Сloaking Device
- Thread starter SergMx
- Start date
Silent running capability is built into every ship and does what a "cloaking device" would do in reality—hide (cloak) you from the enemy sensors.
What I'd love to see would be jamming pods in utility slots—activate it and at close range you'll throw off other ship sensors, disrupting their gimballed/turreted weapons tracking like with chaff and at higher range making your ship an unresolved contact. Unlike silent running it doesn't shut off your shields and unlike heatsinks doesn't use ammo.
Trade offs: high power draw and heat generation when activated plus moderate SYS cap drain similar to, but not as severe as shut-down pulse neutralizer; doesn't work on thargoids; takes up a utility slot; silent running with heat sinks gives you more uninterrupted stealth time. Perfect for running away from pirates/gankers in a trade ship or taking heat off you in a CZ.
What I'd love to see would be jamming pods in utility slots—activate it and at close range you'll throw off other ship sensors, disrupting their gimballed/turreted weapons tracking like with chaff and at higher range making your ship an unresolved contact. Unlike silent running it doesn't shut off your shields and unlike heatsinks doesn't use ammo.
Trade offs: high power draw and heat generation when activated plus moderate SYS cap drain similar to, but not as severe as shut-down pulse neutralizer; doesn't work on thargoids; takes up a utility slot; silent running with heat sinks gives you more uninterrupted stealth time. Perfect for running away from pirates/gankers in a trade ship or taking heat off you in a CZ.
You'll excuse me but as far as I remember well Elite 1, (played about 40 years ago) the cloaking device had the opposite effect.
The ship was visible on radar and not visible visually, shooting into the void.
Imagine a game, you are a miner, no one is visible on the radar, you turn on the silent move, you can't see visually either - you turn on the cloaking device. And then a Corvette pirate appears in front of you out of the void!
In the original you did become completely invisible but the shields drained continuously. You could only go stealth for a limited time. Not sure it worked against Thargoids though - I can check it out from an old .tzx save I have. The screen changed colour, too - I think blue on the ZX Spectrum.
Can't see them adding one in - heat sinks now perform that function so ships can't see you on their radar (but can still eyeball you - though I think night vision in ships should not be able to see you but they can IIRC)
Can't see them adding one in - heat sinks now perform that function so ships can't see you on their radar (but can still eyeball you - though I think night vision in ships should not be able to see you but they can IIRC)
You don't have to. It can be built right into the ship, e.g. Python Mk2
The four energy banks started draining (not the shields) and they did work against Thargoids - when attacking the Thargoid station during the final mission the Cobra had just enough energy to stealth up to the station, launch the missile, and hyperjump away without the Thargoids firing a shot at you.
Speccy version, of course.
I would imagine the Cloaking Device would be a type of hull coating rather than a regular module. I.e. we'd buy "optical camo" hull, to replace the Lightweight Alloys for example. This hull type would use power when active camo is on. Of course, you'd need to go silent running too, in order to be fully undetected. So, you'd likely want a cold ship to get the best out of it... might be interesting.
You're 200% right! I did actually mean the energy banks... But (age-related...) thought they too were called shields ('backups').
And you reminded me that you could stealth on the Thargoid station - I have a distinct memory of doing just that now you reminded me. That was THE most intense mission for me out of all the missions.
Your superior knowledge is untarnished with age, [Sir/Madam/Thargoid]!
Seems like something more for a single player game. The problem with something like that is it might be considered overpowered when you're using it against other players.
Unfortunately not so much - although I played the original when it came out (first on Acorn Electron, later on the Speccy) I never completed the missions or progressed much up the rankings. A few years ago I revisited the first 3 Elite games (Speccy Elite, DOS FE2 & FFE) and gained Elite rank in each, so my undimmed memories of them is due to them being fairly fresh
I think something like this would work very well in the game. My similar thought was to be able to clone another ship ID in a similar way to how you can onfoot, say outside a station or at a nav beacon. In Supercruise your ship would identify as the clone but if interdicted, once in normal space a scan would reveal the real identity of the ship. Would be good to both present a weak trader as a strong fighter, or a strong fighter as a weak trader. Add in rep for a pilot in a similar way to notoriety, but all types of crimes and more subtle, which would make for greater odds for sysec interdictions in mid-high sec systems, then smuggling could become quite a cool game of cat and mouse, maybe even have a particular type of system security that have scanners that are able to bust the clone ID in supercruise, which could initiate a major security response ready for when the interdiction succeeds.
I fondly remember people discussing the possibility of Q ships (it feels like) a billion years ago so being able to somehow present your ship as something else in super cruise would be fantastic for Open.
Ideally it would be a risk/reward module with a counter and only able to mask to ships of a similar size e.g. no mis-representing a Spidey as a FDL
Ideally it would be a risk/reward module with a counter and only able to mask to ships of a similar size e.g. no mis-representing a Spidey as a FDL
It could be well balanced to deter this, perhaps the cloaking/camo hull is a paperweight hull. Possibly useful to smugglers but with the danger of being an easy ‘pop’ if discovered. HRPs could bolster it but obviously take up internal space and never offer anywhere near the same level of armour.
I‘ve never been a PvP’er so I’m out of my depth here but, obviously depending on the details of this hypothetical module/device, it could offer something akin to that brief and initial advantage that fighter pilots had of attacking from ‘out of the sun.’ With that initial advantage used up you‘re left to deal with the penalty of that module choice.
Not that this is ever likely, but I do quite like the broad strokes of the idea.
I think it would depend on how it would be implemented. If you're cloaked in supercruise that'd be a huge advantage as one of the biggest cues for needing to prepare for an attack is seeing hollow squares or triangles on the radar persistently trying to get behind you. However this may be a little too niche since NPCs make no effort to evade you when you're trying to interdict them. Once you've started an interdiction, the element of surprise is gone and the cloak has done it's job, so probably not needed after that.
This probably means it'd be useless in normal space on a target you've interdicted as they know you're there somewhere and it changes nothing about the encounter if the intention is to run. No point in staying around to fight if you can't get a target lock either.
The other alternative would be that you could use it to sneak up on ships to steal cargo or whatever other illegal activities you wanted to do in mining locations, or anywhere else you'd get someone in a ship staying still. Only problem Is see there is it's probably not needed as when someone is focused on whatever activity they're doing isn't likely to see you anyway, especially since you could just use silent running. Again it'd be pretty niche as NPCs don't react to you approaching them either unless they were already hostile.
So my feeling is that something like this needs some gameplay created for it to really work.
Everything can be built right into the ship. The point was (I think) that new features are options that almost always require some form of Game Related Interest Neutralizing Device.
I see CMDRs disappear all the time when I'm robbing / shooting at them.