stealth and stealth detection

[Apothecary]

actually cloaking devices and cloak detecters opinions?

[xx]

The devs have said no in the pass to cloaking decices, instead they were talking about stealth amour. However they may have changed their mind.

[Woopsicles]

I would like to see cloaking but it would probably be to vunerable to battering ram ships sneaking up on you. Maybe making it so a cloaked ship has a limited speed?
Have they ever concidered stealth but only making it effect the HUD/Antenna's detecting ships or the range a Turret sees a ship and starts shooting?

[xx]

The stealth option that only effected the detection range was that they were discussing, you could get closure before being detected but in return had weaker amour.

With the full on cloaked ship only having a limited speed, it still allows the attacker to get a wall of guns/gravity cannon within range and attack with no warning and little chance to defend. Or a drone limpet mine packed full of warheads remotely piloted towards your base.

Or people scattering cloaked mines near astriods.

[SievertChaser]

Firstly. Cloaking devices are pure sci-fi. Keen has said no to pure sci-fi. *cough* artifical gravity *cough*

Secondly. Stealth as in RAM coating or similar is hardly a universal solution. It can always be overwhelmed by sheer signal strength, which increases as you approach the emitter, hence it is impossible to stay completely invisible.

[Woopsicles]

How about this for full cloaking?

Low cloaked max speed.
You could only cloak a small ship and it only works on the grid the cloak is attached to
Any damage taken by a cloaked ship cancels the cloak.
Uncloaking makes it broad cast a signal letting nearby people know its there.

Cloaking a ship locks its weapons, grinders, drills, etc for a length of time after they uncloak to stop uncloaking and taking out a large ship/stations defences.
Cloaked thrusters and recently uncloaked don't damage other ships stopping cloaked thruster weapons. The more functional blocks, grinders, thrusters, weapons, the longer the delay.

This way the only way to have a surprise cloak attack would be to make a drone/ship and hide it in or near the intended target, where you know its not going to be instantly fired on and hope that the target cant destroy it before its cooldown ends and it's able to do some damage.


A cloaked mine can't detonate while cloaked or from being damaged and gets the same delay as the weapons.
This way a stealth mine would have to stick to a ships hull and reveal its self thus giving the pilot a chance to disarm it or remove it before it explodes.


Doing this could hopefully allow for full cloaking being balanced. Removing the OP stealth surprise attack, Hidden gravity cannons and removes stealth the battering ram.

[SievertChaser]

That's sci-fi cloaking. No sci-fi cloaking.

[Woopsicles]

I was replying to XX not your post. Plus the disgussion is more about people's opinions on cloaking and stealth, just because the devs said no sci-fi cloaking dosnt mean it cant be disgussed. :)

[SievertChaser]

We don't even know if we'll get sensors (well, ones that have a range of above 50 m).

[Woopsicles]

Probably be better to use antennas in detecting ships over a large area instead of sensors. It could made so if a ship goes into an entennas range and dosn't have an antenna of its own or if the antenna is turned off if would have "Unidentified Ship" show up on the HUD and if it was stealth, they can get closer before it shows. If cloaked the ship is invisible and dosnt show up on the HUD unless its really close to the antenna.
Possiby other blocks that if powered increase or decrease detection range.

[SievertChaser]

That feature is nice, but I doubt that the antenna will recieve the added functionality. Sensors shold be bulky. There probably will be a certain formula that defines a ships's signature - and RAM Plating (or whatever) will be factored in. A Sensor Field (imagine a 3x3 AESA grid) will have a detection rate based on power input. Antennae will also show up on sensor sweeps even if they are not set to broadcast - reducing the number of Unidentified Large/Small Ships y acting as transponders.

[xx]

Actually the devs did mention the antenna being part of the way stealth works pretty much like Woopsicles said. The only differance would be instead of unidentified ship, it would be considered hostile, so if you return to base with no anntenna or it switch off, your own defences would use it for target practice. A reason for most big ships to have more then one.

As for cloak, till someone produces a working cloak I don't think it will be in game. Even then it would be to easy to abuse. If it limited your engine power people would just get up to speed well outside the weapon range after lining up then cloak or use a gravity drive. most of the people who play this game fall into three catagories. People who are trained engineers, those who in their hart are engineers and greifers. All three groups are good at spotting design weaknesses and engineering something to take advantage of them. So most public servers will quickly install a script to disable them like they do with other functionality that causes issues.

The only way I can see cloaks being half way balance would be to for you to have to be stationary/docked to something, all systems effectily powered off and still be detectable at say max weapon range plus 10%. That way the person being attacked still has chance to bring defences on line. This will be even more important with Oxygen, since a single damaged armour block can depressurise a hull section quickly killing the crew.

There was a mod on the workshop that claimed to be a fully working cloak. No idea if it would work on mutiplayer or not.

[Chuggernaut]

Maybe some sort of ECM/ECCM would be more likely.
Effectively an anti-antennae. It would hide anything in range of its coverage from antennas nearby. The only way to detect it would be through visual acquisition or the drop of the ECM.

[SievertChaser]

Uh, ever heard of "home-on-jam"? The presense of ECM is quite detectable.

ECCM is counter-ECM, BTW.

[Woopsicles]

@XX if they were to limit the engine power you could use gravity or a really long run up to gain speed. But if they cap the speed to something like 10m/s you would take a while to hit them and probably not do alot of damage.

[Apothecary]

what about an exxtremely well cloaked ship but it ha almost no movement and can just run and secondary power with the main engines power lowered to avoid detection?