CCP Wolfman wrote:The cloak is an equipment item with an activation time and a cooldown. You canGÇÖt perform actions such as firing or hacking whilst cloaked. It is not finished so IGÇÖm very interested to hear your ideas on it before it is :-)
If you can't shoot... Make it like a nanohive where you need to hold the cloaking thing to remain cloaked.
A normal gun you could still sort of line up a shot... but for sniper rifles this makes a massive different to prevent sniper lamesauce. Also prevents shotgun and nova knife lamesauce to a lot of degrees. Being able to instantly shoot after cloak 'turns off' is almost just as bad as being able to take that first shot while cloaked. Cloaks should be a positional tool. Ideally If person B is watching the back of person A whom you're flanking just as you decloak.. Player B should be able to shoot you just about the same time you're starting to shoot their friend. Not after their friend is already dead because : trololol surprise: Cloaks should basically just be tools to help evade redlines and position yourself favorably. I abhor the idea of them being an offensive tool rather than a positional tool.
Please note : This is me telling you that something that would greatly improve my personal playstyle will be overpowered as hell from all description you've released so far. I love the idea of cloaks, but done wrong they can completely ruin a game by being too good... or conversely just be completely useless. I want to kick ass because of merit, not because the things I use are broken as hell :(
Ideal cloak implementation IMO is as follows:
-Active scanner/dropsuit scanner detects and decloaks someone and increases cooldown
-Being shot while cloaked decloaks someone and increases cooldown
-Cloak active length is not limited, 10-25s cooldown starts after deactivation
-De-activation has a quiet, yet audible noise to alert nearby people who are very alert (Similar to the terrifying hum of charged knives)
-No weapon can be equipped while cloaking; ideally accomplished by making the cloak an equipment piece the player must hold in their hands to use
-Cloak increases scan profile somewhat. Penalty to profile reduced by skill level in cloaking
-Always visual distortion, only amplified to be 'super visible' while sprinting: This is mitigated by being more susceptible to scanners of all varieties. You won't be able to get close to anyone cloaked if they have good/decent scanner modules on their suit, or are using active scanners to look for people. Active scanners should be the direct hard-counter and force people to decloak easily unless a player sacrifices all of their module slots to prevent this.
- Expanding on last point : When facing two max skilled players against each other at close range the scanner should always win. At longer ranges like 50-60m+ the cloaker should win out as the scanner should be less effective.
-Any suit should be able to use the cloak, provided it has equipment slots. Effectiveness and ease of detection is then related to scan profile. IE: The new heavy suit could get a cloak, but getting inside anyone's scan radius would pretty much instantly decloak him because his scan profile is so high
-Getting within extremely close range of another player (5-10m or so) should decloak a person regardless of each player's fit.
-The cloak module should have a very steep melee damage reduction modifier, to prevent people from just running around smacking people with it while they have damage modifiers for melee stacked
-Unable to throw grenades while cloaked (Make up whatever lore you like. Need both hands to power the thing from your suit or something like that.)