On 2013-03-25 12:49, Novacat wrote:

Your not doing it right. Kluth can cloak, sublight over to a long range ship, open fire. Missile ship is forced to either disengage or die. If it tries jumping 1000 gu away you can simply jump it and kill it.

No, I am not. I am asking for a way to counter Kluth cloak. It does not have to be 100% reliable, just reliable enough that it can work sometimes. Again, something that works 100% of the time with no counters is bad, this is both for the Cloak, and any potential counter to the Cloak. My honest opinion is that minelayers and interdictors should be a huge part of countering cloak. Kluth can still circumvent it with a lot of paitence and some luck, while ICC/UGTO actually has a chance of engaging at long range without being pointjumped.

I do not see anyone flying anything but CQC ships. The only exception I saw was actually Kluth, I do see a few Ganglias throwing missiles/fighters from time to time but I suppose they are an exception because they not only dont have to worry about cloaked enemies sneaking up on them, they actually have multiple methods of escape should they get jumped. Dont think I ever seen anyone use a Carrier or Missile ship otherwise aside from the occasional Command Carrier as an oversized engineer.

Partly because it does not fix the problem (brawlers can still pointjump from long range), and actually complicates long-ranged ships fights against brawlers, Much like it would prevent brawlers from point-jumping long range ships, it also prevents long range ships from jumping 1000-1500 gus to get breathing room.

As I said, why not try minelayers? It actually sounds perfectly reasonable, and on top of that it brings back into use a certain role that has not seen use since the minelayer boats were nerfed many years ago.

When the design of the factions does not work, maybe it is time to change the design?

All I ask is countermeasures. Right now, Cloak really does not have any. You could have utterly rediculous amounts of ECCM (multiple EWAR ships, ECCM plats, ECCM planet) and currently it was a negligable effect on Kluth cloak.

At the same time, though, ECCM is a bad countermeasure for cloak because it shuts out the EWAR game for ICC and UGTO. ICC/UGTO are not going to bother with the EWAR game and the EWAR game becomes only a bludgeon in which to whack the Kluth with. That is why I seek a better counter for cloak.

Why not platform-based dicos? A lot of the fustration of the old interdictors is that they were very easy to defend and very hard to attack. The Kluth interdictor especally had very good armament, and the ability to cloak if things got dicey for it which made it especially maddening. Remove all of that and you have an immobile, unarmed platform (I would not even give it PD, force the defenders to provide some PD coverage for it) with only a bit of armor/shielding. I would increase the range to 1500, only because of heavy cannons/core cannons being a bit long ranged.

On 2013-03-25 15:57, Novacat wrote:

The problem is numbers. If the enemy gets an ally, so do you, and when you can jump straight to him, there is really nothing stopping you from bringing two CQC ships to that fight, and at close range, two CQC ships will smash a single CQC ship and a long range ship. This is why battles in Darkspace eventually devolve into blobs of CQC ships fighting other blobs of CQC ships.

On 2013-03-25 15:57, Novacat wrote:
There are ways of countering long-range ships aside from point-jumping on top of them. Infact, the next patch will have Escort roles which are dedicated to countering missiles and fighters.

The problem is numbers. If the enemy gets an ally, so do you, and when you can jump straight to him, there is really nothing stopping you from bringing two CQC ships to that fight, and at close range, two CQC ships will smash a single CQC ship and a long range ship. This is why battles in Darkspace eventually devolve into blobs of CQC ships fighting other blobs of CQC ships.

On 2013-03-25 20:50, Kenny_Naboo wrote:
The key here is survivability, right?

As long as the missile ship can long jump out far enough, he will be safe. He can execute a 200K gu jump out and then log out for a couple of minutes. This is what most players are doing anyway right?

Now IF we were to bring back interdictors as per your idea, your LR ship would be shafted. Let's get a Piercer and a Siphon cloaked near to a Missile Dread. BOOM. Game over.

Apparently, according to some players, cloak currently can still be pinged. But it works within ECCM range, which has been shortened.

Next, it has been demonstrated that if a Kluth ship changes velocity while in cloak, his diamond will pop up onscreen to nearby enemy ships for a moment.

Perhaps not enough to target and kill. But certainly long enough to at least be aware that he is there, and maybe even send a shot his way.

It's not perfect, but you weren't looking for perfect.

Part of this is also a player problem. I've already posted my views above.

Players generally want to fly the best solo ship. And those ships always happened to be heavily armed and armored, built for slugging. It's human nature. Otherwise it's a fast and agile ship so they can avoid fire.

Only when players number get big enough that you may see some fleet diversity, depending on what the group of players want to do.

(usually Bombers, stations, engineers)

You will usually see missile ships for defence once they get planetary dicos up.

Or we could just do absolutely nothing about it and let the status quo continue.

There are minelayers now, aren't there? And the mines are practically undetectable unless you have a scanner right? And cloaked ships do get damaged when they run into mines, don't they?

So, what about minelayers? What do you want them to do?

As suggested above, ping still seems to work, albeit at shorter ranges.

Because dico-plats can still be towed around by a fast ship. Or they could be towed by a command dread, which packs more firepower than the old interdictor cruiser ever did. It'd come back to the same thing. Unless they made dico plats untowable?

And 1500 gus is a stupidly long range too. Keep in mind that deploying the old dico cruiser meant losing one player that could be committed to combat. A dico plat is CHEAP in comparison. You could stack them in a line of 15 that could block intersystem jumps completely. No cost at all to manpower in your team. No risk at all to your prestige. All you need is a damned engineer!

Unless they were untowable and limited to 500 gus range, and with such low armor that you could pop them like frigates. Perhaps that would be viable?

On 2013-03-26 07:21, Dank Ma`arna C`arns wrote:
No, and neither have you. At least, not in the current version of Darkspace.


Given that the entire combined firepower of the claw from full to zero energy is roughly equal to one Siphon alpha, at absolute best, you saw a Claw get in the line of fire and Kill Steal from a Siphon.



Wait.. I know what the problem is... I am speaking the wrong language. I will attempt to translate...



LOLWTF?!!?!? NOWCLAW <> THENCLAW!!!! Y U NO MAD, BRO??!?!? LOLNUB!!!!

[ This Message was edited by: SpaceAdmiral on 2013-03-26 07:35 ]