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Is Battle Cloak the only cloak worth using?
tilarta
Member Posts: 1,801 Arc User
After running my Scimitar for a prolonged period now, I noticed my gameplay pattern was changing for that specific character.
All because of Battle Cloak.
On my KDF, I never bothered to cloak, since it can be disrupted too easily and you have to fly out of combat before you can cloak again.
My Starfleet gave up using their one ship (Defiant Retrofit) that had a cloak because it wasn't a Battle Cloak.
But on my Romulan, I will cloak as often as I can and sometimes, even use Cloaked Barrage to fight while cloaked.
Just for the simple reason that I can cloak on demand whenever I want.
Does this mean that Battle Cloak is the only serious cloak in the game?
Disclaimer: I don't want build advice on maximizing cloaking abillities, so don't bother offering it.
All because of Battle Cloak.
On my KDF, I never bothered to cloak, since it can be disrupted too easily and you have to fly out of combat before you can cloak again.
My Starfleet gave up using their one ship (Defiant Retrofit) that had a cloak because it wasn't a Battle Cloak.
But on my Romulan, I will cloak as often as I can and sometimes, even use Cloaked Barrage to fight while cloaked.
Just for the simple reason that I can cloak on demand whenever I want.
Does this mean that Battle Cloak is the only serious cloak in the game?
Disclaimer: I don't want build advice on maximizing cloaking abillities, so don't bother offering it.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Post edited by tilarta on
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It ain't that special IMO. It's better than normal cloak, which allows for you to choose where the first strike will happen, but that is about all.
Enhanced Battle Cloaks are just flat out game changing for you as a player, particularly if you go the Torpedo Boat route. After that, even Battle Cloaks feel like they're just "half warmed up left overs" by comparison, simply because they aren't at all comparable (aside from the FX).
Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser
Immortal BOff Skills combo for Ground
Regular battle cloaks are okay. But couple them with the cloak cooldown reducing romulan boffs, and the problem starts.
Elite Defense Stovokor
Not just reducing the CD on the cloak, but majorly buffing the Ambush bonus AND making it longer to the point you can choose to 'blip' your cloak to constantly refresh the bonus.
Even then, the cloak itself isn't an issue, BC or not. It's the BOFFs.
I honestly think that it should be to choose when and where the battle starts. Its one thing for a BoP, or other raider sized ship to be able to run away, but using it on larger ships is just ridiculous. There should be a commitment to fight after you start it.
Same as everything else in this game, there is no cost associated with any benefit, everything is free, cryptic wants you to like them and be their friend.
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
No it does not.
Elite Defense Stovokor
It's a sore point with KDF fanatics that they are actively hostile to the idea of the Defiant acquiring a battle cloak.
Even if it has one in the show.
It's a Romulan Cloak remember?
So I highly doubted the fleet version would have a battle cloak.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Oh whoops... derp. I meant to say cloak, but somehow 'battle' got in there. Thank you for pointing that out.
NP. A long time ago I used to think that the fed cloak console was a gimmick, and the only way for craptic to redeem this hideous console was to at least make it battle cloak. Now with the advent of romulans, and 90% of romulans flying under the federation flag like rest of the player base, I think this point has become somewhat moot.
Four word sentence with nothing but truth in it, and somehow you not only managed to wonder about its veracity, but also saw some sort of conspiracy in it? Gotta give it to you champ
Elite Defense Stovokor
As for the conspiracy, I don't know if Cryptic purposefully kiboshed the idea of a Starfleet battle cloak, but it is firmly on record that KDF fanatics hate the idea.
I've seen pages of ranting against the idea every time it is suggested!
I'm waiting for the ranting to start here.
Now, as regards the Defiant's cloak in the show, it is a battle cloak.
Firstly, it's Romulan technology and as demonstrated by the latest faction, Romulan cloaks are all battle cloaks.
Secondly, although I don't remember the episode (most likely the first Defiant episode), Sisko gives the order to cloak while the Defiant is under fire from the Jem'Hadar.
And for a 3rd point, the Defiant is a warship, so I never understood why a warship wouldn't be using the cloak of a war ready vessel (as opposed to the standard cloak).
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
For the longest time, kdf had nothing going for them, except for their BoPs and their battlecloaks. Everytime there was a cross-faction console, kdf has a history of their best consoles being stolen from them. There was no incentive whatsoever from cryptic for players to join kdf. As such, every little thing that made kdf unique, had to be protected. Kdf tried to protect their consoles and failed miserably. Understandably, the idea of losing battle cloak, and hence by extension, the exclusivity of their BoP play-style, was something that was not very appealing. But like I said in my post above, with the advent of Romulans with their superior everything, the whole point has become moot.
