Stealth / cloak variant ships proposal: Imp courier and Type-7

commander_spanky

C
Stealth would introduce a very fun and interesting mechanic to the game, both for trading and for combat. Additionally, there are a few ships in the game that aren't particularly niche or useful if you compare it's price to other more capable ships.

In particular the type-7, which would really hold it's own if it had a cloak ability.

How it would work:

Type-7 is one of two ships that can fit a cloaking module, it's not that tough, it doesn't have much cargo space (compared to Condas, T9), but it can cloak while in super cruise (or in normal space) and avoid interdictions this way. It would make an amazing smuggler as well. Cloaking means your not visible, and your not in local or on radar either in SC or normal space.

Type-7 needs to decloak before it hyperspaces, within 8k of a station, and within 500m of any other vessel or planet surface. The cloak has a cool down (as long as an FSD after you crash as an example) before you can reactivate it. Even cloaked you still leave hi wakes and lowakes behind, so you can be followed, but very hard to catch. At CG's the tradeoff will be about taking ships with more space, versus a cloak able ship with much less space, but much safer.

I'm less confident about which combat vessel needs differentiation and would be a good fit for a cloaking ship, but for now let's assume its the Imp Courier. My rational is it's a tough sell versus the Vulture for pure combat / toughness (other than great speed of the courier). ideally you'd want this on a ship with weak shields to avoid it being OP, and giving others a real chance of blowing you up during your cloak cool down.

All of the same mechanics apply to the T7 cloaking example above, but in combat you must decloak to release your hard points, and have the same cool down time before you can recloak. Another consideration is if you're cloaked in normal space, you don't have a wing beacon until you've decloaked, however while cloaked you can drop in on your wing mate's beacon (assuming they aren't cloaked or have a different ship entirely).

The interesting combat tactics this provides:
* Do recon and watch for activity at a station (enemy player group)
* Add support in a wing, your ship can help out in a group fight by decloaking, dropping a torpedo or mines then recloaking. Because of the cool down on recloak, you'll draw a lot of attention, and with weak shields a good chance you won't survive the fight long term once enemy wing catches on.
* When mass locked (as a small ship) you can cloak (assuming cool downs have ended and the enemy ship isn't within 500m of you)

Thoughts welcome! Obviously would need to be careful with this mechanic to avoid it being OP, but would add a lot to the game and differentiation of ships that today are hard to justify owning IMO.

Thanks for reading :)
 

JosiahD

JosiahD
In my experience, proper cloaking has been a bad thing in PvP as the counters never seem to be effective enough to overcome the advantage proper stealth gives for that first alpha strike, so I tend to be against such things. It's not necessary here anyway as you simply control your heat signature. Stealth builds are already possible in terms of being difficult to be detected on the scanner, and black paintjobs are good for hiding against the background. All we really need now is the ability to switch off running lights (vice the headlight toggle that is) - a ship would be very difficult to see in black and with no running lights plus very low heat. Rather than some form of cloaking device, just make it so it's difficult (but not impossible) for the scanner and mark one eyeball to detect a ship - once combat begins though, the ship's heat goes up and is then targetable.
 
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commander_spanky

C
JosiahD said:
In my experience, proper cloaking has been a bad thing in PvP as the counters never seem to be effective enough to overcome the advantage proper stealth gives for that first alpha strike, so I tend to be against such things. It's not necessary here anyway as you simply control your heat signature. Stealth builds are already possible in terms of being difficult to be detected on the scanner, and black paintjobs are good for hiding against the background. All we really need now is the ability to switch off running lights (vice the headlight toggle that is) - a ship would be very difficult to see in black and with no running lights plus very low heat. Rather than some form of cloaking device, just make it so it's difficult (but not impossible) for the scanner and mark one eyeball to detect a ship - once combat begins though, the ship's heat goes up and is then targetable.
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Thanks for the feedback! Some good comments, and certainly important to be concerned about balance.

My rule of thumb is this, Cloak shouldn't be more powerful than other builds outright, but it should just offer a different play style than other builds. It might require different tactics to respond to an enemy using a cloak tactic, but it shouldn't be an unfair advantage. You are right, it would give a powerful alpha strike advantage, but with other big disadvantages, like weaker shields, long cool downs, etc.

Is it that much different than medium / small ships with torpedo builds? You get a massive alpha strike, but after your ammo is out, you've got fewer hard points than the other guy to survive the rest of the fight. Good for wings, bad for solo PvP.

I totally get that it seems like a variant of the silent running mechanic we already have, but that mechanic doesn't help you in super cruise, and dropping in on an existing fight undetected. Also can't recall if you fully vanish from radar (and certainly not local) with silent running on. We could potentially merge the two and remove silent running altogether ?

For trade ships, I think it would be important to have the super cruise cloaking element, big time.
 

Glock_N_Load

Glock_N_Load
No shields while cloaked and shields have to rebuild after uncloak. Can't fire weapons while cloaked. Have "Unknown Energy Wake" and unable to lock on. While cloaked you use the same thing as when your windshield is broken.
 

