Cloaking devices or stealth ships?

[Tenacity]

Which do you think we'll see? There are plenty of references to cloaking/stealth in some of the component tooltips at the moment, so obviously it's something they plan on adding when GSF opens up for all players.

 

Do you think it will be a ship class (stealth fighters? interceptors?) that gets stealth as a unique ability, or do you think it will be a component that can be used on any ship type?

[willfarlow]

Good question. I personally would rather see a whole ship built around being sneaky than see a cloak introduced as a component. A whole ship would mean learning a whole new way of "ambush" playing, which would be fun.

[AAntan]

There are some ships that can get Targeting Telemetry, and this skill says it can de-cloak all enemies in a 3000m radius... So there's probably gonna be a stealth ship

[Slivovidze]

Yeah, a stealth interceptor class is being developed. We are gonna get bombers in February, and somewhere in the first half of 2014 there should be a stealth class introduced.

 

On an unrelated note I must say that I dread that, as it is well known that stealthers tend to ruin any game for everyone except themselves.

Edited December 15, 2013 by Slivovidze

[willfarlow]

Yeah, a stealth interceptor class is being developed. We are gonna get bombers in February, and somewhere in the first half of 2014 there should be a stealth class introduced.

 

On an unrelated note I must say that I dread that, as it is well known that stealthers tend to ruin any game for everyone except themselves.

 

Certainly a possibility, but if they level them properly, say, give them REALLY crappy hulls and shields, or arm them so that they CAN'T get one-shot kills, just get the FIRST shot in, it could still work, IMHO.

[Slivovidze]

Certainly a possibility, but if they level them properly, say, give them REALLY crappy hulls and shields, or arm them so that they CAN'T get one-shot kills, just get the FIRST shot in, it could still work, IMHO.

 

Yeah, if they balance them well, then okay... But if they make their stealth endless like stealthers in ground game, nah. I think that like 10s of stealth time with 60s cooldown would suffice, on a ship with less shields than scout (or even none) with slightly better firepower.

[Tenacity]

Considering that only gunships can get one shot kills, and that any stealth ship would probably be forced to 'de-cloak' in order to fire weapons, I think that stealth wouldnt be as powerful in space combat as it is in the ground game.

 

More likely, it will be a way to get in close to a capture point without being noticed by gunships, or a way to sneak up on gunships so you can take them out.

[Gavin_Kelvar]

My main concern will be if they don't fix/remove evasion + evasion boosting abilities first. Because even if a cloak ship lacks a scout's speed if it has a scout's evasion it could be nigh unkillable by combining cloak with evasion. Having a ship I can neither see nor hit because of evasion RNG dodges is a terrifying prospect.

[Verain]

I think that you don't need to approach stealth the same way in GS as you do when making a rogue class. The stealth in a rogue class, which we have two of in the ground game needs to be:

 

1- Permanent. Can't be a small timer with a cooldown.

2- Achievable in combat on a timer, to use to escape.

3- Very good: you need to be able to meaningfully sneak up on someone.

 

But there's several things to balance this. The alpha strike capability tends to be adequate, but the damage out of that burst, and the ability to be interrupted by CCs and defensive cooldowns are high. In GS, it's reasonable for a scout to do super damage to you if you don't see him coming. If you have the flashfire a cloaking device, he'd likely be able to "one shot" someone by turning on his offensive cooldowns (shoot really fast + blasters ignore shields) without much fairness, while still being amazing in a dogfight when that went away.

 

 

So they could give the ship the ability to own people from melee but then be awful at everything else, which I think would not be good, or they could take away some of the core stealth class features. For instance, anyone within 5km might see the stealther or something, or the cloak drive could have a 20 second use with a minute cooldown, or it could reduce the max gun, shield, and engine power while in use such that a cloaker busting out on you doesn't have the oomph to get the kill right away.

 

It's really, is the ship just about the stealth?

[Slivovidze]

...

It's just that a stealth ship is just another ship functioning to actually counter the firefights, which are the most fun (at least for me).

Now we have 3 classes, two fighting ready, one sniper which ruins the dogfights. If 2 or 3 people from the 12 pick sniper, there is still 9, 10 people on each side who will attend in the fun firefights.

