Cloaking Question...

[ToxicSlurpee]

In the FAQ it says that the cloaking types are Passive EM, Active EM, Gravitic (or is it Gravitational?), Psychic, and what not. Can you add other types?

Basically, what I want to do is create a Visual cloak. It consists of painting the ship black, and could probably be outdone by pretty much any scanner, or by equipping the ship with floodlights () or something.

[Ed Kolis]

No, you can't create your own cloak types. However, there's nothing to stop you from *describing* the cloaks (in the ability descriptions) differently than they are officially named.

Unfortunately, you can't give a ship an ability which *negates* its own cloak level (such as floodlights, or an Active EM sensor which defeats enemy Active EM cloaks yet also prevents the equipped ship from using its own Passive EM cloaks)

[AMF]

I'm sorry, could you elaborate on what difference passive versus active makes in the game?

Ed Kolis said:
No, you can't create your own cloak types. However, there's nothing to stop you from *describing* the cloaks (in the ability descriptions) differently than they are officially named.

Unfortunately, you can't give a ship an ability which *negates* its own cloak level (such as floodlights, or an Active EM sensor which defeats enemy Active EM cloaks yet also prevents the equipped ship from using its own Passive EM cloaks)

[geoschmo]

For purposes of the stock game there is no difference between passive and active beacuse all sensors have the same level passive and active scanning, and all cloaks block the same level of passive and active.

You could complicate things somwhat in a mod by having cloaks that give one level of passive cloaking and a higher level of active cloaking, but it wouldn't make any difference unless you also modded the sensors so they are only passive or only active scanning of different levels.

What would be cool is if there was some inherant differnce between passive and active scanning. Like a ship with active scanners can't be cloaked itself. That can't be done through a mod though. Maybe SE5.

Geoschmo

[AMF]

geoschmo said:
What would be cool is if there was some inherant differnce between passive and active scanning. Like a ship with active scanners can't be cloaked itself. That can't be done through a mod though.

...and, in addition, a ship that has passive cloak "on" should not be able to scan anything. It would be flying blind (except for stellar phenoms, planets, etc... which are pre-mapped out). This would make the cloaking system much more like modern day submarines/sonars...and a lot more subtle in their usage...

hmmm...one possible issue there is that a passively cloaked ship would, obviously, be able to recieve scans from its empires' other ships in the system...hmmm...this too is not too weird, since submarines today do "communicate with HQ" even when "running silent and deep"...and then if you had *only* a passively cloaked ship in a system (with said cloak "on") then you should have no visibility into other ships in the system...

that would be neat.

Maybe in SE5...


EDIT: I think I'll suggest this in the SE5 hopes and dreams thread...

[Zereth]

alarikf said:
...and, in addition, a ship that has passive cloak "on" should not be able to scan anything. It would be flying blind (except for stellar phenoms, planets, etc... which are pre-mapped out). This would make the cloaking system much more like modern day submarines/sonars...and a lot more subtle in their usage...

hmmm...one possible issue there is that a passively cloaked ship would, obviously, be able to recieve scans from its empires' other ships in the system...hmmm...this too is not too weird, since submarines today do "communicate with HQ" even when "running silent and deep"...and then if you had *only* a passively cloaked ship in a system (with said cloak "on") then you should have no visibility into other ships in the system...

that would be neat.

Maybe in SE5...


EDIT: I think I'll suggest this in the SE5 hopes and dreams thread...

There's no reason having passive cloaking on would prevent htem from using their _own_ passive sensors. However, while this would lety ou see planets and so on, and ships visible with passive sensors, it wouldn't provide as much detail as active sensors. If nothign else, the crew could use the curde passive EM sensor system known as "Vision".

[AMF]

yeah, that's what I meant. The "silent and deep" cloaked ships would only be able to use their passive sensors, and that should mean, to me, they can only get crude sensor scans...I should have been more clear in my post...thanks!

[AMF]

I would also suggest that the cloak and cloak detecing techs be made "infinite" as some other techs will be. Passive and active sonar technology today seem to work like that - subs in year X cannot be detected but next year better sonars can, so the subs make their engines more silent, and so on...a continuous game of one-up-manship.

That would be neat to have in SE5, and be more realistic to a certain extent I think.

Thanks,

Alarik

[ToxicSlurpee]

OK, I think this answered most of my quetions on the subject. Thanks!

[Atrocities]

Can you know you can lay things like mines and satellites while cloaked?