy approach on a bug, then say working as intended when they can't find a solution.
I paid good money for a B'rel retrofit only weeks ago. Now we see the pivotal ability, the enhanced battle cloak, the one thing that allows a ship like this to be effective with it having less weapons, hull and shields than same tier Fed and KDF vessels, less effective because of cloaking changes.
This TRIBBLE will stop if they want people to keep playing and keep purchasing z store items.
Player and forumite formerly known as FEELTHETHUNDER
Remember about a year ago when the cloak broke and Dan said "we have to go map by map to fix it, will take a long time but it will get done" and now he says "oh it was always meant to be like that" this really makes me mad as a KDF player who uses cloak i Kerrat.
Ps. This is my first post in over two years I though i need to expose this lie, as if we don't remember.
I am astonished as well. I distinctly remember it being stated, very early on after release, that this was a bug and they they were looking for a way to fix it. Now.. all of a sudden they are trying to say that it is intended?
Whether this is indeed intended or a cover-up-bug, either way this "feature" is bloody annoying and should be removed. There are plenty of episodes and movies where cloaked ships are able to hail and communicate with other ships...
This "feature" of being uncloaked when hailing mission objectives needs to be removed... or fixed. Since I do not buy this recent calling of it "intended," I say fix it please.
Thank you for your time.
Full Name: Zeryn Zebulon Zebular Short Name: Zebular ( @zebular ) Starfleet Rank / Serial: Vice Admiral, Field Captain / SZ-872-112 Fleet Registry / Command Ship: Fleet Admiral of the Betazed Patrol / U.S.S. Zebulon, NX-91333-C Diplomatic Registry: Starfleet Ambassador, Betazed Ambassador, Son of the Thirteenth House of Betazed Species / Birth Date / Birth Place: Half-Betazoid, Half-Human / Stardate 27481.22 / Rixx City, Betazed Handles:@zebular (PC) • @MtnDewFreak (XBOX) • @Terraseer (PS4)
When Dan said it's a bug and they have to map by map to fix it, he meant they have to go map by map to put in the minicoms. Which is exactly what he said this time, only in more detail this time.
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
And that just means manually changing non-essential messages to flyover dialogue.
If it spawns an enemy, you'll still get decloaked. If it marks the beginning of a new phase of a match, you get decloaked.
Cloak is intended as a novelty option, the equivalent of maybe an ensign BO power. It's not SUPPOSED to be the anchor of a playstyle.
yes it can be an anchor to a playstyle, and strategy wth are you smoking? it's a cornerstone of the kdf and romulan tactics...if it was so unimportant why would either races even use it? apologists irritate me. there's no defense for bad coding. even worse recognizing it as a bug and never properly fixing it. the game relies entirely to much on dialogue triggers as it is. 'click this to proceed' every fracking minute.
perhaps i'm overly touchy about pop-ups...rerunning boldly they rode for phased gear...but it's not just that mission, cure is a major irritation playing as kdf because i have to wait for that comm to pop up at the end before i can cloak, else that breaks it. pop-ups in other missions breaking cloak and guess what? no time to recloak cause it's on cd now.
and before someone or this person comes back 'it's too difficult the codes too complex' BS, done right in the first place there would have been no problems. such as the cloak can only be broken by taking damage in the case of everything but enhanced, and captains orders to decloak. fracking simple eh?
and instead of 'fixing' missions that got screwed up because of cloak they should have taken it into account when creating the missions that players will CLOAK. seriously...it's like there is zero foresight at cryptic HQ. who's supposed to be the guy or committee in charge of covering all the angles? doing a lousy job of it. and continuing to do a lousy job of it...at least you're consistent.
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So your telling me what he meant to say almost two years ago you must think we are idiots
No, I'm telling you that when they introduced minicoms, and shortly after that Dan said they had to make per-map fixes for this, and then he comes back and says evidently some people misunderstood him because he wasn't very clear, and here's what he meant, you can put two and two together or you can assume that it was a complete coincidence that mincoms happened right before he said there was a fix that had to be implemented per map, and minicom are a fix that has to be implemented per map.
