Cloak bug

[Mímir]

No, you can still damage a cloaked ship if you know where it is at with all sorts of gunfire.

The problem isn't the gunfire/missiles, but the CD's - if you got 10-15 seconds to make your escape in a cloaked snub, 1-2 CD's will slow you down so much that escape is impossible before uncloaking. Hence the uselessness of a small cloak.

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[Jack_Henderson]

The problem isn't the gunfire/missiles, but the CD's - if you got 10-15 seconds to make your escape in a cloaked snub, 1-2 CD's will slow you down so much that escape is impossible before uncloaking. Hence the uselessness of a small cloak.

Cloaky bombers are great in group engagement in a "get in, strike hard, get out" role when no one has the time to scan enemies. They are not useless. They are very powerful if used correctly.

They are not that strong if used in solo activity... but: that's how the game is meant to be played anyway. Solo activity should never be 100 % safe.

I agree, however, that the cloaking time is a little on the short side for snubs. Plus 15 seconds (making it 45 seconds in total on a Roc with UAU5) would be good. 30 seconds maximum cloak time (Roc UAU5) is a little on the short side, imo.

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[Hielor]

I'm just thinking - after reading how much whining there is going on here - that what if it wasn't a bug, but is a design feature?

After all, your DIRECT fire weapons still become useless, so that means that the guy cloaking can't be shot. But indirect fire weapons - missiles - hey, how do you know that this wasn't planned in the first place? And congratulations, you've now found the inherent weakness of cloaks, that missiles can track.

Except that you can see the missile or CD tracking the cloaked target, which means that direct fire weapons are usable to hit him, rendering the cloak completely worthless.

[Ursus]

Except that you can see the missile or CD tracking the cloaked target, which means that direct fire weapons are usable to hit him, rendering the cloak completely worthless.

The no-fail escape becomes <strike>worthless</strike> partial-fail. Sneaking up on a target still works, as does recon function

I've fought a few cloaked cruisers and never been able to follow them just by spamming CD.

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Discovery 24/7 Negotiating Tactics:

[Jack_Henderson]

Except that you can see the missile or CD tracking the cloaked target, which means that direct fire weapons are usable to hit him, rendering the cloak completely worthless.

I have chased cloaked ships A LOT. *waves to Vispilio*:)

And you cannot even hit a Ptrans with guns/Snac/direct fire because CDs do not give away the exact position, they also do not show you the direction of movement and it all remains very very sketchy at best. You can be glad if you manage to not lose a Ptrans out of the CD angle and to always keep the Novas locking.

Hitting a cloaked fighter with guns is next to impossible, believe me.
And: disengaging from a fighter Cding you is not hard. You have to surprise him and get out of his CD angle. As you are invisible, it is far from impossible. I have never been caught.

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[SnakThree]

DELETE

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[SeaFalcon]

All you need is to spam CDs since it is not like that snub will have CM, yes? Later on the fuel runs out, you know?

oh boy too bad, he got caught. Just like his CM's ain't working on drunk CD's.

[Knjaz]

Well, I'm not sure why this came up just now, since =2te= (those pesky Rheinland cloaking turtles - yes, it's mainly =2te=) knew it from the very beginning (we made good number of tests on our first cloaks, back then), but we never considered it an exploit or something like that.

I'm just thinking - after reading how much whining there is going on here - that what if it wasn't a bug, but is a design feature?

After all, your DIRECT fire weapons still become useless, so that means that the guy cloaking can't be shot. But indirect fire weapons - missiles - hey, how do you know that this wasn't planned in the first place? And congratulations, you've now found the inherent weakness of cloaks, that missiles can track.

I think that'd be about the perfect definition of irony, considering how people try to always one-up and overpower things ...

Totally not true. We've been killing cloaked ships in their cloaked mode. Just because CDs show you where he is and the vector of his movement, and if it's at least Cruiser sized, he'll die. Or get out of cloak and die (but the former happened more often. For example, I once killed a cloaked rans with a thannie, and Rans had about 35% hull left when cloak activated. I just kept shooting him, and even running past me didn't help him, at all)

At same time, I've been caught by this as well. There's no counter to that thing if you're 1x1 - CDs will show your vector, and they will always track, even if he's not turned towards you (i.e. you're not on his screen). (but as long as it's in CD tracking angle)

Also, according to my experience, this doesn't work well in large scale fights. We didn't specifically test it yet, just LNS were never sucessfull enough to prevent our turtles from running, and we never had a chance to test it against Liberty dread that would try to run through our formation - (i.e. if CD will still track you, even if there're many other targets on screen, and at closer range) - then yes, it'd make cloak totally useless as an escape mechanism.

(Edit: but yeah, there was something that can be considered half-test. A dread against few our ships (4-5), + few Liberty ships on the field. Dread was pinned down until we finished off LAC, and when we turned our attention to it and engaged cruise to catch up with it and kill it in cloaked mode, it run out of fuel)

Unless you got alot of cargo space and they got little CDs, so you can both outlast their full ammo, and outtank the damage they'll be dealing to you while their CDs will be running out.

[Agmen of Eladesor]

Totally not true. We've been killing cloaked ships in their cloaked mode. Just because CDs show you where he is and the vector of his movement, and if it's at least Cruiser sized, he'll die.

The only encounters I've had so far with cloaked ships were on my battleship - so no CD launcher. That would probably explain why I didn't kill them.

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Oh god... The end of days... Agmen agreed with me.

[Knjaz]

The only encounters I've had so far with cloaked ships were on my battleship - so no CD launcher. That would probably explain why I didn't kill them.

That's quite hard when I tried it myself while on my turtle, but still possible. Comes with experience.

Basically, you should stay somewhere between CDer and cloaker, (closer to the cloaker to be able to visually check if you're actually hitting something, but little to side to not to hinder your CDer), to visually track the CD flight path - your victim will be trying to turn around and run past the CDer in it's attempts to escape, or past you to reduce the damage received and hope that CDer will run out of CDs before your team finishes it off/fuel runs out.

Still harder then when you're the CDer, of course, because it's way easier to track your target's movement vector and how it changes with your own CDs.


P.S. Btw, BS missiles should work as well. And that's some serious guaranteed damage (especially against cruisers - medium cloak falls off after 3-4 BS missile hits - and that's something I'd consider "not as intended")