On 2010-07-26 19:14, Lark of Serenity wrote:
for the record, other older cloak systems worked like this:

1: ECCM slowly drained energy. ECCM stacked drain and distance. the distance stacking was ridiculous. energy drain made some sense but was a bit much at time

2: cloak covered a ships base sig. ECCM raised it. ECM lowered it. problem was the ECM and ECCM forts that cropped up. a planet with all ECM bases couldnt be countered because youd have to bring 20 scouts loaded with ECCM to pierce it. this was also when kluth could fire while cloaked. invisible death beams = bad

3: current system, ECCM pings for a fraction of a second and pilots are left trying to guess where the invisible things are moving, meaning the average ICC and UGTO pilot is wasting a lot of ammunition and/or energy firing off into space trying to find the target. also, since not everyone is going to ping endlessly forever, kluth still sneak up on you. ive seen a fleet of kluth uncloak in a semi circle around a station and kill it instantly, which is the sort of thing that made us get rid of ECM forts.

other tidbits:
used to be able to see damage through cloak
used to be able to fire and jump while cloaked

On 2010-07-26 06:08, Gejaheline wrote:
What follows is a short essay on why K'luth ships are horrible. I'm not implying that K'luth ships are god-killing superweapons, since otherwise everyone would just play K'luth, but it should hopefully provide an insight into why the K'luth faction is the hardest to keep balanced with the other two sides.

K'luth are, in short, horrible to balance. Additionally, their tactics massively favour the use of dreadnaughts.

Why? Because they have cloak, basically. It allows them to use their favoured tactics at virtually any time, and any place. Let's have a look at their strengths and weaknesses, first. I'll probably miss some out, but hopefully I'll cover the biggest ones.

K'luth strengths:

Cloak. This is essentially perfect invisibility, vulnerable only to flying too fast and pinging, which requires lightning reflexes since the diamond only appears for fractions of a second. It also provides immunity to long-range missile and fighter attacks.

Auto hull repair and speedy armour regeneration. This negates the need for supply ships.

Lots and lots and lots of killy, never-miss beam weapons, along with all of the short-range, max-damage variants of various weapon types. They have the highest-damage core weapon, and the highest-damage torpedoes. Pressing spacebar on a K'luth ship generally results in epic amounts of damage on whatever's sitting in front of you. I think there are perhaps two non-k'luth warships that can kill scouts and destroyers in a single attack, and they're both assault deadnaughts. K'luth dreadnaughts can be reasonably expected to deal hull damage during a single pass, if not outright killing the target.

AMJD. They will ALWAYS be able to jump before you can.

Weaknesses:

Weak armour. They've not got the best in protective technologies.

Hugely aggressive weapon layouts. K'luth ships will typically have lots of front-only guns, although their dreads are something of an exception there. They still won't have as many rear-facing guns as other faction's dreads. Unless you're using a krill, in which case you have rear-facing core weapons, if memory serves. But then, all factions have exceptions to something.

Horrible energy management. Their huge arrays of death-dealing weaponry tend to consume rather a lot of power, as does their cloak. This also reduces their effective damage over time in comparison to other ships.

Short range. All of their guns are either beams, which are inherently short-ranged (although not as short as other factions' beams due to no falloff), or optimised for close combat in some way, typically trading range and velocity for more damage.


Now, most of these strengths and weaknesses seem fairly reasonable on paper. K'luth are a hard-hitting, no-defence faction that can give out lots of damage but not take it.

The problem, in a word: Cloak.

The cloaking device, as it is, is supremely powerful in that it negates a lot of K'luth's disadvantages whilst allowing them to maximise their advantages:

On the defensive, cloak allows you to easily disengage. Unless you have a gigantic fleet pinging you constantly you can probably live long enough to repair yourself or get to a safe distance and jump away. Once you've jumped, you can cloak to prevent anyone from following you. If nobody knows you're around, only the most paranoid of players will ping you and therefore notice you, and that's if they're lucky enough to be in range of you.

On the offensive, in combat, cloak allows you to make maxmum use of your optimum tactics. K'uth ships are best when facing the enemy at close range, from behind where they can't shoot you. Cloak makes it pretty easy to get into this position, and if you're not in position, then there is no need to uncloak. YOU get to choose engagement range, and YOU get to shoot first, typically crippling the hapless target. Once you've fired once or twice, recloak and reposition. This counters most of the k'luth's weaknesses.