I'm sure you're right; it's a complete coincidence, there never was a fix, it's just a happy accident that minicoms don't break cloak.
This is why Dan doesn't talk on the forums anymore.
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
yes it can be an anchor to a playstyle, and strategy wth are you smoking? it's a cornerstone of the kdf and romulan tactics...if it was so unimportant why would either races even use it? apologists irritate me. there's no defense for bad coding. even worse recognizing it as a bug and never properly fixing it. the game relies entirely to much on dialogue triggers as it is. 'click this to proceed' every fracking minute.
perhaps i'm overly touchy about pop-ups...rerunning boldly they rode for phased gear...but it's not just that mission, cure is a major irritation playing as kdf because i have to wait for that comm to pop up at the end before i can cloak, else that breaks it. pop-ups in other missions breaking cloak and guess what? no time to recloak cause it's on cd now.
and before someone or this person comes back 'it's too difficult the codes too complex' BS, done right in the first place there would have been no problems. such as the cloak can only be broken by taking damage in the case of everything but enhanced, and captains orders to decloak. fracking simple eh?
and instead of 'fixing' missions that got screwed up because of cloak they should have taken it into account when creating the missions that players will CLOAK. seriously...it's like there is zero foresight at cryptic HQ. who's supposed to be the guy or committee in charge of covering all the angles? doing a lousy job of it. and continuing to do a lousy job of it...at least you're consistent.
/agree You couldn't have stated it any more clearly.
AND the truth is, this bug is just hard to fix.... thats all.
oh well the point is two years later its not what customers want and is annoying most people who use it everybody knows its not right
But despite the fact we're customers, we can't get everything we ask for. Just because we don't get it doesn't mean we have to the right to call it wrong.
You can say they think we're idiots for this being a coincidence, or even a lie... but while you're doing so, things are going on behind their doors.
I will wait for the inevitable result of Dan's post, instead of making assumptions.
My two cents.
Was named Trek17.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
a bridge officer telling me something should not decloak my ship its not only wrong but stupid how many times in star trek did a bridge officer speaking decloak the ship. just picture it a Klingon officer says something to the captain and the bop's cloak goes down so do cloaks sense your voice now? the fact that they have asked us to compile a list of missions where contacts should not decloak your ship shows us its not right.
I think the thing is, PvE is NOT designed around the idea of cloak providing an alpha strike. It would potentially break "Blood of The Empire" if you got one.
Alpha strike via cloak can cause missions to be incompletable.
I'm not sure how an alpha strike via cloak would cause a mission to be incompleteable but I'll take you at your word. Regardless, the way cloaking works in STO is counter intuitive to what people expect, which is why multiple posts on this topic are popping up on the forums.
I would like to see an in game tutorial on how cloaking is supposed to work, as this would at least give us a guideline on how to bug report the missions that are adversely affected by the poor way cloaking was implemented in the game.
I'm not sure how an alpha strike via cloak would cause a mission to be incompleteable ...
It shouldn't. I've noticed that some NPCs have health protection. Meaning, that I'll alpha them and get them to 0 health, but they still won't die and the mission will continue on as normal.
If they can do that for some NPCs, then there's no reason they can't apply that to other NPCs.
It shouldn't. I've noticed that some NPCs have health protection. Meaning, that I'll alpha them and get them to 0 health, but they still won't die and the mission will continue on as normal.
If they can do that for some NPCs, then there's no reason they can't apply that to other NPCs.
If the cloak is soooo hard to fix that they actually have to lie and say its not a bug why not i donno write new code and make a new cloak?!
It would be easier to write a new code similar to the current cloak that provides the same function, uses same stat modifiers but works on its own set of code not linked to maps. Then simply change all the exsisting ships and npcs to use that new code by using a redirect.
