Sovvie Decloak Sweep

posted on March 19th, 2011, 12:56 pm

Remember in nemesis we saw the ent fire loads of lazor spam to hit the deathstar?

well i was thinking of implementing something similar for fleetops.

push a button, spw energy gets used, and hits nearby cloaked ships, doing tiny damage. say 1% of the hull of a noqduj. it then makes visible some cloaked ships.

balancing ideas:

• only certain high level capital ships (mainly those with beams) can do it. so sovvie, phalanx, big d, tavara, cube (might be iffy), v13, v15, neggie
• could take a lot of spw energy to fire. the ent didnt do this a lot, only once
• could have a chance to fail, like it did in nemesis
• could only cause the ship that used the sweep to be able to fire on the cloaked ship, as the others dont have enough time to react
• could let the ship be visible only for 1 second, just enough time for 1 volley to be fired, which might not destroy the ship, just damage the hull, which would at least force them to repair
• maybe low ranking ships cant do it, so only officers or vets
• if lower ranking ships can do it, maybe higher ranking ships get a better chance of detecting

posted on March 19th, 2011, 2:15 pm

Hehe, this idea has popped up throughout the history of Fleet Ops, and it's probably quite doable now - sounds like an interesting officer/vet ability 

posted on March 19th, 2011, 3:02 pm

IIRC this could even work in stock A2 - multi-targeting weapons ignore cloaks...  Of course, it'd be a lot less elegant, but it can be done.

posted on March 19th, 2011, 3:34 pm

Except there is no way in Stock A2 to do levels of cloak detect or valid targets 

posted on March 19th, 2011, 4:01 pm

Except there is no way in Stock A2 to do levels of cloak detect or valid targets 

Of course not. Why use a workaround if you can have awesome enhanced engine features? 

posted on March 19th, 2011, 4:26 pm

Isn't this already implemented as manual targeting? I still would like being able to shoot blindly until I hit something tho.
:2guns: :guns: 

posted on March 19th, 2011, 4:30 pm

Isn't this already implemented as manual targeting? I still would like being able to shoot blindly until I hit something tho.
:2guns: :guns: 

kinda, manual targeting works when they are cloaking, and you wanna keep them visible. my idea would work when they are cloaked already. but would give far less visible time, as we saw in nemesis, by the time you fire at the impact position, they may have moved. thats why only 1 second visible.

posted on March 19th, 2011, 5:52 pm

doing tiny damage. say 1% of the hull

Actually in Nemesis it looked like ALL Phaser-blasts of the Enterprise had less duration than on the shows or in First Contact. And face it, Sovereign-Phasers aren't powerful in FO and the ship relies on its torpedoes.

I suggest letting the "phaser-spread" do 66%-75% damage of a normal blast and giving it a chance of around 5% to disable weapons on battleships, around 10% on cruisers, around 15% on destroyers and around 20% on scouts/miners/constructors. Ships with advanced cloaking devices like the Bortas could be immune to the disabling effect, but still become visible during the short moment of the phaser-impact itself.

posted on March 19th, 2011, 5:59 pm

Actually in Nemesis it looked like ALL Phaser-blasts of the Enterprise had less duration than on the shows or in First Contact. And face it, Sovereign-Phasers aren't powerful in FO and the ship relies on its torpedoes.

1% hull damage of a noqduj isnt a lot of damage  just to acknowledge that its still a normal phaser, just at lower intensity and duration.

i dont agree with disabling effects, that would make it quite powerful indeed. and there is no reason that these unaimed random blasts should disable weapons if normal aimed blasts as higher power dont always disable a subsystem. disabling weapons would also cause the ship to decloak as cloak is tied to weapons. i think it should stay limited to making ships visible, as it doesnt require research.

posted on March 19th, 2011, 6:06 pm

1% of a NoQ'Duj health would be about 1 point of damage... probably about 1/12 of the full setting. So it's pretty much firing at 'light shove' setting?

posted on March 19th, 2011, 7:07 pm

1% hull damage of a noqduj isnt a lot of damage

No, it isn't, but it's too weak (the ship gets hit by a weapon, not by an apple). Just let the Sovereign do 66%-75% of its usual phaser damage.
In Nemesis there is no proof at all that the 0-elevation-phaser-spread was weaker than a normal phaser-blast (it's entirely possible the faster and shorter blasts got a high powerboost to do equal damage to a longer blast and that could also be a reason for not doing that twice).

posted on March 19th, 2011, 7:25 pm

I really like this idea.... Im not sure of the statistics for balancing purposes but i would like to see this implemented into the sovereign.

Graphically Id like to actually see the phasers firing off into nowhere.... The first time I saw something similar was the Sabers ECM that makes beams pulses and torps miss. I think if it was possible Id like to see this sort of effect happen when activated. you know the sovies phasers shooting quick bursts out of each hardpoint with maybe a % chance to hit a cloaked target. The effect lasts until special energy is consumed. Might be cool to add photon torpedos for additional awesomness to the effect too.

As I said Im not really sure about how often it should hit or how much damage, But it would really be sweet visually.

posted on March 19th, 2011, 7:32 pm

No, it isn't, but it's too weak (the ship gets hit by a weapon, not by an apple). Just let the Sovereign do 66%-75% of its usual phaser damage.
In Nemesis there is no proof at all that the 0-elevation-phaser-spread was weaker than a normal phaser-blast (it's entirely possible the faster and shorter blasts got a high powerboost to do equal damage to a longer blast and that could also be a reason for not doing that twice).

think about it logically, you are gonna fire 20 shots, knowing that all but 1 will miss, why waste power making all of them do any serious amount of damage? the aim is only to get an impact to target, not to do damage. so it would be a waste of power making the sweep be damaging.

posted on March 23rd, 2011, 11:45 pm

I just want to say I like this idea and would like to back up the request.

posted on March 24th, 2011, 1:06 am

here is the problem with this idea:

ships decloak when they receive hull damage, either direct or indirect.


This will cause a lot of buggy and forced decloaks which will annoy the crap out of cloakers...