So I think everyone is agreed that if we do have arc based cloaking that'll it'll be an alteration of the value of the cloak to a small degree for some kind of power saving, rather than a full these acrs are uncloaked and these arcs are fully cloaked situation for the purposses of firing uncloaked and then fully cloaking in the time it takes to Het.

By Geoff Conn (Talonz) on Sunday, March 23, 2003 - 05:52 pm: Edit

I don't know why you guys insist on speaking for anyone but yourself.

Arc cloaking is silly and makes no sense imo. Either you cloak the entire object or you don't.

Phased cloaking is really the combination of 2 ideas, that of invisibility and extradimnsional devices. Hardly anything that franchise trek would hold a sole copyright to.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Sunday, March 23, 2003 - 05:55 pm: Edit

I'm not sure, MJC. I don't think there's any consunsus yet.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Sunday, March 23, 2003 - 06:07 pm: Edit

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Quote:

Arc cloaking is silly and makes no sense imo. Either you cloak the entire object or you don't.

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By Geoff Conn (Talonz) on Monday, March 24, 2003 - 12:53 am: Edit

Personally if the cloak was just made cheaper I'd be happy. It already fades in 2 impulses and provides 2(?) pts of ecm under cloak free.

Make it cheaper so that the ships can retain their cloak longer in battles and maintain higher speeds under it.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Monday, March 24, 2003 - 01:16 am: Edit

Personally if the cloak was just made cheaper I'd be happy. It already fades in 2 impulses and provides 2(?) pts of ecm under cloak free.

What have you been smoking!?!...the X1 cloak takes 4 Impulses to cloak and uncloak...need to double check the bonus ECM, though I don't think cloaked vessel can generate ECM.


Make it cheaper so that the ships can retain their cloak longer in battles and maintain higher speeds under it.

Well the mirky cloak and the Jump cloak would be cheaper cloaks which would avail the Roms and Orions of higher speeds.


Personnally I think they are the way to go because of the Gee-wizz value.
A simple faster cloaking, faster uncloaking, cheap as chips cloaking divice in my opinion is not much fun.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Monday, March 24, 2003 - 09:35 am: Edit

The X2 cloak should not have just an on-off setting. An X2 cloaking ship should be able to freeze his fade at +3 and be allowed to move to +2 or +4 on the following impulse at whim. Pay for the cloak once/turn and you can make an number of fade-in/fade-outs.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Monday, March 24, 2003 - 02:03 pm: Edit

MJC,

Cloaked ships do get some use for ECM/ECCM. The shift is added to the roll for damage vs cloak chart.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Monday, March 24, 2003 - 08:02 pm: Edit

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Quote:

The X2 cloak should not have just an on-off setting. An X2 cloaking ship should be able to freeze his fade at +3 and be allowed to move to +2 or +4 on the following impulse at whim. Pay for the cloak once/turn and you can make an number of fade-in/fade-outs.

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Quote:

Cloaked ships do get some use for ECM/ECCM. The shift is added to the roll for damage vs cloak chart.

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By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Monday, March 24, 2003 - 08:04 pm: Edit

It's in the rules. I can come up with a reference tonight. No SFB rules at work.

By Geoff Conn (Talonz) on Wednesday, March 26, 2003 - 03:14 am: Edit

What have you been smoking!?!...the X1 cloak takes 4 Impulses to cloak and uncloak...need to double check the bonus ECM, though I don't think cloaked vessel can generate ECM.

Ah...who's been smoking what? X2 cloaks fade in/out in 2 impulses. And of course a cloaked vessel can use ECM. Kind of a necesary part of the ECM yoyo.



A simple faster cloaking, faster uncloaking, cheap as chips cloaking divice in my opinion is not much fun.

Its very fun in my opinion. Certainly a more sane option than 99% of the proposals here. Although more turn on/off options is very appealing.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Wednesday, March 26, 2003 - 03:53 pm: Edit

Geoff,

I don't belive any decision has been made about X2 cloaks and how fast they fade in/out.

2 impulses would be too brief.

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Wednesday, March 26, 2003 - 04:48 pm: Edit

Yeah much to short. MAYBE 3Imp.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Wednesday, March 26, 2003 - 05:20 pm: Edit

Maybe.

I see no reason to shorted the fadeout/in a second time.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Wednesday, March 26, 2003 - 06:22 pm: Edit

There is no reason to shorten the fade out except that we are talking about a technological leap forward so it'll probably get faster ( the computers controlling would probably get faster) and also a three impulse fade can be made to feel more smooth.

+1 range bous.
+3 range bonus.
+5 range bonus.

That's got a feel like the old change of 1 extra range per impulse so it might be good to go with three impulses.

By Geoff Conn (Talonz) on Thursday, March 27, 2003 - 02:08 am: Edit

I take it none of you have the original X2 module then? X2 cloaks did fade in/out in 2 impulses, with a +4/+2 penalty. It also provided a measure of free ECM while fully cloaked.

