Should any ship decloak when it fires its weapons?

Lestradae · Post by **Lestradae** » Sun Aug 09, 2009 5:18 pm

I quote another_commander:

"For everyone's information, there has been some interesting discussion in the past (thread is here) about the Cloaking Device being too strong a weapon once acquired, practically giving a huge advantage to the player. One of the proposed solutions had been that when cloaked, any weapons fire (lasers or missiles) would cause automatic deactivation.

For quite a few SVN revisions in trunk now, this has been added. The addition is on a per-ship basis and the key to use in shipdata.plist is cloak_passive, which defaults to NO. If you add this key to any ship and set it to YES, then whenever said ship uses weapons while cloaked, will result in it decloaking. If you do not use this key, obviously things stay as they are now."

I actually belong to the people who think that the CD is massively overpowered in the aspect that it allows destroying other ships while cloaked. And as I am working on the OSE meta-oxp that contains about 90% of all NPC and 99% of all player ships in the Ooniverse, that opens up the option to set the cloak_passive option as a standard for OSE.

Ships that fire weapons would then always de-cloak.

It is far from me to force such a change down the OSE-players throats. So I am putting this to a poll which will run for 14 days: Should every ship decloak when it fires its weapons?

The relevant threads of the debate are here:

https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t=6472

... and here:

https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.ph ... sc&start=0

Curious about your opinions,

L

Jagen Ordo · Post by **Jagen Ordo** » Sun Aug 09, 2009 5:35 pm

A cloaking device that makes the ship completely invisible requires massive amounts of energy.
Therefore, there's none left to power shields, weapons, and stuff.
Even in Star Trek VI, the BoP being able to fire while cloaked "dampened" the cloak around the launcher while firing.
Star Trek X doesn't count for me, as it was directed by Abrams. And this guy ruins any decent Star Trek movie.

Cmdr Wyvern · Post by **Cmdr Wyvern** » Sun Aug 09, 2009 8:29 pm

Why is somebody comparing Oolite to Star Trek? Good grief...

<Spartan Mode> This is not Star Trek, :Romulan kicked into the pit of death: THIS IS OOLITE!! </Spartan Mode>

Right, that joviality aside, I don't really give a Bimerian slimerat's iron ass one way or another.
If you're flying a ship of average recharge - around 4 to 5 - you'll notice the cloaking device is a power guzzler, especially if your energy unit gets shot off. Let your shields take a few hits then engage the cloak. Now watch your energy reserves get sucked down as the shields recharge. The cloak has an automatic safety cutoff which turns it off if it draws the reserves to 50% or less. Firing lasers and/or ECM only hasten the cutoff.

The cloak effect isn't total anyway. Your ship flickers rapidly instead of completely disappearing, whether weapons get fired or not.

Jagen Ordo · Post by **Jagen Ordo** » Sun Aug 09, 2009 9:25 pm

Ah, that sort of cloak.

And I compare Oolite to Star Trek, 'cause I'm modelling ST ships for Oolite.

LittleBear · Post by **LittleBear** » Sun Aug 09, 2009 9:42 pm

NPCs though can't see the player when cloaked, even though as humans / birds / lizards / bearoids etc we are smart enough to work out where the cloaked NPC is and so his cloak does him little good against the player! So I'd vote for a balancer like losing cloaking when you fire, which applies to both player and NPCs.

Post by **Disembodied** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 12:40 am

This will presumably affect the inbuilt Cloaking Device mission, yes? I haven't actually done this in Oolite yet but my 25-year-gone memory of the event from the Spectrum days had the cloaked ship flickering in and out of view as its lasers fired ...

Lestradae · Post by **Lestradae** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 1:25 am

Hi Disembodied,

Good point for an objection, but no, it wouldn't. I had a look: The Asp Mk II that is the ship in question for the mission has a completely discrete entry in the core shipdata.plist - "asp-cloaked" - meaning that as long as this entry isn't touched or overwritten (and I wouldn't, via OSE, anyways), this ship stays as it was and so does the "mission".

