Oolite Bulletins

Switeck wrote:

The U-Boats were at least extremely slow while "cloaked" (underwater). In some sense, they tended to reveal their presence when firing...switching from hunter to hunted. But in Oolite, you can stay cloaked while firing...or at worst only have to decloak if you want credit for the kill. Your speed is not reduced while cloaked. (If injecting and firing lasers/bombs/missiles caused decloaking, then at least it'd be more balanced.)

Might that be worth considering? In the original game, only the player would have the cloak, and would only ever fly a Cobra III. Maybe, given the greater flexibility of Oolite, it might be wise to add some restrictions to the cloaking device to keep things interesting. If you want to stay cloaked, you'd have to minimise your energy signature: that means no weapons fire, no ECM, and no redlining of the engines (i.e. you'd have to stay a certain percentage below maximum cruising speed). A cloak should be something sneaky, for skulking around under: it feels wrong, I think, to let players zoom about and shoot things up while effectively invisible.

I was thinking if it would be profitable making cloak_passive default to yes. This way, shooting any weapon will result in immediate cloak de-activation.

Opinions?

another_commander wrote:

I was thinking if it would be profitable making cloak_passive default to yes. This way, shooting any weapon will result in immediate cloak de-activation.

Opinions?

That's how I have it set myself. So as not to appear hypocritical, I should suggest making it work like Elite by default (sorry can't remember exactly how that was!), but with the option to change it to taste

My player ship has cloak_passive set to 'yes', as does the one OXP ship with a cloak I've produced.
Making it the default setting gets my vote.

another_commander wrote:

I was thinking if it would be profitable making cloak_passive default to yes. This way, shooting any weapon will result in immediate cloak de-activation.

Opinions?

Agree!

another_commander wrote:

I was thinking if it would be profitable making cloak_passive default to yes. This way, shooting any weapon will result in immediate cloak de-activation.

Opinions?

I'd make whatever is considered to be the best gameplay option the default mode, and not worry about what happened in the original game. After all, the original game didn't have injectors, or player ships with more than 4 energy banks, or high recharge rates. Making the player auto-decloak when firing is, I think, the better option. I'd also shut down the cloak if the player redlines their speed, but decloaking on firing is better than the current setup.

In fact, thinking about recharge rates: it's presumably possible, at the moment, for some ships to remain cloaked all the time, because their energy recharge rate is higher than the cloak's power consumption. Might it be possible to base the cloak's energy consumption on the player-ship's recharge rate, so it's always (say) 110% or something similar? For handwavium, it's because the cloak has to mask the energy signature, so for higher energy levels its own power consumption must be higher etc. etc. ... Ships with lots of energy banks would still have an advantage, in that they'd have more energy to spend, but it would mean that ship designers wouldn't need to worry about "breaking" the way the cloak is meant to work by giving a ship too high a recharge rate.

Alternatively, cloaking could automatically disable the weapons, so you couldn't fire at all whilst cloaked. (IIRC that's how a cloak works in the Star Trek universe.)

On second thoughts, though, both this idea and letting cloak_passive default to "yes" would change the cloaking device mission. I think it's an integral part of the mission that the player gets attacked by a cloaked ship. This has to be considered as well.

Commander McLane wrote:

On second thoughts, though, both this idea and letting cloak_passive default to "yes" would change the cloaking device mission. I think it's an integral part of the mission that the player gets attacked by a cloaked ship. This has to be considered as well.

How about: there's a difference between a properly installed cloaking device, and one that the player has scooped up out of the debris and retrofitted to their own ship?

Disembodied wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

On second thoughts, though, both this idea and letting cloak_passive default to "yes" would change the cloaking device mission. I think it's an integral part of the mission that the player gets attacked by a cloaked ship. This has to be considered as well.

How about: there's a difference between a properly installed cloaking device, and one that the player has scooped up out of the debris and retrofitted to their own ship?

Sounds like cloak_passive should be yes by default, but can be set to no in shipdata.plist .
That would mean the cloak would be active BY DESIGN on some special ships only.

(If this was to be implemented guess we have a new criteria for Uber-ships : cloack_passive = no) .

Disembodied wrote:

another_commander wrote:

I was thinking if it would be profitable making cloak_passive default to yes. This way, shooting any weapon will result in immediate cloak de-activation. Opinions?

In fact, thinking about recharge rates: it's presumably possible, at the moment, for some ships to remain cloaked all the time, because their energy recharge rate is higher than the cloak's power consumption.

Agreed on making cloak_passive default to yes.

Permanent cloaking requires a basic energy_recharge_rate of about 5, with a Naval Energy Unit fitted (assuming no other demands on the energy banks).

Commander McLane wrote:

On second thoughts, though, both this idea and letting cloak_passive default to "yes" would change the cloaking device mission. I think it's an integral part of the mission that the player gets attacked by a cloaked ship. This has to be considered as well.

That will be the least of all problems by explicit setting cloak_passive to "no" for that mission ship to keep it unaffected by any default change.

I also would suggest to set default to yes. And with all the AI changes on cloaking, now will be the right moment to change it. After a few weeks playing you know what feels best. And generally, I think the default option should be the worse option for the player. That leaves room for an oxp to offer an 'improved' version. This sound better than the other way around.

It looks like everyone agrees that we should at least give it a try. I will switch the default for tonight's nightly build and suggest we let it like this for a while in order to give people a good chance to test.

As for the built-in mission, my personal opinion is that the way it feels and plays should not change that much if we have a passively cloaked ship. My interpretation of the mission would be that the player gets attacked by a ship that can cloak. It will still be not so simple tracking it, especially when someone encounters the mission for the very first time. It could be that we may not have to set passive cloak to false for that ship at all. Thankfully, all this can be tested quite exhaustively with the nightlies. For those who want to give it a try, we have a savefile of a game just before the start of the cloaking device mission stored under http://svn.berlios.de/viewvc/oolite-lin ... ision=3554 (right click and save target, you may have to rename the extension to .oolite-save).

cim wrote:

The pirate band was wiped out - including their base - with only one casualty on the trader's side. Unfortunately, that was the Anaconda...

Anacondas currently are usually escorted by 2, 4, or 6 not-terribly-fast Cobra 1's. Even if it has the full escort compliment of 6 Cobra 1's, the Anaconda itself possesses 1 more missile than all its escorts combined. Have it use them...brutally! Its first order of action in an attack is to stop, overheat its front laser, fire a missile, and then turn away and accelerate to normal max speed. From that point, it can use its rear laser till overtaken and fire off missiles as needed to eliminate the remainder of attackers. Escorts will assist as needed.

cloak_passive set to 'yes' ...no problem here. Mostly I just use the cloak to watch and test things. My "all serious" savegames never got a cloak, not in Oolite or even in Elite despite me getting to Deadly.