Cloaking a Commercial Platform

[Kang]

The Rom and Orion Commercial Platforms [CP] in Orion Attack can have a cloaking device.

This is all very well if you have a Fleet Scale platform, as the cloak cost is 3/8 and you have 3 total power - you can therefore stay cloaked as long as you like. And given the weakness of the CP, this may even be the best strategy.

However, once you have a Squadron Scale CP, it has only 5 total power, plus batteries - and the cloak cost doubles to 3/4. Therefore we have a double cloak cost but without double power available. The Sqn scale CP can therefore cloak for two whole turns, burning the batteries in the process, and then it will have to surface.

Was this not noticed in playtest and/or not been thought through properly?

[Davec_24]

It's quite possible that the CP wasn't meant to be able to have sustained cloak, it might just be an "emergency only" sort of idea. The Romulan starships can sustain cloak, and often have the cloaking device active during long-distance travel to mask their strategic movements from the enemy.

However, there is little need for a commercial platform to do this, as it is a civilian unit which will not be making raids into enemy territory. That said, 2 turns really isn't very long to have as a maximum cloaking time, and you would have thought that if they've taken the trouble to give it a cloaking device at all then it'd be able to cloak for a little longer...

[Davec_24]

Come to think of it, why is the cloaking cost that high? As I understand it, the starships have fairly high cloaking costs because the cloaking device has to mask the warp engine signature, hence the high power demands and hence why the energy needed to cloak is proportionate to the energy used in moving the ship.

Presumably, the CP doesn't have to mask such a high power signature, but its cloak cost is actually higher than that of the BH, and isn't far short of the WE's cloaking cost. These ships both have much more power, and are also warp capable, which I presume the CP is not, and so I would have thought should require less energy to cloak. (Damn, I nearly wrote "Cp" [shorthand for the cyclopentadienyl anion, of course...] then - too much chemistry...)

I haven't actually seen the CP in OA yet as I haven't yet got OA (in fact, you have my copy!). Oh well, I can wait 4 or 5 hours to get it, honest.

[OGOPTIMUS]

The fact that it's a more civilian station might also explain why it wasn't meant to cloak continuously-- a less efficient cloaking device. I'd imagine that the Romulans would have varying degrees of it since cloaking a Condor would be a lot more difficult than a Skyhawk.

(Damn, I nearly wrote "Cp" [shorthand for the cyclopentadienyl anion, of course...] then - too much chemistry...)

Ah, Cp, what a ubiquitous ligand.

It could have also been the heat capacity at constant pressure--there's some engineering on top of that!

[Scoutdad]

I'd imagine that the Romulans would have varying degrees of it since cloaking a Condor would be a lot more difficult than a Skyhawk.

Not after you blow it up!!!!

[Steve Cole]

It does what it's supposed to do.

[djdood]

Was this not noticed in playtest and/or not been thought through properly?

I know you guys are just asking questions and trying to get answers, but the way you phrase things kind of lacks tact sometimes (the "Orions nerfed into oblivion" thing comes to mind). Loaded words don't engender civil debate (or prompt answers).

I agree that pointing out problems is a good thing, so they can be corrected and/or otherwise addressed. We all can expect a quality product and ADB's tend to be very clean. When problems are found they always have stepped up and fixed them. They also playtest everything (check the credits page of every release).

It is possible to ask questions or point out flaws, without insulting the game's designer and the playtesters (at least I would be kind of hurt or insulted by words to the effect of "not thought through properly...". Errors happen to even the smartest and best-organized of people, even when they "think it through properly".).

The playtesters in-particular are all volunteers, who donate lots of time to test things and do a very respectable job. SVC is great about thanking the playtest teams. I've seen very little but grief thrown their way lately.

Playtesting is often a thankless job.

[junior]

Was this not noticed in playtest and/or not been thought through properly?

Why would a ComPlat need to cloak for more than a couple of turns? It's not a military platform, and isn't expected to see combat. And if anyone DOES make a serious effort to kill it, it's going to die in less than two turns even if it's cloaked.

Personally, I'm surprised that it even has one to begin with.

[Steve Cole]

Maybe the Orions want to stay cloaked while you sail by and don't notice they are there?

[Mike]

Couldn't a power module be attached to pay those cloaking costs?

[terryoc]

Also remember that Orions and Romulan ships are designed to make effective use cloaking devices; as a result, they cloak cheaply. A commercial platform is designed to facilitate commerce, not to have a small energy signature, so it's harder to cloak.

[Kang]

I know you guys are just asking questions and trying to get answers, but the way you phrase things kind of lacks tact sometimes (the "Orions nerfed into oblivion" thing comes to mind). Loaded words don't engender civil debate (or prompt answers).

It's never intended to be rude or anything. See it as just a cross-cultural communications breakdown if you like And I know the playtesters are volunteers; I too volunteer for a lot of things - plus you could say that by asking these questions we are helping develop the products, as Steve kinda thanked us for in a recent Star Blog post.

The discrepancy I had noticed was just that the Fleet scale CP can stay cloaked indefinitely, whereas the Sqn scale one cannot. That was what I meant by asking if it hadn't been picked up in playtesting.

[terryoc]

Sometimes weird things happen in the translation from Squadron to Fleet, and I think this is one of them: when halving the number of energy boxes, the energy got rounded up.

[junior]

Also remember that Orions and Romulan ships are designed to make effective use cloaking devices; as a result, they cloak cheaply. A commercial platform is designed to facilitate commerce, not to have a small energy signature, so it's harder to cloak.

Romulan, sure. Orions, on the other hand, don't engage in 'normal' commercial operations. A ComPlat would probably only be used by them to off-load looted or smuggled cargo, and would be of particular interest to the local navy.

[Davec_24]

It could have also been the heat capacity at constant pressure--there's some engineering on top of that!

Would that be a sub-script (rather than just a lower case letter) in that instance? You can't do subscripts on here, which is of course vastly disappointing to us chemists.