3 small things !!!

[Rimbaud]

As an alien item they are worth a lot more than the 50Cr for a kill, providing you know where to offload them, but I do agree that they should not count as a kill unless they are firing at you of course.[/quote]

Agreed: usually my cargo bay is full anyway (I'd rather take the kill). I think they didn't take any cargo space in C64 Elite

[Jar]

Perhaps the cloak generates massive amounts of heat and raises the cabin temp. then the cloak would have a life time once switched on.

Or the cloak would interfere with the ships shields. Like the longer the cloak is on the lower the shields get.

[Commander McLane]

The cloak uses the ship's energy. Not cabin temp, not shields.

[another_commander]

However, it would be a very good idea if the cloak did increase the cabin temperature, and at a quite fast rate, too.

This would definitely impose a time limit on the cloak usage.

[Jar]

It seems resonable to me that a cloak field generator might clash with a defense shield generator. They are both trying to envelope a ship in a field. They might clash. So when the cloak is on the defense shields drain away. So if you ran the cloak too long, you would have no shields when you decloak.

Also the ship would have to have some kind of radiator to bleed excess heat out into space. The cloak might affect that as well. So the ship would tend to over heat when cloaked. Or maybe the cloak generator just makes tons of heat when in use.

If I could really be totally invisiable with no price to pay I should be elite with little skill involved in getting there. The first one to get a cloak wins. To balance it out there ought to be a price to pay for it, and a fairly expensive price to make it balance.

[Scoopy]

Please excuse a newbie to the forum.

I love the work that has been done with this game. I am in awe of the quality of design and the implementation of this re-implementation of the classic Elite. It would be very easy to just have made an Elite clone but Oolite, with its extensibility is a remarkable piece of work in my view.

Ok, having said the introduction piece I´d like to say something about the cloaking device. I appreciate that it makes the game rather easy, as is but feel it would be wrong to make it useless by overdoing the balance. therefore, my suggestion would be that instead of getting complicated with the effects of turning cloaking on, how about just make missiles still find their target instead of just blowing up?

This would still make the cloak a useful tool but still allow your enemies to attack.

Just a thought

[Commander McLane]

First I have to admit that my pilot doesn't yet own a cloak (still in Galaxy 4), so my knowledge is purely theoretical, and I may be wrong with any of the details.

@ Jar: Having said that, I would first like to point out that the cloak isn't needed at all to become Elite. My pilot has been Elite for quite some time (something like 9000 kills now), and, as I said above, hasn't even arrived in the galaxy where the cloaking device is waiting. Generally I would guess that players will have gone a fair way up to Elite, before they get hold of the cloaking device, especially with additional mission OXPs for Galaxies 1-4 installed. So I'm not overly afraid of the cloak's ability to give the player a shortcut. Furthermore, as far as I know, kills that are made while being cloaked, are not counted for your Elite-ranking. That's the built-in balance.

@ Scoopy: First of all hi, and welcome to the boards, and of course to this great game! Nothing to excuse, we welcome and appreciate everybody's thoughts and contributions. I agree with you that the suggestions made here would probably overdo the balance. I have somehow in mind that activating the cloak sets your shields to ZERO anyway and instantly, but that could be a false memory, probably induced by the Escape Velocity-series. And, as I said before, I'm not so afraid of the cloak making the game too easy in the first place, simply because you get it so late in the game.

[Ark]

So until now we have the following suggestions (concerning the operation of the cloaking device):

1.The use of it to disable your weapons. (As Ahruman said simple and elegant solution)
2.As the above but also after decloaking not to be able to use your weapons for a period of time (not necessarily with the use of timers – but with the inability to shoot due to a weapon overheat or something like that)
3.To bind the duration of its use with the increase of cabin temperature
4.To leave it as it is now but improve the AI of your opponents

Yesterday I watched a movie about submarines. I really did not know that when a submarine is underwater (aka cloaked) it moves slower than when on the surface. So here it is another drawback that can be applied in our case

All the above recommendations suggest that there must be a bigger drawback when you use the cloaking than from just not get the kill.
Until now I believe that everybody (or almost everybody) agree that there must be a change in the operation of it but we must decide something that will be acceptable to all (or at least the big majority) of the community.

From my point of view the cloaking device must have a defensive and not aggressive use so personally I prefer the second solution

[Cmdr. Maegil]

I don't think it too powerful, but if you are going to change it, I'd go with the 'firing deactivates cloak" group.
Of course, improving AIs is always in order... If it ever gets that far, I'd eventually like to see difference between a rookie and a veteran pilot, but that's another matter...

[Disembodied]

There's nothing wrong with having a cloaking device but ideally it should enlarge the available tactics -- not just be one uber-tactic in itself. I'd like to see the cloak provide some stealth options to the player. I think Ark's got the right analogy there with his submarine comparison.

Is it possible to have a combination of limiting factors, e.g. when active, the cloak causes cabin overheating, but at a rate determine by your speed -- so you can cloak and sneak about at low speeds for quite some time, but if you want to go anywhere fast under cloak, you have to watch your internal temperature? This has a reasonably easy "logical" interpretation, in that the cloak is containing all forms of emissions from your ship, including heat radiated from the engines... it would also add a bit of tactics to the cloak's use. With this in mind, it would be a nice wrinkle if your laser didn't cool down at all when under cloak -- preventing players from decloaking, firing, cloaking, cooling the lasers, decloaking and firing again. The same logic would also demand that firing lasers or missiles deactivates the cloak automatically.

[Commander Mysenses]

the cloak is containing all forms of emissions from your ship, including heat radiated from the engines...

I'm liking it.. thinking outside the box/jar. Logic and Oolite may well be uneasy bedfellows much of the time, but that is an elegant solution. Cloak contains all detectable emmisons... engines, laser, cabin... so heat build-up in the cabin and/or weapon sysem would be inevitable, if used vigourously... yeah real nice!

[Scoopy]

Remember how you got the cloaking device in the first place?

You shot and destroyed a cloaked ship. To me, is seems logical that your enemies should be able to do the same to you now you are using the cloak. You were still able to see the cloaked ship on the scanner when you were chasing it and you were still able to see it visually even though it blinked on and off. Maybe it makes sense to somehow simulate that for enemies who are attacking you when you are cloaked. Simply reducing their firing rate might achieve that.

For me, I only use the cloak to get rid of pesky hard heads anyway which is probably not the most logical use for a cloaking device.

[Cmdr. Maegil]

Remember how you got the cloaking device in the first place? You shot and destroyed a cloaked ship.

Why not make that possible with other pieces of equipment?

[JensAyton]

Remember how you got the cloaking device in the first place? You shot and destroyed a cloaked ship.

:idea: Why not make that possible with other pieces of equipment?

It is. You just have to write the OXP.

[Commander McLane]

Yesterday I watched a movie about submarines. I really did not know that when a submarine is underwater (aka cloaked) it moves slower than when on the surface.

AFAIK it depends very much on the type of submarine. Traditional subs, that use a diesel engine when on the surface and batteries when submerged, are slower when submerged. I guess simply because the batteries don't give as much power as the diesel. But - if I'm not mistaken - a nuclear sub is actually faster when submerged, because there are no battery restrictions, and I think moving fully submerged reduces drag, compared to the surface turbulences.