I'm going to go with the explanation that in the 16 years since cloaking technology was first "discovered" by the houses, someone has reverse engineered it and developed sensor improvements that render it useless. These days a ships computer will not only detect cloaked ships but will also do a simulated render of the ship on the HUD, allowing the pilot to see the ship's position.
' Wrote:I'm going to go with the explanation that in the 16 years since cloaking technology was first "discovered" by the houses, someone has reverse engineered it and developed sensor improvements that render it useless. These days a ships computer will not only detect cloaked ships but will also do a simulated render of the ship on the HUD, allowing the pilot to see the ship's position.
excellemt way to explain it! although personally i'd like cloaking, i know most people hate the idea but if implimented correctly i think there's a place for everything.
Ideas for possible cloaking limitations one or a mixture (might have been said)
1. they drain energy like a regular weapon, only very fast (different level cloaking devices for different ships so that battleships can't stay cloaked indeffinately with their large power supply)
2. cloaking lasts a maximum of 10 secs
3. cant cloak during thrusting, cruise or tradlanes
4. if player is selected in the HUD before he cloaks, he can be cded to disrupt cloaking device
5. small asteroids, solid objects and any attacks hitting the ship would shut down the shield (although possibly the little asteroids just make it flicker
6. Cloaking device replaces scanner (BS cloakers will cost same BS licenset) only have very low scanner range. Helps balance it out for pirates, so that any traders using cloak can't see pirates coming a mile off and cloak, go 'round them (although currently scanner type doesn't affect other player view distance at the moment anyway)
7. thruster/engine trail s till visible
8. firing of weps by cloaked party will cause loss of cloak.
9. cloak requires time to charge up (the same as cruise engines)
10. weapons require time to charge back up after de-cloaking (like cruise engines)