Low relative damage over time is negated because your DPS is massively front-loaded: You deal all of your damage at the start of the engagement, and by keeping engagement times short, you reduce the opportunity for enemy ships (who deal a more-or-less constant amount of damage over time) to cause an equivalent amount of damage. This allows you to deal way more damage to the enemy ships than they do to you, particularly since they'll probably have to use rear or side weapons. This also allows you to kill smaller ships far more easily, since they will typically die in the first volley rather than be able to evade enough fire to make an escape.
This one is probably the main kicker, in my opinion, particularly since prestige gain is based on damage inflicted.

The very limited firing arcs are also rendered irrelevant, since you will always be facing your target. Otherwise, you wouldn't have engaged. Same thing for the short range focus. Additionally, you don't need to absorb enemy long-range fire because they won't be able to target you.

Weak armour is negated by the fact that you can cloak in order to avoid return fire. In addition, cloaking gives your repair systems time to work, so you can be at 100% for your next run, while your target will still be damaged. Unless they have a supply ship, but of course that can be killed first.

And, of course, this all heavily favours k'luth dreadnaughts. They don't have to worry about speed or manouevering, since they can just hide until the perfect moment. They don't need to worry about missing small targets, because they have perfectly accurate beam weapons. They have the most guns, which is what matters, and they have the armour to survive their relatively slow cloak times.

Oh, and it's really easy to capture planets, too.


All of this tends to make fighting k'luth fairly dull for the other teams, since if k'luth aren't killing you horribly, they're invisible. Which doesn't make for much in the way of rewarding combat or prestige gain, which is further aggravated by the knowledge that they're making oodles of prestige every time they hit the spacebar, and you know that if you try and use a scout you'll just get killed in one shot by a giant red thing materialising next to you.

Of course, if you took cloak away from K'luth, everyone would have a field day killing them, since they can't survive sustained combat.


tl;dr: K'luth are really hard to keep both balanced and interesting because any tweaking will cause them to kill everyone really easily or cause them die a horrible horrible death, neither of which are fun, and it's really hard to find a middle ground.

Postscript: About a billion people are going to counter the above with "Ah, but it takes mad leet skillz to play K'luth properly, therefore we are superior."

Let me counter with this hypothetical question: If someone turned up with a ship that was totally invincible and killed anything in one shot from any distance, but which required some kind of ludicrously complex control mechanism/keyboard combination/ in order to operate, which if more likely? Would you:

1: Defeat them with your even madder, leeter skills, in spite of their invulnerability?
2: Shrug, say "fair enough" and die in the knowledge that you were bested by someone even more skillful than you?
3: Complain bitterly and demand that this blatantly broken game object be removed?

Or, to put it another way: Is it acceptable to allow players to use unfair tactics as long as they're sufficiently skillful to use them?

The problem with the skill argument here is that you can't counter "skillful" use of k'luth ships with "skillful" use of UGTO ships.
The way to counter a cloaked k'luth ship is, basically, lots of ECCM, which requires no more skill than getting a mob of sensor scouts. Except that you'd need something like 16 scouts to have an even battle with a dreadnaught.

End rant. I shall donate 800 credits to the UGTOSPCG (UGTO Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Gaifen) if nobody manages to completely miss the point of the above essay and instead flames me. Otherwise I'll feel smug and spend it on an extra AI dreadnaught.

On 2010-07-26 21:53, Lark of Serenity wrote:
re: planets; when kluth want to take planets its fairly easy for them. they havent been trying to take planets though, theyve just been running combat ops. they are very capable of pushing ICC or UGTO right out of Sag.

for planets:

one possibility is to make planet ECCM run differently than ship ECCM. it is a planet afterall, one presumes its resources are much greater than a ships. having planetary ECCM run by draining energy of cloaked ships, for instance, would be a quick fix that would still let kluth sneak in. it shouldnt stack though. the stacking thing is what made it ridiculous. or if it does stack it should have diminishing returns.

there is also the cloak rework i posted and that got moved to beta, ppl can comment/edit that to their liking and see what comes of it. adding special provisions for planets would be nice.