Cheers

L

Lestradae · Post by **Lestradae** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 7:07 am

There's a poll here.

Zbond-Zbond · Post by **Zbond-Zbond** » Sun Aug 16, 2009 9:05 am

There's not much point firing while cloaked: you don't score anything.

In a hostile battlefield environment, a moment of cloaking enables temporary respite from the merciless onslaught - the objective of advancing one's kill-count remains, of course; if everything was extinguished from cloaked status, there would be no progression beyond "Harmless" - Thargoids, bounty hunters, VIPERS

I want my triumphs recorded (as a kill-score)

Lestradae · Post by **Lestradae** » Tue Aug 18, 2009 9:52 am

@Zbond-Zbond:

I actually agree with everything you say, but this does neither say anything for nor against decloaking when firing. The following cases still stand imho:

1) You might not score anything, but you might finish missions by damaging the mission's mark for half an hour, then decloak for the final shot and have managed a mission basically in god mode. That makes no sense.

2) Ingame if it was possible to fire when cloaked (as it is -yet - still) - then even if cloaking was horribly rare and unusual (which it is also with OSE beta and the core game etc.) - any naval force and the thargoids would logically fight every important battle cloaked. So you would have battlefields full of ships never launching one missile or thargon (as no one could get a lock anyways), with transparent ships blinking in and out of existence, sporadic laserfire on an invisible battlefield. Makes no sense either.

3) A very few really uber ass pirates in OSE can cloak. They are not invincible. But I think it is enough if they can get close without a scanner warning and with really bad visibility onscreen. The moment they shoot at you they should loose the cloak. Methinks, at least.

4)

I want my triumphs recorded (as a kill-score)

-> Exactly!

So where is the point for us - as players - of being able to defeat opponents who will never know what hit them and also no killscore?

These are my 0.2 Cr concerning your arguments. The poll result is leaning massively in the direction of passive cloaking for OSE anyways, I will wait for the final result but I think the outcome is not likely to change anymore.

L

Lestradae · Post by **Lestradae** » Mon Aug 24, 2009 12:33 am

I think the result of this poll is going to be rather unambiguous, as there is only one day of voting left this is my last bump for it.

But as 91% are for passive cloaking for OSE at them moment, if no wonder happens, I'd say it's in.

wackyman465 · Post by **wackyman465** » Mon Aug 24, 2009 5:42 am

I think you should design OSE so we can choose, like with an option in a .plist file in the oxp.

Lestradae · Post by **Lestradae** » Mon Aug 24, 2009 7:24 am

wackyman465 wrote:
I think you should design OSE so we can choose

That's an interesting (fifth) option, the only problem with that being that the passive cloak is done via an entry into the shipdata plist, and I can't make partial ship info dependent on a condition - so I am afraid your suggestion is to the extent of my knowledge technically impossible.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this!

Anyways, the poll is that obvious about what most people who cared enough to vote want to have that passive cloaking is going to be standard in OSE.

Cheers

L

wackyman465 · Post by **wackyman465** » Mon Aug 24, 2009 9:12 pm

To change passive cloaking would I have to do it for each individual ship or would I be able to change a "global passive cloaking" to false in a .plist? Would that be possible at all?

Lestradae · Post by **Lestradae** » Mon Aug 24, 2009 9:38 pm

wackyman465 wrote:
To change passive cloaking would I have to do it for each individual ship or would I be able to change a "global passive cloaking" to false in a .plist? Would that be possible at all?

As far as I have understood A_C's comments (linked in the first posting of this thread) a global setting of this is not possible - it can be set individually for each and every ship in the shipdata.plist.

The shipdata.plist for final OSE will be produced by a program (!) that is in the last stages of development as I write, which will cloak_passive every ship.

Once it's done, the way back is to hand-change 650 or so templates.

L