Now they made it so that a player can start a kdf toon from level scratch. They added more storyline missions. That is good. But kdf is still nowhere to completion and I have a hounding suspicion that it is again going to stay that way for a looong time
Yes, defiant definitely had a battle cloak in the show and I loved it.
Elite Defense Stovokor
I think there's really a lot of problems with KDF from the bottom to the top and battle cloak is one of them.
Sure they get badass KHG armour and every sweaty teens dream of a crew full of half naked Orion's but apart from that most people just don't have an incentive to play a faction with so little support. Maybe it's time Cryptic got silly with how much ec and dili they can earn whilst making all KDF ships have 10-20% more hull than the fed/rom counterparts?
Also I think the look of Klingons needs to be changed, less dirty and red, more war like with a bit of red.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
Throwing balance to the wind never works, all it does is make everyone resentful. The feds would resent the KDF for getting better ships for nothing and the kdf would resent teh feds for STILL not playing KDF. You may think i'm talking nonsense but i've seen it, even on these very forums.
KDF players all but ranting that the feds refuse to even try out KDF, even with all its benefits and perks; they take it as a personal insult and in a way I guess it is. Its like saying "even with all your extras, your faction is still not worth touching". Imbalance never helps faction parity, EVER. It only embitters everyone involved. Its a lazy solution to actually making a faction more interesting. That said, I can't imagine actual KDF fans want the KDF to go the way of the Romulans, poor sods are stuck playing as members of a generic rebel alliance instead of as actual romulans from the shows.
What about a full on redesigning of all the ship interiors, qo'nos and star base to tone down the reds and perhaps change up the colour palette to be less mucky but still keeping a combat edge. Sure it might be deviating a bit from the shows but then the shows had an ulterior motive with the design of the KDF.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
Its doubly unfortunate because cryptic went the other extreme with Romulans, not just slightly stronger gear but OP stuff everywhere. The T'varo is probably the best overall ship in the game, and every STF is dominated by Scimitars, the BOFFs are stupid, consoles are absurbd, etc. Predictable results, there are a lot of Rom players.
KDF really needs a shot in the arm. Something to make people want to roll the toons.
o.o
/10chars
Elite Defense Stovokor
If you have to slot a console for it, then its not useful.
There are two reasons why I avoid playing KDF.
1. The bugs just don't get fixed.
Why would anyone want to play a faction full of bugs?
2. It claims to be KDF, but it's Klingon all the way.
Klingons are my least favorite race in Star Trek.
I never approved of the "honor before common sense" approach.
Also, even if you're playing an Orion, a Nausicaan, a Gorn, a Lethean or a Custom Alien, the mission dialogue still reads as though you are a Klingon.
And judging from the different mindsets of those species, each of them would take a different approach to each situation, based on their cultural outlook (which is nothing like that of a Klingon!).
While the first problem may be fixed in time, the 2nd one won't be ever fixed.
So, no matter what they do to KDF to make it more attractive, I'll never play it again.
Therefore, playing "dog in the manger" and stopping Starfleet from having stuff that is the domain of KDF isn't going to motivate me to play it.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
I think that all ships with cloak should be able to battle cloak. No ship could "not cloak" simply because they went into battle, it was just a dangerous thing to do because your shields drop. Klingon ships of all sizes in the show would cloak in battle if they felt that today wasn't a good day to die.
I think much of the issues with cloak would be mitigated if we had targetable subsystems like the ships in bridge commander had. In that game, you could specifically target and disable the enemy cloaking device so that they couldn't hide and run or hide to repair. Ironically, I don't remember if it was cryptic or the people who were originally developing the game, but someone said that the average player found targeting subsystems too... confusing? Or something along those lines... right, cause the plethora of abilities in the game that we have to micromanage (especially those who don't know how to keybind/refuse to keybind/get frustrated trying to make it work and give up on it), their related doffs that most players don't even know exist, shared cool downs, what exactly they effect and to what extent, yeah, that isn't confusing at all. :rolleyes:
But, someone says, "there are skills to counter cloak! grav well! tractor beam!" erm... are there any others? Either way, maybe if they put in a point at which the cloak gets knocked offline, like if your ship falls below 25%-20% health or something. Then maybe all of the kdf and romulan faction having battle cloak wouldn't be too much of an issue. At least it would eliminate that incredibly frustrating escape by battle cloak RIGHT at the last second. Though battle cloaking at such low health typically just results in a cloaked explosion anyway.