Cloaked while firing is a bad mechanic, and doing a "let's see how it works out" with an obviously bad and broken mechanic would be irresponsible.

It's better to have the cloak pre-nerfed rather than have it overnerfed later on down the road. This way, the cloak won't feel OP but it won't feel useless either. This is my way of trying to protect an aspect of the game that I feel passionate about much like how I felt about the Nova Knives. You don't hear anyone crying "nerf the knives" because the knives came pre-nerfed and thus many people regarded them as a balanced weapon that just need a slight tweak such as allowing sprints while charging. If knives came with all the bells-n-whistles from the start, then it was likely that everyone would call out "nerf" and then the weapon will truly become useless with an overnerf later on down the road.

This is what I'm trying to accomplish with the cloak now. If it comes in pre-nerfed, very few people will ever complain about it and then it will be safe from the nerf bat. Kain Spero, Heinrich, me, and many others are trying to do you all a solid by going down the pre-nerf route. It's safer for the cloak so that it won't be completely useless due to unwarranted fear of the cloak.

Adding any sort of cooldown time would likely invalidate the cloak. If you are getting shot at while cloaked and try to return fire you will have to wait the cooldown to fire...which in a scout suit is already about 0.2secs TTK.

With any sort of clumsy controls or cooldowns on cloak it will likely not even be utilized, scouts already know how to stay hidden and wait for their time to strike. Adding additional penalties to that situation is not going to improve scouts or make cloak useful to them.

My assumptions on cloak is that they will likely be active for less than 20 seconds, if they could be indefinitely ON with no shimmer on scouts then I would not mind the proposed mechanics of cooldowns and not shooting while cloaked. But I highly doubt that's the case.

Standard Cloak (can fit on all suit classes and tiers)
CPU: 250
PG: 60
Cooldown Upon Deactivation: 30 Seconds
Cloak Stability Rating while Moving: 4 (moderate-high shimmer)
Cloak Stability Rating while Sprinting: 2 (high shimmer)
Bonuses when fitted on Scout: 80% reduction on CPU/PG usage and a +3 Cloak Stability Rating for moving and sprinting.

Covert Ops Cloak (can only be fitted on specialty Covert Ops Scout or Prototype Scout)
CPU: 350
PG: 60
Cooldown: 15 seconds
Cloak Stability Rating while Moving: 10 (no shimmer)
Cloak Stability Rating while Sprinting: 8 (very low shimmer)
Bonus when fitted on Prototype Scout: 80% reduction on CPU/PG usage
Bonus when fitted on Covert Ops Specialty Scout: 80% reduction on CPU/PG usage with 25% reduction to cooldown timer

Skill Prerequisite for Standard Cloak:
Cloaking Equipment Skill Book Level 1 ( 5% reduction to cooldown timer per level )

Skill Prerequisites for Covert Ops Cloak:
Cloaking Equipment Skill Book Level 5 ( 5% reduction to cooldown timer per level )
Cloaking Equipment Proficiency Skill Book Level 1 ( 3% reduction to cooldown timer per level )

NOTE: Must first train up to [Racial] Scout Level 5 before being able to train towards the Covert Ops scout.

Show me the gameplay on how it is bad. These guys are slow moving, gimped HP and damage scout suites from CCP description.

CCP needs a big push for SISI connection, I don't care if it takes up another 8 gigs on my PS3.

I think you should be able to fire while cloaked. The mechanic works fine in Eve as you appear right after you attack.

Off topic but what should the caldari scouts bonus be if we take this away?

Aso im all for having to hold it in your hands, then switching to a weapon deactivates it.

Firing while cloaked didn't break Halo Reach or Halo 4. (some other things arguably do, but not that)

You simply had to introduce an additional counter-balance to it or two. Fast movement made you much more visible, and anytime you were nearby a cloaked opponent your radar went crazy and put you on alert. It was like being invisible while banging a bunch of pots and pans together. You could fire while cloaked, but it made you very visible for a short amount of time. It muted all but the highest pitched sounds while it was activated, so you were effectively deaf.

Movement also drained that cloaks energy reserve.

Yet with all of these disadvantages together, you were able to use any weapon you liked while cloaked. And it was indeed very balanced.

We're aware of the concerns, and it's still something in development.