Current state of cloaking devices?

[kikatsu]

I am just curious about how cloaks are working these days now that the new ammo system has been introduced. Anyone have any experience using cloaks on VHFs, freighters, and or transports?

[Deeceem]

It's definitively an improvemet on freighters. You can actually use your cloak now and still have an okay-ish amount of cargo space available. Cloaking time is decent as well as the duration. Ammo is cheap.

I would assume it should be somewhat the same for VHFs, who now actually should have something you could actually call a duration.

Not sure about transports.

[Sciamach]

Battleship cloaks are boned.

Where before I could last about 10 minutes (-1 for charge time) on the Cross Ranseur Flagship, I get about less than 3 minutes

3 minutes has little to no combat use.

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[ sci·am·ach ]
/sīˈamək/

A simple, angry man casually working his way through life on a personal quest to acquire copious amounts of street cred.

[Jayce]

It's definitively an improvemet on freighters. You can actually use your cloak now and still have an okay-ish amount of cargo space available. Cloaking time is decent as well as the duration. Ammo is cheap.

I would assume it should be somewhat the same for VHFs, who now actually should have something you could actually call a duration.

Not sure about transports.

2 minutes of cloaking time on a Freighter is OK? That's less than a snub.

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[Misfit]

The only cloak that got better was the snub cloak, which I own a lot of on Warans. I have one MkII cloak and it seems pretty garbage now compared to the time I got on the old one. I can't imagine the MkII Advanced is any better.

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[Binski]

I only fly the medium cloak these days. Its capability has been scaled back considerably. You were able to sacrifice armor for a longer cloak time, or vice versa, and the fuel based system allowed you to play with your set up to reflect your own purposes for it (as with any level of cloak). Although the ammo is available everywhere, which is the opposite of MOX, which was the most used fuel for cloaks, I find this will significantly change how I have to use my cloak. This is the only aspect of the update I have been dreading.

Specifically, medium cloaks can hold up to 1000 batteries, and consume at a rate of 4 per second. That leaves a maximum of 250 seconds including charge time. Using only universal armor on a cruiser or pelican, you could get up to 8+ minutes before, freighters maybe 4-5. Now all ships have the exact same cloak time as any counterpart using the same cloak. Snubs and freighters seem to benefit, everything above that loses time considerably.

On top of the drop in maximum times for all cloaks, there is now the compromising 'sound' that alerts ships to the presence of a cloaked ship when they come within 3 k of the cloaking ship.

Combined with the drops in all scanner ranges, using a cloak tactically has become more and more difficult. There`s not a lot of room for error anymore. With how tedious things can get during gameplay I`m disappointed by all of this, for some reason they`ve still seen fit to reduce its effectiveness. I really don`t know why cloaks have become regarded as so horrible, they`ve been the most fun piece of equipment to play with IMO, and allowed for lots of options for use.

Also if there is a mountable countermeasure going to be added in the future that will be yet another blow to the practical use of cloaks we`ve enjoyed up to now. I honestly don`t understand the desire to curb cloaks so much. As usual, it seems that they are being changed over a few abusive applications and bad players pushing people`s patience with them. However I`m a firm believer that the rules in place already protect people from the major abuse and that players are simply too hasty to complain whenever they get 1up`d by a cloaking player, in any way.

The fuel based system was fine IMO and allowed for far more freedom with the use, giving it a high value in the economy. I still think it wasn`t broke and not in need of fixing. Was it perfect? No, but neither is what we have now, and you know what they say about the devil you know! The worst part is that I basically feel I'm being told that the way I've been playing has been bad, and we're quietly forced into more restraint. Unfortunately, there's more non cloak users than cloak users it seems, so by default popular opinion seems to weigh in favor of curbing them and anything else that might give a player any edge over another, even if its worked for, or part of RP. It seems that the bad possibilities drag cloaks down very easily, but when people use them well and RP around it, its an uphill battle.

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[Sylvie557]

Yeah transports are screwed at the moment, I understand nerfing transport durations but this is a bit too much. I am hoping some balancing happens eventually so I am not gonna whine too much yet.

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[Deeceem]

It's definitively an improvemet on freighters. You can actually use your cloak now and still have an okay-ish amount of cargo space available. Cloaking time is decent as well as the duration. Ammo is cheap.

I would assume it should be somewhat the same for VHFs, who now actually should have something you could actually call a duration.

Not sure about transports.

2 minutes of cloaking time on a Freighter is OK? That's less than a snub.

It's more like 4 isn't it? And yes I'm fine with that. Since before I had to either choose if I want to A: Use my cargo for trade or for B: fuel for cloaking. Now I can do both. I can avoid potential dangers by reacting properly and restock on any I base I can dock with if I feel the need to. And as I already mentioned ammo is cheap, 25k for 1000 cloak bats.

[kikatsu]

Hmm so do freighters run off of cloak batteries that do not use cargo space? I think I saw that the smaller batteries do not use cargo, but the larger ones do. I have been thinking about making a smuggler, or reworking one I already have, and equipping it with a cloak as a quick way to avoid scanners as I go past hot spots or something.

If that is the case that could be very viable I imagine.

I am not sure it would work on a transport in the same way, not sure if they use cloak batteries that need cargo.

Sounds like the combat potential of cloaks is somewhat altering as time changes. Could still make for ambushes I imagine, just not the same as what we have seen before.


Does cruise change how fast these cloaks drain?

[Veygaar]

New system is great for evasive use. I like.

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Veygaar for Admin Moderator 2013!!!