There is no reason that the cloak should have ANYTHING to do with the map or npc dialog. As it is its worthless. In pvp/pve the cloak bugs and doesnt uncloak when told to sometimes but you are visable with no shields and weapons offline. Then it opts to disengage randomly almost depending on maps when one of our crew says something. We arent in subs here doing a silent running! There isnt air or water in vaccum of space to transfer sound vibrations any how!
Maybe nobody "owns" the cloak anymore, they may have all resigned. That's why he needs a list from us cause they really don't know!
Anybody that has ever flown a bop, and is a dev, should be all over this. The word that came to mind while reading his response was "disingenuous". I got a chuckle though, so thanks for that!
No, I'm telling you that when they introduced minicoms, and shortly after that Dan said they had to make per-map fixes for this, and then he comes back and says evidently some people misunderstood him because he wasn't very clear, and here's what he meant, you can put two and two together or you can assume that it was a complete coincidence that mincoms happened right before he said there was a fix that had to be implemented per map, and minicom are a fix that has to be implemented per map.
I'm sure you're right; it's a complete coincidence, there never was a fix, it's just a happy accident that minicoms don't break cloak.
This is why Dan doesn't talk on the forums anymore.
Um, this is all wrong.
It was Salami Inferno who said that they had to go map by map to correct the issue. It was also Salami who said they did that, then later had to recant and say that in fact it was done via a script.
When the game was shipped, pop-up dialogs and informational inter-actables did not force ships that were cloaked to decloak. The only thing that would force you out of cloak were mission objective inter-actables.
This was by design. If you could just stay cloaked you could basically just fly to a mission objective, use it, and leave without ever having to fight anything that might be there to protect it.
All of this stemmed from streamlining how things work within the engine, combining all of the ineractable types under one umbrella:
Somewhere between Season 2 and Season 3 all pop-ups and informational inter-actables were reclassified in the Engine to all work off the same internal engine feature, prior to this change there were separate systems for each . This change was a good thing for those of us that use the tools daily because it simplified our work flow. However, it had the side effect of breaking people out of cloak whenever you use any inter-actable or get any pop-up etc...etc..
When the bug was "fixed" supposedly they added a way to flag interactions so only the APPROPRIATE ONES (read: the ones that did so at launch) decloaked us. They didn't bother flagging anything by hand though (though Salami initially suggested they did), but instead ran a script that should have caught most of the issues... but didn't
According to Gozer they should have been fixing any problems where it wasn't caught, which, you know, was ALL OF THEM, which is what everyone reported.
There has been new tech added to this system as with the latest build that allows us to flag this stuff now on a case by case basis. We also ran a game wide "fix" script that should have caught most of these with Season 4.
I'm sure that the script probably missed a bunch of edge cases as well, so just report them when you see them and we will crush them as we get the reports.
Of course, nothing was ever done about any of the issues afterwards, and apparently they've now decided that nothing ever will be done.
You can find the Gozer and Salami quotes in this thread in quote format (otherwise attributed to Archived Post).
Captain: Alight crew, our Bird of Prey has been assigned to the Ker'rat system to salvage borg technology and blow up any Federation petaQs that happen to be in the area.
Crew: [The crew cheers, throws beers, and fires at Will]
Captain: Damnit that was my first officer... anyway. Upon arrival, we'll raise the cloak and go high above the solar plane, then plan our next moves from there.
Conn: We're dropping out warp-Sir! We're surround by Federation ships!
Captain: Engineering, all power to engines. Helm, evasive maneuvers! Get us out of here!
Chief Engineer and Helm: Aye Captain!
Captain: As soon as we clear tractor range... now! Raise cloak, all hands brace for impact!
[Ship escapes, much sighing and counting of stars (lucky or otherwise) ensues]
Captain: Helm, good piloting, take us up and let's see about finding us some prey. Sensors... anything?
Sensor Officer: No sir... wait. Yes, one of the Federation ships has broken off from the group. Trident-class, seems to be making best speed for one of the large Borg nodes. Oh, it's engaged with a Sphere and appears to be struggling a bit.
Captain: Excellent, that shall be our first kill of the day. Helm, vector us to intercept, inform me when we reach optimum weapons range.
