Decloaking

posted on June 9th, 2010, 3:29 am

how about this:

cloaking takes a lot of energy for klingons but minimum amounts for the romulans, but you can research to reduce amount of energy it takes to cloak, the romulans would have an advantage over this b/c they only might need only 1 level of research, while the klingons would have to do 3 or 4 levels of research to reduce the energy usage of cloak...

posted on June 9th, 2010, 5:28 am

That could work, then the "heavy cloak" could still be a game option, just have it at level three or four.

posted on June 9th, 2010, 6:05 am

I have two proposals:

1. Klingons ships are not completly invisible. They leave some flickering in the visual appearence. This way an aware player can guess where a cloaked Klingon ship is.

2. Klingon cloaked ships consume energy constantly. This makes it impossible to stay cloaked all the time but allows for cloaked ambushes and raids.

posted on June 9th, 2010, 7:19 am

Eh, we have canon examples that Klingon ships can stay cloaked as long as they please, and are willing to do so (if grumpy about it).

Remember when they went to see Spock on Romulus?  Klingon cloaks may not be as nice as Romulan cloaks, but they are still good enough that you need to be actively looking for them if you want to find them.

posted on June 9th, 2010, 7:37 am

This'll just ruin the reason people play Klingon though. High attack, with a good sneaky cloak 

posted on June 9th, 2010, 10:57 am

thats the thing though, klingons should be offense oriented in my mind. cloak is still a really nice thing, it allows the klingon fleets to move undetected a lot of the time. i think klingons should have better weapons and worse cloak. the romulans are the cloak masters. i just want the races to be more different from eachother. right now if u play as klingon or romulan nearly the same ambush tactics apply. decloak and kill everything that moves. then cloak and run before enemy arrives if possible. i think they should be different.

[Dexter]

posted on June 9th, 2010, 1:06 pm

Last edited by Dexter on June 9th, 2010, 1:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You all know i'm a klingon favoring player (if not, now you know), yet personally i think it's utter nonsense to think that klingons must be presented always as brute force warriors, and as idiots in all other compartments.

Granted, on screen most of the time you only see the warrior cast of there society (granted all other casts are also dominated by the same mentality), but do remember that these "brute not knowing klingons" maintain and expand an empire, they are almost constantly at war with someone (not full scale war).

Now even the most unskilled person is able to observe by using something that certain modifications have positive results. Remember a certain episode that allowed only the klingons to adapt almost instantly to the breen torpedoes, while the feds and romulans where literally dead in the water ?

I do understand that for balancing reasons klingons have a 4 second cloak, yet what really upsets me is the difference between breen and klingon time to cloak.
Now we all know that romulans are considered to be the masters of cloak (fine so be it), but in the game at least cloaking costs different amount of energy for all the races that have this option.

Romulans always have enough energy to use 2-3 times an ability and reengage the cloak that will make them almost unkillable with there 2 seconds. With a klingon you literally drop your pants for 4 long seconds. That's 2x as much no matter how you look at it.
Thankfully in 3.1.2 they have improved hull strength, but less shielding.

I would propose that before you all start whining that they are not different enough, you take a look at how they really all :
Klingons have strong hull, but weaker shields, they have the stronger weapons in contrast to romulans whom have mediocre hulls and average shield, but have the superior firepower at first.

Maybe i was delirious, or i should check the odf's, but i think the romies do more DMG/s when they open fire and then do less and less (consider the reload time of the weapons).

I also like the idea that players are not forced to use only one tactic, as you can use the same hit and runs with both races, yet there is a huge difference :

1) one has a better staying power (duh: klingons of course), while the other has not

2) one has ships that have disadvantages that can be used against them (see K'vort loosing it's shields; almost all klingon ships suffer from system failures more easily once shields are down except the mainstay K'beajQ and perhaps the Vor'cha thax to it's ablative armor plates)

3) one has more energy reserves (duh: romulans of course) then the other

4) one has the best mobile cloak detection while the other is utterly reliant of 2 ships, at least in 3.1.2, not to mention they need to be in range and do not loose sight of a fleeing enemy

5) one has a really quick and adaptable/versatile techtree, while the other no matter how you look at it is static, easily disturbed, blockable even (cloaked ships do block a building from being placed !), not to mention more resource consuming

6) one is heavily reliant on successful battles, while the other is not

7) I could go on, but i hope you get the point.

On the topic of science, even the smartest of us can go berserk, can be provoked, and klingons do have a temper (so do I).
By no means do i mean that any race (romulan or klingon) are cowardly, yet there always will be similarity and difference with them.
The diversity you are longing for is in your hands. You can choose how you play the game, what tactics you will use.

Remember that history is written by the victors.

And even the honorable federation, klingons did do dishonorable things to save there "empires". The end justifies the means, remember ?

Also just for the sake of it .. Even on screen we saw it explained that for a klingon nothing is more honorable then victory. The klingon chooses how he will gain that victory.
Currently there is the Martok way and the TaQ'roja way.

Please do remember that good and evil are also just points of view.

Now if you can digest this you may be ... heck if i know ..

Edit: Better readability, typos

posted on June 10th, 2010, 1:31 am

And don't forget that Klingon Warriors aren't idiots as a general rule.  Remember the story Kor told?  How, on the way to a battle, he spent hours in engineering, taking apart systems and reassembling them over and over until he had memorized them, and knew them as well as his own hands?

Never mistake a Klingon for being inept or incompetant until they prove themselves so.

On a side note, come to think of it, I think some Klingon ships should have the Weapon Pods special.  If anyone would build weapons that you can't force offline, it'd be the Klingon Empire.