Cloak Detection Alterations

posted on March 2nd, 2010, 11:48 pm

I can't think of a canon reason for intelligence report being there, but it HAS to be there as a gameplay mechanic.  Otherwise in multiplayer you'd get some jerk who has lost, but still has one or two cloaked ships hiding out, and he won't quit the game before you do, so even though he technically lost, he can still claim it as a win, because he still had ships on the board.  That's really childish and annoying.  So there has to be some way to pinpoint cloaked vessels, so you can hunt them out and eventually hit them with graviton ping or whatever you have so you can completely finish off a cloaking enemy.

[Dave Denton]

posted on March 2nd, 2010, 11:58 pm

Last edited by Dave Denton on March 3rd, 2010, 3:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

    So you put all of this because someone will be claiming a victory behind his cloaked ship? And who will see this anyway?
  And even if someone is seeing this, any rational being will clearly know who won .... certainly not the guy with one cloaked ship.

posted on March 3rd, 2010, 12:00 am

Dave you are looking for "Sciency" reasons for how Intel Report works and why it's in the game.


 You are not going to get any.


 It's in the game because it has to be.  There needs to be a way of locating cloaked ships that a person might try to hide in order to "win by boredom" after their opponent tries to find that last ship.  It's a game mechanic and it's necessary.

 Use some freakin' imagination instead of yelling at me about it on Tunngle and calling me bad names  >:(.

[Dave Denton]

posted on March 3rd, 2010, 12:05 am

Last edited by Dave Denton on March 3rd, 2010, 1:18 am, edited 1 time in total.

  Nice try, Boggz.
And I don't remeber calling you bad names, I don't deny this either.

  This feature should affect ships that are not cloaked as well, because if you cloak you get more visible than not being cloaked.

  I have never seen things in Star Trek to be able to detect cloaked vessels over vast areas of space, just because they are cloaked ... yet become undetectable once they drop their cloak. The cloaking in Fleet Operations has an opposite effect to the whole idea of Star Trek cloak.

posted on March 3rd, 2010, 1:14 pm

I believe the  best way to deal with that annoying graviton net is to have a counter to it. There are several Options.

1) A real sensor jammer. A jammer, that just turns off all sensors in a large area, but dies not do anything else like the griffin's.

2) A jammer that prohibits use of the graviton ping in a defined area

3) A cloak enchancer that enables immediate recloaking. This could e.g. supersede the shield recharger, which the seems to be going to be replaced anyway.

Asides that i need to say i like the other mentioned ideas in this thread too.

posted on March 4th, 2010, 5:15 pm

I pretty much agree with Dom on the issue. I think cloaking should be a viable way of escape for the cloaking races, cause right now against decent players, its more a liability than anything else.

Honestly, Id just lower the energy recharge rate on sensor stations and give them less energy to start with. I think that would have the desired effect.
But I would also agree with mimesot's suggestion of sensor jammers (those would be awesome IMO )

To everyone complaining about Dominion sensor station range and pinging ability. The thing costs something like 700dil, 500tri and 70supplies (Im probably wrong, look it up yourself, use the guide! ). Compare this to the cost of other sensor stations and u shall know the reason for its better performance
TBH, Id rather have a cheap sensor station, that I would actually be able to build in early game, rather than a monster for which I have to sacrifice ship production. It also becomes a nice juicy target for the enemy as well -.-

posted on March 4th, 2010, 5:18 pm

point-and-scan cloak detection will be removed for all races in 3.1.2 and sensor stations will get reworked a bit.
All races will have a different - less efficent - way for mobile cloaking detection

posted on March 4th, 2010, 5:29 pm

Kewl .

posted on March 4th, 2010, 6:30 pm

Yes!!! I'm looking forward to this patch with inexpressible anticipation.