Claoking during battle!?!?

Maybe if the cloaking / decloaking would take several seconds and leave your ship vulnerable without shields and weapons in Star Trek style. However it would still be horribly overpowered, even if your ships would leak somekind of energy trace, which would balance it a little bit by allowing blind shots.

I don't think that could be implemented into SE5 properly. I doubt the AI could cope with in-battle cloak.

Just my 2 cents

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Shazbot!

I dident like the cloak in star trek. i think you shoud still be able to shoot but it gives you the chance of being spoted. i should work like a sheild. but if hit makes a leak in the feild in witch you can see into. like stargate asgard shields that cloak the ship aswell.

I think its a great idea to have teh cloak in battle.

But more than not beeing able to use weapons or shields during cloack, it should also reduce your speed to some degree.

Also if you get too close to enemy ships you will be detected (depending on their sensor factor vs your cloack factor)

Given that the battlefield is so small, what would be the point of a cloak?

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Shazbot!

Cloak in battle would be very important, to me. The cloak tech come a little later, so, you can use for tactical purpose like sending boarding parties, or to drop unit on a planet... but I think it must be in Star Trek way, you must decloak to use your weapon or drop troops...

I'd like to see cloaked ships be able to initiate battle but have to decloak to do battle. In strategic mode the ships would automatically decloak for battle.
Omnius

I think it should be a small additional cloaking device that enabled when you enter a battle (unless enemy ship have apropriete level of sensors to penetrate it) that makes ship invisible until it fires first shoot.

Would be cool as a long time Romulan player from Starfleet battles I appreciate its tactical and strategic uses. I should imagine it’s difficult to do with the tactical combat engine. You can simulate combat cloaking to an extent with stealth armour. Though a device which gives large defensive bonuses but which prevents weapons fire when on would be the best way to model it sort of like super ECM. The theory being that at close range the enemy would have at least a vague idea of where the target was but not be able to get a good targeting solution. Tachyon sensors would give a huge targeting bonus against it

In order for a cloaked ship to be in battle, it must have run into a ship with sensors that could see it.

SEV, more than a feeling.

Simulate it by adding an evade bonus.

I think that the best use of cloaking in battle would be the way its described in the In death Ground and The Shiva Option novels (there're two more books in the series, but those two give the best descriptions of it as I would see it implemented).

Then again, I think that combat ranges in SEV are too small. Its not that I think a laser should be limited to 30 light seconds, more with higher tech levels; rather, that the scale is too big on the combat map - weapons should be two to three times as long range as they are now on the combat map, with the length of a ls also extended a similar amount on the map (IE - zoom in).

Cloaking systems would reduce the range at which a ship could be detected in combat - and make them completely invisible (unless the sensor level really outclassed the cloak level) at system ranges. A star system is a really big haystack to find something as small as a ship practicing strict emmissions control, to say nothing of a cloaking system. Things such as launching missiles (which imo should really be weaker but a lot longer ranged than energy weapons) and fighters would give a general locus for where the opposing fleet would be, but you'd have to get closer (between energy and missile ranges) to break through the cloak, exact distance depending on tech levels but completely unable to hide at energy weapon ranges regardless of tech levels.

At system ranges, I'd see the cloaking enemy fleet, not well enough to identify their exact locations but well enough to know something's there within my fleet's sector. For every 3 levels my sensors are better than their cloaking tech, extend that by one sector. So if my sensors were at level 10 and their cloak was at level 3, I would kow they were there (but not well enough to do any sort of ID or anything like that) two sectors out from my ships/bases. If their cloaking level was 8 or better, I wouldn't know they were there until they entered the same hex as one of my ships/bases/planets.

That is, in a nutshell, the way I'd like to see cloaking done in SE games. I must admit, however, that I'm not holding my breath. If for no other reason than it'd be a really killer AI to be able to take advantage of all that, and I'm not expecting that sort of thing out of this game.

IMHO doubling or tripling the weapons range would be a bad idea: outranging & "outfasting" the enemy would become even more critical that it is now (same thing for extending missile range).

And I don't think the scale of the combat map is too big - wait until you have fleets of 500 ships!

slightly off topic, but when do you get higher ship count allowed. My game is still limited to 200.

davor

Check the options available when you setup your game.

I like the idea of cloaking in battle but firing should make you "visible" even if just to simulate that they return fire to the source of the attack...this would make a fast cloaked ship perfect for any flanking manouvers...the cloaking device should use up supplies constantly while active in combat as an incentive to not remain cloaked too long.

all good ideas..... btw how could a game have a ship limit? ive gotten over 1000 ships deployed!

1000 ships? You have one huge economy!

You choose both the ships and units limits per race in the game options when you first start a new game, im not sure if it works at the moment though.

I agree cloaking in tactical combat would be very cool
But it would need to have certain disadvantages like leaves vulnerable for 2 or 3 seconds while cloaking or uncloaking, and high level tachyon scanners should be able to pierce it.

agreed, and for the ships, i cut maintinence down to 2% for most of my mods and games just so the AI doesnt cry and i can build fleets, ive faced an ai with well over 400 warships in one of my mods (the older halo mod)