On 2009-03-20 13:52, Shigernafy wrote:
As for beacons.. basically you're proposing more of a counter to the cloak, instead of just a modifier of it. That is, beacons currently just make the thing slower, whereas you're proposing a device which can effectively nullify it - though you propose strict limits on that, namely to distance and audience.

So if you think beacons should be limited to visual range (ie, sensors can no longer deny its there because I can throw my lunch at it) for cloaked (or 0.0 sig, anyway) and presumably negative sigs as well, what do you propose for scaling for those with sigs? 5gu per point, 50gu per point, or what? How far away, basically, do you want to be able to see a beaconed Siphon, for example, which is firing some of its weapons off and on?

Or, I suppose... since you can already see them a few thousand gu off when uncloaked, were you thinking more like "across the system" when they're uncloaked?

On 2009-03-20 17:12, Pakhos wrote:
Jim , whats wrong with current beacons?

On 2009-03-19 15:02, Jim Starluck wrote:
Right now, Beacons are kinda "meh." Sure they add 20 sig, which makes it take a looong time for a K'luth ship to cloak and makes it impossible for anyone to hide using ECM, but that's kinda boring. And it doesn't do anything at all when a K'luth ship is already fully cloaked.

So I've got a new idea.

Instead of adding sig, a Beacon will relay the beaconed ship's position to the ship that did the beaconing... within a limited distance. The distance is proportional to the signature of the beaconed ship. At 0.0 signature or below, the distance shrinks to the minimum "visual" detection range--that is, how close you have to get to see a ship using enough ECM to stay hidden. And they would have a limited lifetime; say, 5-10 minutes.

This means that in order to track a cloaked ship, the beacon-launching ship--which is going to be a Scout or an Escort/Picket Dessie (as they also have beacons IIRC)--will need to stay very close to the target. And since the beacon no longer affects how quickly a ship can cloak, there's not much stopping the beaconed ship from decloaking, blasting the ship tracking it, and cloaking again in short order. The beacon only supplies info to the ship that launched it, so once that ship is dead the beacon is useless.

In fact, this would also encourage the K'luth to use smaller ships to take out beacon-launchers, because they are smaller and thus the minimum distance to detect them is much, much lower. So even if the smaller ship gets beaconed, it can shake the pursuit of the tracker much more easily.

And of course if the K'luth are just making hit-and-run attacks, they can jump out and wait for the beacons to expire, then sneak back in.



Hey, that gives me another idea. How about an alternate Jumpdrive for the K'luth, that travels slower, has less fuel and a longer cooldown but doesn't give you +50 sig while jumping? Perhaps a Psionic Jumpdrive, since they've got Antimatter and Psionic Engines and only Antimatter Jumpdrives?
[ This Message was edited by: Jim Starluck on 2009-03-19 15:03 ]

On 2009-03-21 00:04, mannythepogs wrote:

i got a better idea... why not have a beacon that travels faster (missile speed) and has automatic homing device that will attach to a cloack ships and will will stay there until the ship is destroyed, and will give at least 3000 signature so cloaking will take at least 10mins. to finish.

and for the drives... give every kluth ship a jump drive that never recharge once and a fuel for one jump only.

On 2009-03-21 00:18, Enterprise wrote:

Quote:

On 2009-03-21 00:04, mannythepogs wrote: i got a better idea... why not have a beacon that travels faster (missile speed) and has automatic homing device that will attach to a cloack ships and will will stay there until the ship is destroyed, and will give at least 3000 signature so cloaking will take at least 10mins. to finish. and for the drives... give every kluth ship a jump drive that never recharge once and a fuel for one jump only.

Because the difference between Jim's idea and yours is a matter of balance.

For example, I'm going to choose to assume you're being funny in this instance.

However, I'm greatly in favor of an alternate JD for Kluth which would allow them to jump in undetected, for slower than Tachyon Jump Drive recharge, slower jump speed, and less fuel. Hell, throw on other negatives. The value of such a thing would be massive for people who would like to be able to actually jump in and ambush people.

Currently, there is no real problem with beacons except in my opinion, they need to be faster. They should have a reasonable chance of hitting anything they're shot at.





-Ent

As Shig said, they do the exact same thing as non-pinging ECCM--raise sig, which just increases the time that K'luth are visible. Sure, that gives you a bit more time to kill them before they fade, but it's still not that much, and once they're fully cloaked it does jack squat.

ECCM pinging alone is not a sufficient counter for cloaking. It only works against big, slow targets like Dreads and Stations. Cruisers and smaller can evade far too easily. Even Dreads can avoid it if they get far enough away. And of course it renders missiles and fighters totally impotent against K'luth, since they lose their targeting lock and self-destruct/turn around.