Conn Officer: Aye Captain.
[VFx shot, outline of the invisible Bird of Prey lines up on the unsuspecting Trident-class Science Ship as a pair of Defiants decloak and destroy the Sphere that it had been struggling to kill]
Captain: Blast, no honor in committing suicide against such a force. Another opportunity will arise, and now we know there are Defiants about with cloaking devices. We can use this to our advantage. Probably.
Comms: Captain! Our Tactical officer has something he needs to tell you right away! I'm lowering our cloak!
Captain: What the FU-
[VFx shot: The Bird of Prey decloaks and is quickly disabled by the Trident before being vaporized by the Defiants.]
Now. If you had watched an episode of Star Trek that played out like that, would *you* have thought it sensible?
The thing is, to actually FIX the cloak they would have to go through the complete game, every mission dialog and tag it to decloak or not.
That would be super time intensive so it is not going to happen.
And yepp this is totally a "It's a feature not a bug" statement.... "working as intended", move along!
Shenanigans...
The problem is also, it doesn't decloak me when i need to react (press a button), but when the text pop up appears, so i have no control over when i decloak at all.
Can you imagine Star Trek 6 if all Kirk needed to do to decloak that Bird of Prey was to HAIL them?
That would have been a short movie...
Dstahl: To clear up some confusion about this issue, let me shed some light on how cloak is intended to relate to interactions within the game. It is our intention that any interaction within the game will remove stealth. Anytime you are expected to take a game action of clicking on a button to respond, whether it is to scan something, or acknowledge a bridge officer, or make a command decision via a contact option, it should pull you out of stealth. With that said, there are undoubtedly missions out there that were made prior to the inception of the mini-contacts (the ones that fly across your screen) which are just providing information and shouldn?t need to be acknowledged. One reason we created mini-contacts was to allow information to be given by your bridge crew without you needing to acknowledge it for game design purposes. If you feel that a specific mission contact could be switched to a mini-contact that doesn?t need acknowledgement, then that is the type of suggestion that should be made. We can then look at the mission specifically and determine whether it warrants a mini-contact or not.
The way this answer is written is interesting. He's not saying 'cloaking was supposed to be this way from the start'. He's saying 'we want cloak to work the way it is now and some older missions decloak you unnecessarily'. Maybe he specifically said different in the Raptr Q&A but going off of this quote he's not trying to rewrite history, he's just saying 'this is how we want it to work'. The interesting part is that this answer is the exact opposite of Cryptic's previously communicated position on this, but Dan phrases the answer so that it sounds like this was Cryptic's intention all along even though he never explicitly states that. Basically, smoke and mirrors.
Regardless, it's still unacceptable. He comes out and says that acknowledging a Boff should drop cloak. As intended. :rolleyes:
Star Trek: Online - Now with 100% more dinosaurs!!
Well, I'm no PvPer but I have a question: Why exactly is there "story content" on a PvP map? I mean, in the middle of the fight obviously.
Same question regarding the STFs - the game outright forces us to do these missions a bazillion times and every single time we are forced to click thorugh all the story bits - they don't change, we know what's going on after 300 runs, it's nothing new - but it breaks the cloak. If they can't fix that why isn't there an option for PvP and STFs to turn the story dialogue off once you read it one time?
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
Because the story bits are your button to tell the game "I'm ready for the next bit, spawn Borg cube please."
What's written as text in the window is meaningless from a gameplay perspective.
Without that button, there would be no way for the game to know when it should proceed.
I understand why they do not want people going around constantly cloaked, and to be fair for story line content they are right.
However, for certain things they do need to implement the mini com. All PvP maps and war zones, fleet events, fleet actions, Red Alerts and the STF maps.
They are really the only maps where it is a problem, normal PvE missions in this game are so easy you do not need to cloak at all, so the times you can it is a bonus. I am on my 4th KDF character now going through levelling in a BoP and I do not see the need for a cloak in PvE story missions.
