feat(data): Cloak differentiation #10049
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Zitchas
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Quantumshark
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In addition to the fact that it's a capability that they canonically have, I do think giving the Remnant the ability to scan while cloaked is good from the gameplay side. Being able to scan an opponent before deciding whether to engage them is a major help in making scanning integrate better with normal gameplay, so I support that. It would, I think, be nice if the cloaking device had something over the Remnant cloaks to balance out their many advantages over it - right now, it only has the disadvantages of slower cloaking and higher fuel cost, and this PR is adding the ability to scan and communicate while cloaked to the Remnant. I'd rather see this be at least somewhat of a sidegrade, rather than the Remnant cloaks being a flat upgrade over the cloaking device, even if the Remnant cloaks do remain the better option overall. |
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Regarding the cloaking device, given how early in the game it is acquirable, I am quite firmly of the opinion that the only advantage it should have is the fact that it is a completely transferable outfit. The fact that it makes any and every ship the player cares to put it on a cloaking ship already trivializes the value of any other ship being able to cloak (unless one wants a fleet of cloaking ships, that is), I don't think it needs anything else in order to retain its value. It also has the advantage that the player can choose to not use it. As in, they can leave it storage and gain that additional space. Remnant cloaks give no such option, it will always be taking up space. |
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This should make the mission where you need to scan the ship in Korath territory not so difficult without needing a fleet or 1k scanners, nice change |
It's only acquirable after completing almost all of FWR, I wouldn't call that early in the game. Once you know about the Remnant, in subsequent playthroughs I'd honestly say that Remnant cloak-capable ships are acquirable earlier than the cloaking device is, because the mission sequence to get the Remnant license is certainly much shorter than all of FW.
Insofar as there is a distinction to be made between 'any' and 'every' in this context, to say that it makes 'every' ship a cloaking ship is incorrect. It makes any single ship a cloaking ship, but never more than one at once (unless you've looted more of them off Arfectas, I suppose, but there's a sensible argument to be made that they're not even the best outfit on an Arfecta, and in any case when you're at the point of disabling Arfectas the ship of balance has sailed).
It will always be taking up zero space, because it's an integrated ship capability rather than an outfit, and as such isn't associated with an outfit space cost. The Starling and Gull don't really give up outfit space in exchange for it, and the Merganser and Peregrine certainly don't. And given that that outfit space cost is zero, the inability to not equip it isn't really a disadvantage either. |
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The other reason for not touching the outfit cloak is that it is likely to be subject to a lot more debate about it. The Drak and Remnant changes here are established in lore and prior behavior. The outfit version, on the other hand, is an unknown. Where did it come from? Is this someone's prototype? Did the Korath kill an arfecta somewhere, or did someone else? Or is it completely unrelated? Beyond that, I'm not sure there is agreement on whether it is too powerful, too weak, too "required"... You get the picture. Hence this PR not trying to do anything with the outfit. In any case, I personally see the outfit as far too good to merit any change in its favor. The fact that no matter what we change, the meta is to always take reconciliation because of the cloak leads me to the opinion that the cloaking outfit needs to be nerfed. Except for those that don't use cloaks, of course. Anything that can just flat out *give" cloaking to ships that are already balanced to be formidable and powerful ships without it is, in my books, already far too powerful. Now, if it was cloak by mass calibrated for the current rate of cloak on a small or medium ship, maybe, so when it gets put on a Punisher or Hurricane it either doesn't work or is extremely slow, maybe. But not in its current state. Anyway, tldr: |
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And personally, I would rather keep this PR for matching current lore, and have the discussion on how good (or bad) the cloak outfit is and what should (or should not) be done about it elsewhere. |
What current lore? Are you talking about the mission where the Remnant are able to scan Korath computers at the atomic level to scare them? Because that has been pointed out as a lore/continuity issue, and the general thought is that it needs to be changed due to how incompetent it makes the Korath look. 
Like yeah, I get that the intent is to look really cool and smart, but it comes across as a little bit much. I don't think we should be using it as a lore justification. It also raises questions about how Remnant cloaking is supposed to work if it allows for these highly detailed active scans (which involves emitting radiation by necessity) without anyone detecting them, including civilizations far in advance of Remnant technology. Gameplay wise, I think this actively hurts cases where you want to seek out something in hostile territory and scan it, such as the Tubfalet search missions. This makes them utterly trivial, as you don't need to decloak even during the critical part of the mission where you have to scan the Tubfalet without dying to it, which takes a lot of the fun and challenge out of the mission. |
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The archon changes seem fine to me. I am mostly fine with the remnant changes as well, as this feels more like a novelty to me more than anything that would impact balance too much. However, I think the bunrodea should also have this change, as their one cloak ship is designed as a scoutship, so it makes sense that they can scan, especially considering the bunrodea and remnant are roughly the same tier.
Additionally, I think that both of those ships should not be able to regenerate shields or hull while in combat, as that would make cloaking non-combat oriented, which makes sense for those types of ships. For instance, scouts don’t generally fight, and the gull is designed to secretly carry cargo, not to fight. While the penguin/merganser/peregrine line of ships are combat oriented, they are designed to use their speed to their advantage, so cloaking can allow them to escape combat, where they can safely heal. Finally, there’s the starling, which is again designed to scout or flee from combat using the cloak, and once it has fled it can safely heal.
Making this non-combat oriented also means that when the cloaking device in FWR is nerfed to just be a jammer, this won’t make remnant/bunrodea cloaks suddenly much more powerful. This will probably require the ship stats to be looked at again to see if anything should be buffed, but I don’t think that is too big of a deal.
EDIT: I didn’t originally mention the heron, as it is currently a person ship, but I think that the heron can also have a non-combat oriented cloak considering that the goal of the heron is to evacuate people, not to fight. The person ship zitchas can have a special version that can heal while cloaked if needed, as it is a person ship.
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Lovely changes. In my view, the FWR cloak's advantage of being both small and installable in any one ship is far bigger than the Remnant's lower fuel draw, higher cloak speed and, now, ability to scan; as such, i see it as adequately balanced.
It also makes the Tubfalet mission more fitting, as a clever player will use a remnant cloaking vessel to make it easier to execute. Plus, it makes cloaking more useful as you can judge if you wish to uncloak and attack or not through the underused outfit/cargo scan mechanic, mostly useful for missions, as of now.
Content
Summary
This implements some initial cloaking values to differentiate some of the cloaks.
changes:
Note, I was considering making the cloaking outfit a "cloak by mass" calibrated to be equipped on the Dreadnought with little-to-no change in performance at that level, but it results in the outfit being rather powerful, as in it became faster than any other cloaking device in the game when put onto small ship. While some degree of improvement on smaller ships would be good, I don't think it should be that good. Something more along the lines of scaling up to 0.02 or maybe 0.03 as ships gets smaller, and the main thing being getting slower as ships get bigger (no limit). So I think that in order to be useful that cloak-by-mass is going to need the ability to have min, max, or some other way of "framing" the rate in order to really be useful. In any case, that's neither here nor there, just a comment explaining why there's commits in this that add this in, and then remove it again.