JosiahD

JosiahD
zaqintosh said:
Thanks for the feedback! Some good comments, and certainly important to be concerned about balance.

My rule of thumb is this, Cloak shouldn't be more powerful than other builds outright, but it should just offer a different play style than other builds. It might require different tactics to respond to an enemy using a cloak tactic, but it shouldn't be an unfair advantage. You are right, it would give a powerful alpha strike advantage, but with other big disadvantages, like weaker shields, long cool downs, etc.

Is it that much different than medium / small ships with torpedo builds? You get a massive alpha strike, but after your ammo is out, you've got fewer hard points than the other guy to survive the rest of the fight. Good for wings, bad for solo PvP.

I totally get that it seems like a variant of the silent running mechanic we already have, but that mechanic doesn't help you in super cruise, and dropping in on an existing fight undetected. Also can't recall if you fully vanish from radar (and certainly not local) with silent running on. We could potentially merge the two and remove silent running altogether ?

For trade ships, I think it would be important to have the super cruise cloaking element, big time.
Click to expand...

Comes down to implementation - if that massive alpha strike from cloak all but destroys a ship in the first salvo (which I've experienced in other forms of such cloaking/stealth in MMOs before - LOTRO and STO spring to mind, back when I pvped in them), or worse if it included crowd control mechanisms from stealth/cloak (like disabling engines or FSD), those disadvantages don't mean much. If the cloaked ship lost shields on cloaking and couldn't fire weapons when cloaked (as suggested by Glock), that would be a different story. But the point of stealth, particularly in PvP, is typically to get first strike or lock down the opponent, not recon/intel, so I could foresee combateers insisting on being able to fire from a cloaked state, even if that in turn removed the cloak. True cloaking is problematic if implemented poorly, giving the cloaked ship too much of an advantage - great griefing tool. Better in my opinion to avoid it altogether - Frontier has enough trouble balancing things as it is after Engineers were introduced that adding further balancing complexity would be a problem I think. Best to stick with the heat mechanics already in play I reckon.
 
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commander_spanky

C
JosiahD said:
Comes down to implementation - if that massive alpha strike from cloak all but destroys a ship in the first salvo (which I've experienced in other forms of such cloaking/stealth in MMOs before - LOTRO and STO spring to mind, back when I pvped in them), or worse if it included crowd control mechanisms from stealth/cloak (like disabling engines or FSD), those disadvantages don't mean much. If the cloaked ship lost shields on cloaking and couldn't fire weapons when cloaked (as suggested by Glock), that would be a different story. But the point of stealth, particularly in PvP, is typically to get first strike or lock down the opponent, not recon/intel, so I could foresee combateers insisting on being able to fire from a cloaked state, even if that in turn removed the cloak. True cloaking is problematic if implemented poorly, giving the cloaked ship too much of an advantage - great griefing tool. Better in my opinion to avoid it altogether - Frontier has enough trouble balancing things as it is after Engineers were introduced that adding further balancing complexity would be a problem I think. Best to stick with the heat mechanics already in play I reckon.
Click to expand...

If you look at the PvP cloak mechanic in Eve Online (which is years old now and pretty well accepted), you must decloak in order to fire your weapons or whatever tackle mechanism you want. I think allowing firing weapons while cloaked is pretty nuts.
 

Archon Valec

Archon Valec
Asp Scout would be a good candidate... it's already the least used ship in the game, this would be enough to set it apart into it's own niche and boost usage. That and frankly it kind of looks like a stealth bomber, especially from the back :D
 

StiTch

StiTch
Unfortunately I believe FD have previously stated they don't want any full-on stealth in the game. SR is about as good as it's gonna get.

If someone can convince them otherwise, you have my thanks.
 

Eidolon

Eidolon
Some good ideas here I think.
Can I just add to the list, Constrictor (my avatar) was an original Elite ship for an NPC which I would love to fly. As it was a dedicated stealth ship.
Maybe also the Mamba, another original game ship which is small class and I feel would be another stealth potential :)
 

zegram33

Z
I cant speak for the type 7 but the type 9 runs freakishly cold, so with engineering its easy to be functionally cloaked
actual full "Invisibility" though is confirmed as a no go unfortunately.
I have a feeling they may do something with ecm and/or limpets...maybe add a limpet controller which shows to all scans as the same as your ship and tries to break in a random direction?
so if you can break visual with the enemy and deploy one or two
 

777Driver

777Driver
Like the idea about stealth in supercruise, for normal space stealth is already covered, it is quite OP and can actually be quite lethal when used correctly. A Combination of a cool running ship (sub 10% heat) Juri ashmeks LONG RANGE (GRADE 5) sensor mod, and a complement of cascade torpedos will ruin anyonse day, they wouldn't even know who fired the shot.

Heat mechanics are discussed in depth on this forum, obviously only applies to normal space. An illegal transponder was an idea people came up with for super cruise, scrambles the ships signal so a potential interdictor could not tell if his target is a Type-6 or a Corvette.
 
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