Snub cloaks

[Binski]

Well I got a snub cloak just cuz I'm too used to throwing the switch myself on just about anything I fly. Personally, I think the snub cloak is a little much. However, there has to be some line drawn where you must acknowledge that the cloaks lose all practicality very quickly the harder we make them operate. Longer charge times mean they're more and more useless. Escape and ambush, and spying should all be viable options with cloaks, as that is their point. So honestly, I don't even think snubs should have cloaks. They're totally not necessary, as snubs are small, fast and highly manoeverable. It really is too easy with a cloak on there too that gives you 2 mins with 3 sec charge time. Before it was 1 min max if you arranged your armor right, and only on a bomber, not a fighter or any other little craft.

As for the operation of cloaks, I still see the battteries as fuel as a total ridiculous and OP mode of operating. We went from cloaks being 'rare' and unique, being linked to the need to have nomad tech involved to build them, to living in a world where every station, military, corporate or civilian, all have 'batteries' to power these devices you can't even buy on NPC stations. Since when does all of sirius now appeal to cloakers? When I started using them, I saw the problems you needed to work out. I spent months 'discovering' where all of the best fuel sell points were (mox) and even hfuel, which wasn't as good but enough to keep you going. I created a base to provide my own refuel point. I rp'd to get access to POB's that would sell MOX, and made note of POB's that were open to dock, that sold fuel. After more than a year of a highly thought out and mapped system of knowing what my best ports to hang around (or fall back on) were, the system was ripped up, forced to be changed to a fuel that is now easy to get in cheap infinite quantities, which is the total opposite as before. You had to work at it before, and for snubs not every base offered hfuel or mox, you had to really think about what you were doing, and make sure you save your cloak fuel for that one time you might need it. Now, people can cloak all the time, and just need to get to the next base to go at it again with the same fuel and rate of consumption every time. Not much challenge to that.

The old system actually made you have to value your cloak ability, and save it for when you need it. If you went to an unfamiliar area, you could learn about what bases offered what, and arrange your flight routines around that. You saved your fuel for the right time, and made your way back to the right port. Its totally opposite now, shorter cloak times (which was not necessary for most cloaks at the time), but plentiful fuel 'batteries' that make it easy for anyone with a cloak to dock anywhere and be able to go at it again. Its a nice 'convenience' but i was already working hard to keep up and have my stuff together, when it all became useless, because people were getting isnta'd in battleships (like that's so terrible and happens so often), or getting spied on by liners, which was also not the worst thing. Ironically, Cloak Disruptors finally being available, would have solved both problems for the groups/players most concerned with those uses (no i don't see them as 'abuses' since players were simply following the parameters laid out by the game mechanics).

The other fun part that is now gone is that every ship had a different cloak time. You could never know exactly how long your enemy might be able to cloak for. It depended on their ship class, armor and cargo held. A frieghter or transport could juggle their ability to get longer time, or sacrifice cloak time, based on their unique needs and perspective. Now, I see a ship, and notice it has a cloak, I know exactly how long I have to hold out to beat them, and vice versa, simply by knowing what class of ship they fly.

Although I know the new system was meant to help non cloakers and curb trolling, imo, all it did was removed a lot of the freedom we enjoyed in customizing our ships and their abilities, and added a blanket of OP batteries everywhere that cloaks are not even sold. We had a great system, if you wanted to be a cloaker, you sacrificed cargo space, and had to be selective about its use. That was fair balance. Not to mention, fuel actually had market value for use on ships, not just bases, and you could actually attack NPC's in game to refuel yourself in space! Now that was fun, and sometimes even a cause for interaction and RP!

EDIT: as to a notification that as ship is cloaking, i don't see that as necessary. You already can see that when shields drop, that's just too easy. What we need is a less OP system altogether. Or would you like a notification when we have to go to the toilet as well?

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