Admiral DeRuyter
Spaceman
Alright, I'm not exactly sure how you guys remade the game so I don't know if you can deal with some of the things I propose.
Anyway, the cloaking device is a major imbalance in the game. It's cool enough to stay there (and it is part of WC after all), but some things need to be done.
First of all, I got it for free...which is not cool. The price is listed as 0.00 where I "bought" it. We'll develop an idea of what the price should be later on in my post, after we review the imbalances it introduces.
Cloaking isn't such a big deal when you are in a fight, since the time it takes your shields to recharge is quite significant. I've used it once or twice to get out of the thick of things and catch my breath at 10-15,000 km, but that's not really abuse of the device.
The cloaking device is most valuable for traders and people running cargo missions. If I'm running cargo, there really is no incentive for me to <i>un</i>cloak. I bypass all sorts of enemies along the way, allowing me to complete the most dangerous cargo runs with ease. Plus, I recently took a mission running Brilliance to New Constantinople (mission computer, not the campaign one) and was able to evade detection by simply cloaking myself.
In order to balance these effects, we don't need to nerf the power of the cloaking device. The loss of shields is penalty enough. However, in the situation I propose, that penalty never takes effect because the player never decloaks. All we need to do is to give players an incentive to uncloak from time to time.
If it's possible, I would suggest that we somehow disallow Autpilot while a craft is cloaked. Why do I suggest something so completely unrelated? Well, it's simple, really: it's a way to force to periodic decloaking of ships.
As it is right now, after you initiate the cloak you can even Autopilot out of combat. If we disable the ability to Autopilot while cloaked, we can remedy this sort of abuse. Players will still be able to potentially do their Brilliance runs or Cargo Missions without fighting a single raider, but they'll either have to sit there and be bored (no autopilot means much longer flights) or they'll have to expose themselves to the possibility of combat by decloaking in order to autopilot (of course there won't be any enemies where they are entering autopilot...but their arrival at the destination point will be fair game).
Anyway, I don't think there's any need to drop the idea, or to implement energy drain or special detection. I think the combination of this limitation and a fairly expensive installation price will be enough to temper the issue. Considering how much damage a cloak can prevent you receiving, I would say that something between 75,000 and 125,000 is not unreasonable for the shield.
Anyway, the cloaking device is a major imbalance in the game. It's cool enough to stay there (and it is part of WC after all), but some things need to be done.
First of all, I got it for free...which is not cool. The price is listed as 0.00 where I "bought" it. We'll develop an idea of what the price should be later on in my post, after we review the imbalances it introduces.
Cloaking isn't such a big deal when you are in a fight, since the time it takes your shields to recharge is quite significant. I've used it once or twice to get out of the thick of things and catch my breath at 10-15,000 km, but that's not really abuse of the device.
The cloaking device is most valuable for traders and people running cargo missions. If I'm running cargo, there really is no incentive for me to <i>un</i>cloak. I bypass all sorts of enemies along the way, allowing me to complete the most dangerous cargo runs with ease. Plus, I recently took a mission running Brilliance to New Constantinople (mission computer, not the campaign one) and was able to evade detection by simply cloaking myself.
In order to balance these effects, we don't need to nerf the power of the cloaking device. The loss of shields is penalty enough. However, in the situation I propose, that penalty never takes effect because the player never decloaks. All we need to do is to give players an incentive to uncloak from time to time.
If it's possible, I would suggest that we somehow disallow Autpilot while a craft is cloaked. Why do I suggest something so completely unrelated? Well, it's simple, really: it's a way to force to periodic decloaking of ships.
As it is right now, after you initiate the cloak you can even Autopilot out of combat. If we disable the ability to Autopilot while cloaked, we can remedy this sort of abuse. Players will still be able to potentially do their Brilliance runs or Cargo Missions without fighting a single raider, but they'll either have to sit there and be bored (no autopilot means much longer flights) or they'll have to expose themselves to the possibility of combat by decloaking in order to autopilot (of course there won't be any enemies where they are entering autopilot...but their arrival at the destination point will be fair game).
Anyway, I don't think there's any need to drop the idea, or to implement energy drain or special detection. I think the combination of this limitation and a fairly expensive installation price will be enough to temper the issue. Considering how much damage a cloak can prevent you receiving, I would say that something between 75,000 and 125,000 is not unreasonable for the shield.
