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Torpedoes and Battle Cloak
foxxblitz
Member Posts: 13 Arc User
I've been playing two KDF captains regularly for a couple of months now and I've had quite a bit of fun. However, I have one big complaint about Battle Cloak and BoP's.
Torpedos fired before you're cloaked will follow and hit you even after you're fully cloaked. This makes battle cloak extremely risky to use when you're being targeted by extremely powerful enemies like Elite Borg ships or when you're low on HP. When you cloak, your shields go down and you're left with your puny ~32k hull ( Or less if you're damaged ). Something that two elite borg torpedoes will eat up right away. If they don't kill you right away, their ~300-1000 DPS plasma fire will. The "+50% defense" doesn't help either.
This flaw severely negates the advantages to Battle Cloak, the one major ability that is supposed to make the BoP worth flying over a Raptor. I don't mind being hit by torpedoes while I'm cloaking. It's after I've cloaked is when it really bothers me. IE: I play Elite STF's quite often. If I get too much aggro, like in Hive, I'll cloak, fall back and find an easier target. Sometimes, after about 5 seconds of being fully cloaked, BOOM, I'm suddenly down to 50% HP and have a 600 DPS plasma fire burning me down to ~30% HP. This is even with 37% kinetic resistance and 130% bonus defense.
This flaw also affects some destructible torpedos like the Transphasic Cluster Mine Torpedo. In PvP, it will follow cloaked ships ( Even if it's 8km away, way out of even high stealth sight range ) instead of targeting the next nearest enemy like it should.
My point: Torpedoes should NOT follow and hit cloaked ships. They do not have super advanced stealth sights.
Torpedos fired before you're cloaked will follow and hit you even after you're fully cloaked. This makes battle cloak extremely risky to use when you're being targeted by extremely powerful enemies like Elite Borg ships or when you're low on HP. When you cloak, your shields go down and you're left with your puny ~32k hull ( Or less if you're damaged ). Something that two elite borg torpedoes will eat up right away. If they don't kill you right away, their ~300-1000 DPS plasma fire will. The "+50% defense" doesn't help either.
This flaw severely negates the advantages to Battle Cloak, the one major ability that is supposed to make the BoP worth flying over a Raptor. I don't mind being hit by torpedoes while I'm cloaking. It's after I've cloaked is when it really bothers me. IE: I play Elite STF's quite often. If I get too much aggro, like in Hive, I'll cloak, fall back and find an easier target. Sometimes, after about 5 seconds of being fully cloaked, BOOM, I'm suddenly down to 50% HP and have a 600 DPS plasma fire burning me down to ~30% HP. This is even with 37% kinetic resistance and 130% bonus defense.
This flaw also affects some destructible torpedos like the Transphasic Cluster Mine Torpedo. In PvP, it will follow cloaked ships ( Even if it's 8km away, way out of even high stealth sight range ) instead of targeting the next nearest enemy like it should.
My point: Torpedoes should NOT follow and hit cloaked ships. They do not have super advanced stealth sights.
Post edited by foxxblitz on
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Al Rivera hates Klingons
Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert
All cloaks should be canon.
Cloak merely masks you from sensors, you're still physically occupying space, as evidenced by ST:4.
When you cloak the torp should lose its target lock and continue on its vector. If you stay in its flight path, its gonna hit, alter course and you should be safe.
Thats how it should work. Unfortunately, the game handles targeting and weapons in some really weird ways from what I've read.
Fire at Will and Cloaks is another issue. If FAW is meant to be a 'randomly shoot everywhere and hope you hit something' ala Nemesis, it should have a chance of hitting your cloaked ship. If however FAW is meant to be a \distribute fire between all currently known targets', then there should be no chance of it hitting a cloaked ship, unless, its in the line of fire between you and a known target.
Again, due to the way the game handles targeting, some abilities, sadly, do not work as they should.
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This vulnerability is also why BoPs don't actually cloak in the battle zone, unless the opponent is really weak in DPS or is distracted by other targets. Cloaking when there's the chance that you could get alphastriked in the 2-3 seconds you're still targetable and vulnerable is a bit of a risk.
I can't wait until Feds start using their precious Romulan battlecloaks and realize it's not the epic, OP tool that they seem to think it is. It's an edge in tactical flexibility and decloak-alpha damage. That's about it. The BoPs, in particular, give up a fair bit in hull and shield mod (and, in the past, a tactical console) to have the battlecloak, universal boffstations, and the high turnrate.
As someone whose main is KDF, and someone who pvp's exclusively in a bird of prey, I will say this. Your doing it wrong.
Placate/confuse targets, then cloak.
I'm aware it doesn't address the cannon concerns, but game play wise cloaking under fire has to be a bit risky. Imagine if hitting that cloak button was a complete get out of jail free card, opponents would literally have 15 second windows to kill you.
As somebody who's tested Romulans on Tribble, I will tell you this: Higher-tier Romulan ships already funtion like that.
You see, the opponents LITERALLY have 15 second windows to breach the shields and deal considerable damage to a D'Deridex or Ha'apax before it cloaks, at which point complete destruction from 100% hull to 0% is impossible without some SERIOUS damage output (hitting some odd 20-30k DPS for a couple of seconds, for example)
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
That is exactly what I was telling everyone I saw whine about the D'Deridex. That a galaxy cruiser with battlecloak was not a thing to complain about, that would in fact be evil.
My words fell on deaf ears.
I find it amusing that ALL Romulan ships apparently have battle cloak. And I really wonder why all KDF ships don't have battle cloak, and why ALL birds of prey don't have the advanced battle cloak.
I'm guessing play balance.. but then I'm an old hard core gronyard of a gamer.
The enemy has not intention of giving you a fair fight anyway, so whats with the concern over if a ship has a cloak? Or what type?
As A KDF player I almost never cloak any more other then to set up for a de cloak alpha... and I don't even bother against AI simply because the way the combat system works, yep, its pretty much suicide, so I don't bother cloaking in PvE unless its some sort of mission requirement.
It might not be as bad as people are thinking I feel. Because while BC can be used in the middle of the fray, using it isn't necessarily a good idea.
Plus, even with a shorter cooldown, it's not like they become immune to anti-cloaking tech or anything. If you count to about 10-12 seconds, then hit them with a Tractor Beam, they aren't gonna be able to cloak. Yes yes, they can use APO and PH, but even with those, it'll still slow and delay the cloaking.
You can also disable their aux power in various ways, or totally disable their ship. If they do decide to cloak in the middle of combat, then immediately try and hit them with an anti-cloaking ability like tractor, CPB, Antiproton Sweep, etc.
They might be able to cloak more often, but there's still all the same ways to prevent and de-cloak someone.
As I've found out, BoP's pretty much seem only useful in PvP. They require too much defense optimization to the point where they're sacrificing firepower to be survivable in PvE.
Well, I've argued several times that ALL cloaks should function as battle cloaks currently do, and that - in order to preserve the uniqueness of birds of prey as well as the B'rel - every battle cloak and advanced battle cloak should be buffed to the next tier.
In the case of BCs, it would become an ABC. ABCs would in turn be buffed (shorter decloak, no decloak, ability to fire energy weapons... whatever Cryptic decided to do).
But apparently, nobody ever listens to people like me...
I will admit, however, that unless all Starfleet ships would gain access to the cloaking device console (as well as any non-Klingon KDF ships), there would be a bit of imbalance.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.