Cloaks and docking on hostile stations: Spice it up a knotch

[Binski]

I've been recently playing with the idea (in my head) of how things would look if cloaked vessels were allowed to 'dock' on any station or planet, regardless of their rep. Before you cry its insanity, hear me out.

PVP wise, all this would result in are more death by docking.

Smuggling wise, if the ship got cloaked before docking, it's fair game.

RP wise, the big winner, is that people could now RP 'hostile dockings' like boarding stations and infiltration. Things like prison breaks, theft, intel gathering, and clandestine meetings, could be achieved better and allow for more accurate activities on the server with regards to our RP actions.

The catch? Well you can't undock cloaked, so if and when you choose to resume flying, you have to survive the undock, and face whatever consequences you left outside waiting for you. Also if would make you PVP dead, you could also be considered a 'prisoner' if your ship does dock on a hostile station or planet and can't escape. The docking, depending on where, would be at your own risk. Infiltrating a lone station might be possible, but larger areas with many stations nearby would be much harder to survive getting out of again. Especially in the cases of defended POB's, if a ship could not undock without being destroyed, as a prisoner, could then secure their safe release from the owner.

I've often wondered how cool it would be if we could cloak and land on a planet that is hostile, and sell our stolen cargo, or smuggled goods, sneaking them in and escaping in a very traditional 'getting shot at on the way out' kind of way.

Ships could sneak in for prison breaks, kidnappings, hostage situations...planting bombs or great heists, etc. I think it would be fun to try to sneak onto the populated colony worlds in a hostile ship for clandestine purposes. Unless you only undock when alone in a system, you're always launching blind, and might be screwed if you undock to some police or navy lurking within range. A smuggler might then go unnoticed, despite bad rep, but isn't that what police and navy should be doing? Watching their skies to make sure no terrorists or rebels are coming and going? Lib navy should be watching for Xenos or Rogue infiltrators on Manhattan...and even pirate smugglers should have the option to smuggle stuff to the core worlds and lawful bases, and deal with the consequences.

The poll is to see how the idea goes over, comments and other suggestions welcome. The question is, do you think it would be cool to open up Sirius and allow cloaked docking (with a few exceptions of course, like POB's, however, even that could open up for new' anticloak' platform or 'shield' that provides detection for bases as well, to build and prevent such things from happening).

PS - My last thought was about the new Cloak Disruptor. After thinking about it, I actually find that allowing cloakable docking on hostile/neutral bases would give a very good purpose to the Cloak Disruptor. The problem with them is that at reasonable ranges, it can be hard to get another ship with them, unless you know where they are heading. Ships using these new countermeasures could actually set up checkpoints at planet docking rings and other hot sell points, and use scouts to 'listen' for cloaked vessels. If used properly, it would be possible to try to snag a smuggler in an attempt to get past them.

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