i dont think we are ever going back to ECM forting. that was just insane =(

the cost of dying in larger ships really needs to be upped too. people treat dreadnaughts and stations like theyre entirely disposable. it really ruins gameplay; people dont care about dying, so they do crazy things or dont help one another
[ This Message was edited by: Lark of Serenity on 2010-07-26 21:55 ]

On 2010-07-27 02:23, NoBoDx wrote:
hm interesting fact:
a luth-dread take about 20-30 sec to fully uncloak, and to be able to fire near a well build planet (without any ships running ECCM) and ~20-30 sec to cloak again

On 2010-07-27 02:29, Julian Delphiki wrote:
While I agree with most of the reasons why cloak needs something to counter it a little better(a planet full of sensor bases can still EASILY be trannyrushed, which takes no tactic as kluth..)

ECCM Pinging is more effective than you think, IF you use teamwork. I haven't played in a couple of months, but when I did I would often be in an antisensor scout against kluth just because it was so effective. It was fun, even if I got no prestige(other than from the beacons).

Number your ECCM 1,2,3,4 and rotate them, pinging every 3 or so seconds. Along with everyone else pinging, you can easily either target the ship itself, or know the direction/speed its going and shoot at the location it will be once your weapons reach it(yeah, it takes a little more skill, but not much).. The scout, if he cannot lock on long enough after pinging to send a beacon, can point-shoot beacons to where the ship appears to be heading, making them visible for a second or so each beacon you add(up to 3 I believe?)

At least half-dozen times I have seen a small fleet of 3-4 cruisers and dreads kill a kluth that never even uncloaked. Usually happened after little battles..

One thing that needs to be done: Make using a scout more rewarding. What is it, 1 pres per beacon? 3 max per ship at a time.. Not to mention the beacon bug, once you are reloaded 1-2 times they stop working..

Basically what I am saying is if people use teamwork and play for fun rather than prestige, kluth CAN be countered. A planetary deterrent to cloak is definitely a must, but 1-2 AS scouts with 4eccm each work wonders for hunting kluth after a battle.
But like I said, scouts don't pay off until grouping comes in(I think I seen it on the beta list?). Even with grouping though, scouts need more incentive. New players don't know how to use them effectively, and older players usually want the big ships that they have earned, and want to gain prestige to get the bigger ships.

On 2010-07-27 03:03, Siginau wrote:
Seriously, does PB have to swap factions to show you that kluth can be defeated if you get a brain and someone to lead you?????

On 2010-07-27 02:41, Julian Delphiki wrote:

Quote:

On 2010-07-27 02:23, NoBoDx wrote: hm interesting fact: a luth-dread take about 20-30 sec to fully uncloak, and to be able to fire near a well build planet (without any ships running ECCM) and ~20-30 sec to cloak again when i uncloak near 3 battle-dreads (icc / ugto) in a siphon i can fire one alpha till i have to jump out (with <50% hull left)

1- Why are you attacking 3 battle dreads in a siphon?
2- Why are you attacking 3 battle dreads ALONE?
3- Why are you attacking 3 battle dreads... Near a well built planet.. Alone..?

On 2010-07-27 03:40, Starcommand of ICC *XO* wrote:
Ping doesn't effect you that much, a few random shots will hit you. Each ICC ship has only 1....thats right ONE sensor slot. So with a fleet of 4-5 dreads thats only 5 pings, IF they ALL are paying attention. Stations have 4 slots, and usually run 1 scanner and 3 ECCM. Also no one leaves there ECCM running, since its more effective if you have just 1, to ping it, then to just run it. Stations can leave 1 or 2 on and ping the other, but mostly fleets don't keep it on 24/7. For one, it sucks energy, energy that ICC ships need for fighting and keeping shields running.

On 2010-07-27 04:40, Julian Delphiki wrote:

Do what UGTO do. Well, what I and a few others did... Take the initiative, get outta ur dread and get in a ping scout. When the battle is going on, you can stay out of range and keep all eccm on, once its over you can ping to find the injured ones tryin to repair. shift-j when a kluth fires on you saves you 90% of the time(at least 2-3 mo ago), tho u probably have a lot of(easily repaired) hull damage.

The tools to fight kluth are there, the problem is nobody wants to leave their big ships for a ship you get no prestige to fly. Once again though, I am not defending the cloak entirely... It could use some general energy tweaking and planet-range energy draining as well...