Energy management and Romulan cloaking

posted on April 29th, 2012, 11:24 pm

This is less an idea, more of a request for a solution to a problem I see (from my perspective): When playing as Romulan, some ships can very easily deplete their special energy to below what it cost to cloak, leaving you in a situation where you can't cloak (which seems very un-Romulan). Leaval's auto-repair,  Norexian's Multipurpose Weapons and Cehlaer's Disruptor Bombardment are the cases that come to mind. 



It would be nice to have some way of indicating to your ships that you want them to keep in reserve enough energy to cloak out.

(just a thought)

posted on April 29th, 2012, 11:33 pm

I agree with you on realism, that a romulan captain would keep energy for cloaking, but from a gameplay slant, this would take away a bit of micro that keeps players on their toes.

posted on April 30th, 2012, 12:35 am

Fair assessment, especially in low number of ship engagements. It's relatively easy to manage your energy.

What about larger number ship engagements, though? The amount of time it would take to click between each of your ships, read the energy and make a decision to disable 'casting' seems a bit too micro management intensive.

Using hover to view the energy of ships while they are all fighting is not what I would consider the best approach either. It still takes time to go get the information.

What I almost want to ask for is an energy bare to be displayed (similar to hull/shields) in the main display when a ship is selected. That way I can see the status of ALL of of my ship's energy. (maybe put it under the ship so it doesn't get "lost" as 3 color bars at the top). 

Ya know: Give me the pertinent information that I need to make decisions. The challenge should not be to get the information, but rather what I do with it.


The other thing I almost want to ask for is: Give me a slider bar on the energy (somehow) that won't let special weapons be used past the slider bar's energy level - that way cloak could be used if needed.

2c  

posted on April 30th, 2012, 3:59 am

Actually I disagree, in fact I think Warbirds in particular should have their cloaking cost increased to 25 energy.  This is why:

In the earliest versions of Fleet Ops that I played, Romulan ships weren't much more expensive than the other races.  At this time, every race's starbase had the ability to remote-ping anywhere on the map 3-4 times before it would have to recharge special energy.  Cloaking was less of an advantage, so cloaky ships didn't need to be more expensive.

Then all of a sudden the ping went away, and cloaking ships got a HUGE cost hike across the board.  It became very difficult for any race besides Romulans and late-game Dominion to detect cloaked ships, so cloaky ships needed to be balanced so that the enemy could use hardly any cloak detect and still defeat them.

Now the new racial cloak detect abilities are making their way into the game, and they're really, really cool.  But the fundamental balance remains that the stronger cloak is, the more expensive cloaky ships need to be and the crappier they are in a forced big-fleet engagement.

So if anything I want cloak to be harder to use, thus less of an advantage, thus allowing the ships to be cheaper, thus allowing them to be less screwed in the event that cloaking gets shut down.

Now for the part about having a visible energy bar and more selective Special Autonomy, I say absolutely yes!!!

posted on April 30th, 2012, 10:02 am

The other thing I almost want to ask for is: Give me a slider bar on the energy (somehow) that won't let special weapons be used past the slider bar's energy level - that way cloak could be used if needed.

personally i really like this idea as it would make things easier for the player, but that's the problem with it too, would that make cloak much more powerful? would cloaking ships need even more costs to account for easier use?

posted on April 30th, 2012, 11:00 am

i think there needs to be 2 cloak buttons. 1 to cloak and 1 to decloak

so if half your fleet is cloaked and you want to cloak them all you can, and if you want to decloak them all you can.

also i like the idea of being able to keep enough energy for cloak

posted on April 30th, 2012, 7:00 pm

^Thats already been brought up though I think they said that its staying as is with only one button.

But yeah the energy used should not be so much that you can't cloak as soon as you use it.

posted on April 30th, 2012, 7:40 pm

Actually we'd like to change it to a two-button system, but such things are difficult

posted on April 30th, 2012, 11:19 pm

I know the chances are slim, but is it possible to key in two different keyboard hotkeys even if it remains a single button?  That would be all I need to be happy