Is There Room For A True Cloaking Device In ED?

GroundxZERO

GroundxZERO
How would you guys feel about this? It would have to be balanced for smuggling, pirating, and combat and that would require a lot of thinking but I do think it would be cool to have. Silent running is neat and all but I feel like it should be part of an actual cloaking system.

I envision something where:
-it has a very short activation time
-you're unable to be seen by sight
-you show as a very faint "blip" on scanners for a time
-your location on the scanner is dynamic
-it could only be used in normal space or super cruise.
-limited to ten second cloak
-it would only allow for very limited thrust capability before your heat signature shows on scanners
-single use

Obviously It would definitely be very expensive and take up a module slot but I don't think shields or weapons should be active while cloaked or immediately after. Utilities maybe.

I usually stick to combat but I'm beginning to feel for traders especially now with the engineers. Stacking shield boosters with SCBs on top of prismatics just feels boring. With cloaking interdictions might be a bit more interesting instead of boost boost boom or boost boost jump, we could at least have a game of cat and mouse.

DONT HATE ME! ITS JUST AN IDEA!
 

grimmb13

G
I like this idea. I believe it should be balanced of course but it would add some new tactics to all forms of gameplay. I'd support this.
 

mung0

mung0
I'd like a cloaking device that can selectively conceal internals / weapons etc (and itself, obviously), hiding them from view when being scanned.

"nah this is a trader build honest guv" :D
 

XrayRomeoAlpha

XrayRomeoAlpha
hypothetical:

cloak on, shields down. weapons offline.
thrusters should still work normal.
not able to use in super-cruze.
signature on sensors should be all over the place, erratic as hell. or, not show up at all.
perhaps a spike in your signature right as you cloak.

duration should be just slightly longer than the silent running diration.

this tech should have a required armor type to coincide with the ability to cloak.

....and i base this on absolutely nothing but extensive sci-fi reading and watching.
 

Armholeeio

Armholeeio
2RIXwom.jpg
BongoBaggins said:
I'd park in front of people's SRVs to annoy and confuse them
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Father Giliam

Father Giliam
Make it a special type of shield generator that has a much higher power drain than normal. Activating it constantly drains shield strength. Once the shields pop, the invisibility does aswell. Bigger the ship, the faster it drains shields. SCBs cant be used, in addition to being unable to fire weapons while active.
 

mung0

mung0
Father Giliam said:
Make it a special type of shield generator that has a much higher power drain than normal. Activating it constantly drains shield strength. Once the shields pop, the invisibility does aswell. Bigger the ship, the faster it drains shields. SCBs cant be used, in addition to being unable to fire weapons while active.
Click to expand...
^ that's actually pretty cool.
 

GroundxZERO

GroundxZERO
Father Giliam said:
Make it a special type of shield generator that has a much higher power drain than normal. Activating it constantly drains shield strength. Once the shields pop, the invisibility does aswell. Bigger the ship, the faster it drains shields. SCBs cant be used, in addition to being unable to fire weapons while active.
Click to expand...

This would be awesome!
 

Thepirateorc

Thepirateorc
I would like a cloaking device that would make you invisible like the Klingon in star trek its the traders that need to hide from me =)
 

Essential NPC

Essential NPC
I like the "it's a special type of shield generator" idea, but that's almost too much exactly like silent running.

I think, make it take up an internal slot, cannot be used with a shield generator, have it sip on the SYS capacitor so you need at least 2 pips in SYS to keep it consistently active, and make the power required to run it be extreme like 40% of your power plant, plus have it run hot so you can't fire for too long.

I think a cloaking device would have to work in tandem with silent running with high risk/reward stealth. So basically you'd be able to go 100% invisible to the eye and radar, but only for a couple seconds because the heat would build up instantly.

Plus that would limit the amount of weapons/utility mounts/internals you can have. Make it so it functions like a constant chaff, so you can target cloaked enemies, but there's never any solid lock as long as it's active. You can also give it very little hit points so one or two seeker missiles can destroy it.
 
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RagingxPenguin

R
Zeeman said:
I think it has been stated it won't happen, but if it did, I suspect it would be used instead of shields. ie - cloaking or shields - pick one.

Z...
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Same train of thought but it needed something to set it apart from silent running.

My thoughts are since the shields are generated via module it's plausible that a specific type of shield could refract light around the ship.
Creating a noticeable distortion but still providing some invisibility.
 

Blackness76

Blackness76
RagingxPenguin said:
Same train of thought but it needed something to set it apart from silent running.

My thoughts are since the shields are generated via module it's plausible that a specific type of shield could refract light around the ship.
Creating a noticeable distortion but still providing some invisibility.
Click to expand...

That's a cool idea, maybe something similar to the way the Predator cloak looks.
 
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