Em scube

posted on September 6th, 2010, 8:00 pm

it was mentioned a while back that the em scube seems to be failing to decloak a lot more than intended.

i remember hearing something about em scubes failing around 10% of the time.

i've been playing several games, and nearly every time em scubes are used they fail to decloak a single unit. i cant remember any instances of it working in about 20 uses. there are 2 instances where it might have worked, where my opponents ship's were apparently decloaking without him ordering them to do so, so it's possible the em scubes werent working then either.

in most of these situations i am 100% sure that the em scube was firing on the enemy while it was cloaking.

i cant say for sure that the em scube doesnt work right, but i think it's something that deserves a little investigation. as it seems to be failing more than it should be. unless it was intended to be unreliable lol.

posted on September 6th, 2010, 8:05 pm

Interesting, since I had some games where it worked without fail  . If it's coded that way in the ODFs, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work right, unless the coding was being strange...

posted on September 6th, 2010, 8:07 pm

Percentages are all luck, so they were probably just bad games.

posted on September 6th, 2010, 8:11 pm

i can accept a few games with it not working. but this is nearly every time i use it. at least 20 times with practically no success. which is far far away from a small failure rate. i like the idea of a failure rate, just not this high lol.

posted on September 6th, 2010, 8:16 pm

Yeah, I think it fails way too many times. I don't like when two em scubes are chasing a half-dead kvort and it escapes...

posted on September 6th, 2010, 8:19 pm

Yeah, id have to agree with this, the em scube does seem to fail more then 10 percent, maybe thats just me tho, and i admit i havent played with it that much for a little while, plus, and i maybe wrong, but isnt that the only way that borg can detect cloak? and thats just to prevent escape, i guess what im saying is maybe a little more testing needs to be done, at least i know that i do, cus i dont really know about this, as i said, i havent played borg much recently.

I did bring this issue up a while ago in another thread, ill try to find it and see what was said.

posted on September 6th, 2010, 8:23 pm

The Borg can find cloaked ships with the Probe, but can't expose them without the EM Scube.

[Anonymous]

posted on September 6th, 2010, 8:24 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on September 6th, 2010, 8:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

yeah, borg ships do have difficulty finishing off ships early on, which is fine as they are defensively nice. but with em scubes not filling their role the borg have almost no way to fight cloakers. which is already difficult as pro cloakers can sneak in and kill your building ships

em scubes letting them escape after sneaking in and spanking you is just humiliating.

EDIT: got ninjad twice, was replying to elim

about probes, u cant justify the resource expenditure on intel report. plus that only works on ships that are already cloaked. em scube can only decloak when firing. so using probes wont help your em scubes.

posted on September 6th, 2010, 8:27 pm

Haha, sorry for the double post guys, in fact there are 3 em scube topics,

Quote from mal:
"The Scube must be in combat for it to work.  It's designed to prevent cloak retreat, not detect units already cloaked.  Races are slowly getting more cloak detection options in future patches, but it just takes time to code all that they have planned.  So the Borg are indeed weak on cloak detection, but it won't stay that way."

Also optec said that it was [i]around[i] 10 percent, not that it was 10 percent, so maybe the fail rate is a bit higher

either way it looks like from what mal says that the team has some things planned for better cloak detect for the borg, so i guess all we can do is hope it is adressed in the next patch.  Right now however, id suggest just build two em scubes, also, the em scube negates the effects of passive, so thats another reason to build 2 of them.

posted on September 6th, 2010, 8:37 pm

i know borg will get more cloak detect which is good.

if the em scube has a failure rate of around 10% then it definitely shouldnt fail more than 20%

and it seems to fail a lot more.

[Dominus_Noctis]

posted on September 6th, 2010, 8:45 pm

Last edited by Dominus_Noctis on September 6th, 2010, 9:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ordname = "bor_emfieldAo"
special = 0
useprimarytarget = 0
basetargets = 5
needtarget = 0
hitmode = 2
hitcloaked = 1
beneficial = 1
autotargetclosest = 1
classlabel = "cannonimp"
wpnname = "cannonimp"
shotdelay0 = 0.1
speakonattack = 0
attackspeech = 0
range = 200

As far as I know, it should be 10%

EDIT : Removed something silly 

posted on September 6th, 2010, 8:54 pm

i understand it's supposed to have a fail rate of 10% i'm just making the point a lot of people are noticing that it fails a lot more than 10%

i maybe should have made this a poll and seen how many people have noticed this.

but i guess people who notice this can post here.

posted on September 14th, 2010, 5:42 pm

The thing to keep in mind is, the decloak range is significantly smaller than the weapon range.  You have to sit right on them for it to work I believe.

posted on September 14th, 2010, 5:45 pm

The decloak is shorter than short range? That's odd since forcefiring cloak detect didn't seem to be that short ranged in 3.1.2, was the range changed in 3.1.3?

posted on September 14th, 2010, 11:21 pm

the effect of EM field obays an internal cooldown of 5 seconds. If vessels cloak shortly after an EM field effect was activated, they might slip through detection for a few seconds