Fed side I have not really made much use of my Defiant or Galaxy X so I cannot comment too much on it. But as a KDF player if the above listed maps were given the once over to make sure my cloak wasn't effected as the missions progress I'd be very happy.
Because the story bits are your button to tell the game "I'm ready for the next bit, spawn Borg cube please."
What's written as text in the window is meaningless from a gameplay perspective.
Without that button, there would be no way for the game to know when it should proceed.
Timers? Like in the fleet events. That would solve that problem
Ehm, sorry, but I don't buy the excuse that people could bypass story content with the cloak. 90% of the story content is blowing enemy ships up. What the constant decloaking does is making the cloak useless for that, especially for the enemies where it would be the most useful.
FKA K-Tar, grumpy Klingon/El-Aurian hybrid. Now assimilated by PWE.
Sometimes, if you want to bury the hatchet with a Klingon, it has to be in his skull. - Captain K'Tar of the USS Danu about J'mpok.
At the very least, put Ker'rat as a mini com thing. I find that's the biggest point of contention, PVE's too easy for it to be much of an issue, in Ker'rat it can get you smoked like a fine Cuban cigar.
Comments
Of course. And I agree. So make those options happen. But don't break a fundamental canon ability like cloaking just to appease some and annoy others. Make it work in a logical and reasonable manner that makes sense, not break it to uselessness or turn it into a "flavor" ability. But Cryptic should not be taking the lazy approach on a bug, then say working as intended when they can't find a solution.
I paid good money for a B'rel retrofit only weeks ago. Now we see the pivotal ability, the enhanced battle cloak, the one thing that allows a ship like this to be effective with it having less weapons, hull and shields than same tier Fed and KDF vessels, less effective because of cloaking changes.
This TRIBBLE will stop if they want people to keep playing and keep purchasing z store items.
Player and forumite formerly known as FEELTHETHUNDER
Expatriot Might Characters in EXILE
I am astonished as well. I distinctly remember it being stated, very early on after release, that this was a bug and they they were looking for a way to fix it. Now.. all of a sudden they are trying to say that it is intended?
Whether this is indeed intended or a cover-up-bug, either way this "feature" is bloody annoying and should be removed. There are plenty of episodes and movies where cloaked ships are able to hail and communicate with other ships...
This "feature" of being uncloaked when hailing mission objectives needs to be removed... or fixed. Since I do not buy this recent calling of it "intended," I say fix it please.
Thank you for your time.
Short Name: Zebular ( @zebular )
Starfleet Rank / Serial: Vice Admiral, Field Captain / SZ-872-112
Fleet Registry / Command Ship: Fleet Admiral of the Betazed Patrol / U.S.S. Zebulon, NX-91333-C
Diplomatic Registry: Starfleet Ambassador, Betazed Ambassador, Son of the Thirteenth House of Betazed
Species / Birth Date / Birth Place: Half-Betazoid, Half-Human / Stardate 27481.22 / Rixx City, Betazed
Handles: @zebular (PC) • @MtnDewFreak (XBOX) • @Terraseer (PS4)
yes it can be an anchor to a playstyle, and strategy wth are you smoking? it's a cornerstone of the kdf and romulan tactics...if it was so unimportant why would either races even use it? apologists irritate me. there's no defense for bad coding. even worse recognizing it as a bug and never properly fixing it. the game relies entirely to much on dialogue triggers as it is. 'click this to proceed' every fracking minute.
perhaps i'm overly touchy about pop-ups...rerunning boldly they rode for phased gear...but it's not just that mission, cure is a major irritation playing as kdf because i have to wait for that comm to pop up at the end before i can cloak, else that breaks it. pop-ups in other missions breaking cloak and guess what? no time to recloak cause it's on cd now.
and before someone or this person comes back 'it's too difficult the codes too complex' BS, done right in the first place there would have been no problems. such as the cloak can only be broken by taking damage in the case of everything but enhanced, and captains orders to decloak. fracking simple eh?
and instead of 'fixing' missions that got screwed up because of cloak they should have taken it into account when creating the missions that players will CLOAK. seriously...it's like there is zero foresight at cryptic HQ. who's supposed to be the guy or committee in charge of covering all the angles? doing a lousy job of it. and continuing to do a lousy job of it...at least you're consistent.