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Thursday, March 27, 2003 - 07:58 am: Edit

Geoff the SVC Patrick Duffy rule takes precendence over all the 2X rules in supplement 2. if not so indicated otherwise.

Also you are conveinantly forgetting that the Rom's would have given up on the cloak due to it's decreased effectiveness in the 2X era. but they stayed with it out of tradition. Per Sup2.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, March 27, 2003 - 12:34 pm: Edit

I've been poking in here and there on this discussion and I would like to say that for the most part firing under cloak is not going to work. To reference Star Trek for a moment not even third or fourth generation Romulans could pull this off. The one ship from ST6 got blown to bits in realitivly short order after the initial surprise wore off. I remember SVC saying this wouldn't fly either.

But the question remains what to do that is new. Well, shortening the fade period is one thing but what about leaving it the same as X1 then doing this:
New X2 Cloak Proposal:
Cloaked ships can turn on active fire control on the first (or any) impulse of the fade in period. This commits the ship to fully decloak. It cannot recloak for the remainder of the turn. Lock-on is automatically achieved at this point but the range penalty still applies. In addition it (the range penalty) applies to the decloaking ship. Any weapons fire(except defensive weapons e.g. Ph-3s, Ph-6 [or Ph-5 fired as a Ph-6 once] and Pl-Ds, ADDs etc.) during the fade in period overload the cloaking systems and rendure it un-usable for a period of 32 impulses. This includes weapons fired under PFC.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Thursday, March 27, 2003 - 01:10 pm: Edit

Geoff,

My personal opinion of Commander's X2 is:
If Commander's X2 used a concept, treat it with extreme suspicion as Commander's X2 is crap. It deserves to be ignored and forgotten.

Loren,

If you add the ability to stop the cloak at any point of fade, you have MJC's "Murky cloak" proposal.

The one problem is that Roms would be looking for some additional advantage while actually under cloak, rather than a fade-in/out benefit.

A cloak that doubles the range with a +7 or +8 to range (to match the longer effective range of the P-5) is one way.

Another is to give the Cloaked ship +1 in its favor on the Fire Adjustment Chart (G13.37). (BTW, I was wrong about the EW shift being applied to this chart. It isn't)

The problem is that these are effective changes but not particularly interesting changes. Goeff touched on this indirectly with his "Phase Cloak" posts. Despite the severe RW-legal disadvantages, at least makes the cloak interesting.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Thursday, March 27, 2003 - 02:07 pm: Edit

I've been lurking but not posting on this one much. I'll just say this, in reference to what John has said. I understand the idea of making a new cloak interesting, but having everything "interesting" is part of what broke supplement 2. Some things just won't be all that gee-whiz, but will be moderately better instead.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, March 27, 2003 - 04:22 pm: Edit

Supplement 2 wasn't all bad. It was the core design that brought it down but there were some good ideas in it.

Re: Murky Cloak. Maybe but mine is fundementally different. The tactics involved are more limited. But it is still a valuable thing. Basically you have turned off the cloak and while the effects are wearing off you can now bring up your fire control or fire/launch weapons with PFC under the same penalty as every one else.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Eagle) on Thursday, March 27, 2003 - 04:38 pm: Edit

I see the cloak more as a strategic asset for making surprise attacks. Tactically it is of little use.
Since it is not a weapon I think it is hard to change that fact. Once people were talking about 'offensive' cloaking, but it seems they learned by experience there is no such thing!
Improving the cloak is therefore only a minor gizmo plus for the Romulans.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Thursday, March 27, 2003 - 05:11 pm: Edit

Actually a more than one uncloak-recloak in a turn cloak would provide basically very similar effects to a Jump Cloak but more like having bought two or three jump cloaks, that is full price for the cloaking and having the abilty to cloak and recloak multiple times in a turn.


Actually I just thought of how to do a phased cloak, if one where to apply it or perhaps one would called it some kind of gravitational fluctuation.
If one has paided for the cloak this turn ( or pays half the cloak cost for the entire turn, if the vessel is to remain uncloaked for the entire turn ) then the phasic shift ) or gavitaional cloak ) will cause the vessels have the table G13.37 applied even when uncloaked ( and during the fadein-out period ).

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Friday, March 28, 2003 - 02:07 am: Edit

Mike,

I thought about that and most of our X2 ideas are in the form of evolutionary upgrades. That's what a P-5 is and whatever photon we come up with is, etc.

If all we can think of is evolutionary changes for the cloak, fine. But I'd like to figure some new quirk on the cloak.

By Geoff Conn (Talonz) on Friday, March 28, 2003 - 07:56 am: Edit

Kenneth, yes I know X2 'never happened'. Yet I saw it, bought it, and still have parts of it somewhere. And I think the X2 cloak worked fine as is.

IOW, lets not throw out the romulan baby with the bathwater!

Hmm what about limited hidden cloaking? For example, the cloaking player could record a direction letter that can change every 8 impulses, and this is the direction from the counter on the board his unit actually is, one hex away.

Makes the depth charge run that much slipperier.