Regarding Cloak energy drain - a possible alternative

[Antonio]

Although I see your point this would nerf battleships the most and they are already the worst class in the game. Uncloaking behind someone is their only way of dealing with cruisers, battlecruisers, lighter battleships and sometimes careless gunboats/any ship that's afk. I don't see an issue with cloaks at the moment because they have plenty of methods to be negated, apart from snubs who have a ridicolous 3 second charge time. On snubs (and transports) cloaks are exclusively used defensively while on caps they're used offensively. Gunboats don't use cloaks since they have to give up an armor upgrade and it's useless offensively or defensively.

There's more than enough ways to negate the cloak effectiveness.

1. Get a good cloaking sound recognizer.

The first and very important thing to do. The default cloaking sound is very quiet and more people than not have trouble hearing it. The good news is that it's very easy to change. Just follow these tips.

2. Keep moving.

The most important step. When you hear something is cloaked, never ever be afk. Standing still while an unknown ship is cloaked near you is just asking to get killed. It doesn't even have to be cruising in circles, but generally moving already makes cloakers' job much harder.

3. Watch the chat.

If you hear a cloaking sound and see someone typing in local that's not on your scanners, chances are he's the guy cloaked. Watch for his (or any other ship that's not on your scanner) messages and wait when he drops an engagement one, if he does. Again, step 2 is key here.

4. Cloak disruptors.

The best and easiest way to deal with cloaks. Disruptors have never been this strong, and they usually guarantee a disrupt when something is near you. The cloaking sound range is 5k. Snub cloak disruptors have a range of 3.5k which isn't a 100% disrupt, but you have more chances than not. Cruiser and battleship cloak disruptors on the other hand are ridicolously good. Since their range is higher (6k and 9k respectively) than the cloaking sound, you're always guaranteed to get a disrupt on the cloaked ship. Yes, you give up the CM slot but there has to be some kind of a drawback to compensate.

Those were the ways of dealing with offensive cloaking attempts. Defensive ones are either relatively easy to deal with on capital ships (CD them once their shield is down every 10-15 seconds) or have almost no counter (3 second charge on snubs) so there's no point in bothering. Overall they're fine and don't need additional nerfs.