Donate Brains, zombies in Washington DC are starving.
No, I'm telling you that when they introduced minicoms, and shortly after that Dan said they had to make per-map fixes for this, and then he comes back and says evidently some people misunderstood him because he wasn't very clear, and here's what he meant, you can put two and two together or you can assume that it was a complete coincidence that mincoms happened right before he said there was a fix that had to be implemented per map, and minicom are a fix that has to be implemented per map.
I'm sure you're right; it's a complete coincidence, there never was a fix, it's just a happy accident that minicoms don't break cloak.
This is why Dan doesn't talk on the forums anymore.
/agree You couldn't have stated it any more clearly.
AND the truth is, this bug is just hard to fix.... thats all.
Yeah, that's right.
You can say they think we're idiots for this being a coincidence, or even a lie... but while you're doing so, things are going on behind their doors.
I will wait for the inevitable result of Dan's post, instead of making assumptions.
My two cents.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
LOL. That officer would go out the nearest airlock, like someone else suggested. :P
I'm not sure how an alpha strike via cloak would cause a mission to be incompleteable but I'll take you at your word. Regardless, the way cloaking works in STO is counter intuitive to what people expect, which is why multiple posts on this topic are popping up on the forums.
I would like to see an in game tutorial on how cloaking is supposed to work, as this would at least give us a guideline on how to bug report the missions that are adversely affected by the poor way cloaking was implemented in the game.
It shouldn't. I've noticed that some NPCs have health protection. Meaning, that I'll alpha them and get them to 0 health, but they still won't die and the mission will continue on as normal.
If they can do that for some NPCs, then there's no reason they can't apply that to other NPCs.
The alpha strike excuse is bull.
/Amen... lol
Yeah, that's right.
It would be easier to write a new code similar to the current cloak that provides the same function, uses same stat modifiers but works on its own set of code not linked to maps. Then simply change all the exsisting ships and npcs to use that new code by using a redirect.
There is no reason that the cloak should have ANYTHING to do with the map or npc dialog. As it is its worthless. In pvp/pve the cloak bugs and doesnt uncloak when told to sometimes but you are visable with no shields and weapons offline. Then it opts to disengage randomly almost depending on maps when one of our crew says something. We arent in subs here doing a silent running! There isnt air or water in vaccum of space to transfer sound vibrations any how!
Anybody that has ever flown a bop, and is a dev, should be all over this. The word that came to mind while reading his response was "disingenuous". I got a chuckle though, so thanks for that!
Um, this is all wrong.
It was Salami Inferno who said that they had to go map by map to correct the issue. It was also Salami who said they did that, then later had to recant and say that in fact it was done via a script.
Exact quote on the fix:
Beyond that, this was never the intention. We learned from Gozer that the intention was to have people decloaked by objective inter-actables.
All of this stemmed from streamlining how things work within the engine, combining all of the ineractable types under one umbrella:
When the bug was "fixed" supposedly they added a way to flag interactions so only the APPROPRIATE ONES (read: the ones that did so at launch) decloaked us. They didn't bother flagging anything by hand though (though Salami initially suggested they did), but instead ran a script that should have caught most of the issues... but didn't
According to Gozer they should have been fixing any problems where it wasn't caught, which, you know, was ALL OF THEM, which is what everyone reported.
Of course, nothing was ever done about any of the issues afterwards, and apparently they've now decided that nothing ever will be done.
You can find the Gozer and Salami quotes in this thread in quote format (otherwise attributed to Archived Post).
Captain: Alight crew, our Bird of Prey has been assigned to the Ker'rat system to salvage borg technology and blow up any Federation petaQs that happen to be in the area.
Crew: [The crew cheers, throws beers, and fires at Will]
Captain: Damnit that was my first officer... anyway. Upon arrival, we'll raise the cloak and go high above the solar plane, then plan our next moves from there.
Conn: We're dropping out warp-Sir! We're surround by Federation ships!
Captain: Engineering, all power to engines. Helm, evasive maneuvers! Get us out of here!
Chief Engineer and Helm: Aye Captain!
Captain: As soon as we clear tractor range... now! Raise cloak, all hands brace for impact!
[Ship escapes, much sighing and counting of stars (lucky or otherwise) ensues]
Captain: Helm, good piloting, take us up and let's see about finding us some prey. Sensors... anything?
Sensor Officer: No sir... wait. Yes, one of the Federation ships has broken off from the group. Trident-class, seems to be making best speed for one of the large Borg nodes. Oh, it's engaged with a Sphere and appears to be struggling a bit.
Captain: Excellent, that shall be our first kill of the day. Helm, vector us to intercept, inform me when we reach optimum weapons range.
Conn Officer: Aye Captain.
[VFx shot, outline of the invisible Bird of Prey lines up on the unsuspecting Trident-class Science Ship as a pair of Defiants decloak and destroy the Sphere that it had been struggling to kill]
Captain: Blast, no honor in committing suicide against such a force. Another opportunity will arise, and now we know there are Defiants about with cloaking devices. We can use this to our advantage. Probably.
Comms: Captain! Our Tactical officer has something he needs to tell you right away! I'm lowering our cloak!
Captain: What the FU-
[VFx shot: The Bird of Prey decloaks and is quickly disabled by the Trident before being vaporized by the Defiants.]
Now. If you had watched an episode of Star Trek that played out like that, would *you* have thought it sensible?
That would be super time intensive so it is not going to happen.
And yepp this is totally a "It's a feature not a bug" statement.... "working as intended", move along!
Shenanigans...
The problem is also, it doesn't decloak me when i need to react (press a button), but when the text pop up appears, so i have no control over when i decloak at all.
Can you imagine Star Trek 6 if all Kirk needed to do to decloak that Bird of Prey was to HAIL them?
That would have been a short movie...
The way this answer is written is interesting. He's not saying 'cloaking was supposed to be this way from the start'. He's saying 'we want cloak to work the way it is now and some older missions decloak you unnecessarily'. Maybe he specifically said different in the Raptr Q&A but going off of this quote he's not trying to rewrite history, he's just saying 'this is how we want it to work'. The interesting part is that this answer is the exact opposite of Cryptic's previously communicated position on this, but Dan phrases the answer so that it sounds like this was Cryptic's intention all along even though he never explicitly states that. Basically, smoke and mirrors.
Regardless, it's still unacceptable. He comes out and says that acknowledging a Boff should drop cloak. As intended. :rolleyes:
Actually, it would only be about 5 minutes shorter than it was, technically.
Same question regarding the STFs - the game outright forces us to do these missions a bazillion times and every single time we are forced to click thorugh all the story bits - they don't change, we know what's going on after 300 runs, it's nothing new - but it breaks the cloak. If they can't fix that why isn't there an option for PvP and STFs to turn the story dialogue off once you read it one time?
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What's written as text in the window is meaningless from a gameplay perspective.
Without that button, there would be no way for the game to know when it should proceed.
However, for certain things they do need to implement the mini com. All PvP maps and war zones, fleet events, fleet actions, Red Alerts and the STF maps.
They are really the only maps where it is a problem, normal PvE missions in this game are so easy you do not need to cloak at all, so the times you can it is a bonus. I am on my 4th KDF character now going through levelling in a BoP and I do not see the need for a cloak in PvE story missions.
Fed side I have not really made much use of my Defiant or Galaxy X so I cannot comment too much on it. But as a KDF player if the above listed maps were given the once over to make sure my cloak wasn't effected as the missions progress I'd be very happy.
Timers? Like in the fleet events. That would solve that problem
Sometimes, if you want to bury the hatchet with a Klingon, it has to be in his skull. - Captain K'Tar of the USS Danu about J'mpok.