February, bomber comes. Hopefully it will be balanced stuff, but I don't expect bombers to be really a fighting ships, more like supports standing in the back lines, beside the snipers. If another 2 or 3 people take these, we are at 6 or 7 fighting ships. Then stealth class comes, and because people love stealth, 4 or 5 of the remaining people will take it, leaving two people from each team to do the dogfighting. Of course, things will probably be balanced, classes will be strong against some and weak against others, but there will not be 5v5 fighter dogfights with 3 scouts on each side interfering. And I will miss those.

 

And most terrifying thing on stealthers for me is that they aren't visible (obviously, lol) - so there will actually be like 8 targets on the battlefield to fight with, and 4 ships that you know they are somewhere but don't have any idea where, until they strike.

Edited December 15, 2013 by Slivovidze

[Xakthul]

I've played Star Trek Online. I like the cloaking mechanics there, and they could be applied here, but with a few changes:

 

1) Cloaked ships should get a debuff if they attack but remain cloaked.

 

2) Cloaked ships that stay cloaked, but attack, should be targetable, albeit not to the naked eye. Maybe make anti-cloaking missiles?

 

3) Cloaked ships that come out of cloaking to attack should get a nice damage buff.

 

4) New anti-cloak shields are definitely gonna be needed.

[reclipsed]

Considering that only gunships can get one shot kills, and that any stealth ship would probably be forced to 'de-cloak' in order to fire weapons, I think that stealth wouldnt be as powerful in space combat as it is in the ground game.

 

More likely, it will be a way to get in close to a capture point without being noticed by gunships, or a way to sneak up on gunships so you can take them out.

 

haha, I can't wait for all the Gunship defenders telling others to l2p coming back in a few months complaining about stealthers sneaking behind them and killing them.

 

Enjoy your 1shots whilst you can, Gunship pilots

[Svarthrafn]

I think they should make the cloaker reasonably good in a fight. Something less than the scout's speed/agility, but more than a strike. Durability between the two as well.

 

But make the cloak one of the ones from the lore (Hibridium I think?) That has a double-blind effect. So they can't see you, but you can't see them either when it is in effect.

[Xakthul]

haha, I can't wait for all the Gunship defenders telling others to l2p coming back in a few months complaining about stealthers sneaking behind them and killing them.

 

Enjoy your 1shots whilst you can, Gunship pilots

 

That'll be another case of l2p against stealthers and bombers.

[sartt]

lol where the cloak ships BIO WHERE R THEY

[havokhead]

They were developed and shelved by Bioware, they claimed they couldn't balance them and were too game breaking.

[Caernos]

Yeah it's pretty frustrating that they "indefinitely shelved" them. For me personally, It's the biggest disappointment of GSF.

[Verain]

They were developed and shelved by Bioware, they claimed they couldn't balance them and were too game breaking.

 

Lies.

 

1- "They were developed and shelved by Bioware"

The ships are, in an incomplete state, in the game. Work stopped on them when the GSF team was diverted to other projects. They were not "shelved". In fact, since the announcement about this, we haven't seen anything except bugs introduced with patches- you could just as easily argue that EVERYTHING was "shelved". There's no stated intention to not bring them out in due time.

 

2- "they claimed they couldn't balance them"

No such claim was EVER made.

 

3- "were too game breaking"

No such claim was EVER made.

 

 

The stealth ships had some problems:

1- Some of their unique weapons didn't have complete development on them. We don't know if the plasma lance even works. This means that they might need code changes to finish the class as designed.

2- Inevitable balance concerns: it's not obvious how the stealth abilities would work in the meta way back when, and it's also not obvious now.

3- Placeholder designs: The stealth ships always used pretty derp placeholders, and likely the devs were considering having other models instead of ships that look like sheds and tugs and whatever.

 

I think the stealth ships just aren't done, and they'll be added when the devs decide to get back to work on them, which is who knows when. I definitely believe that you can add stealth ships to a game like this effectively- just not ships that are basically fully invisible all of the time or something. I address this in my previous post in this thread, from like a year and a quarter ago.

[AlrikFassbauer]

In the hands of aces, stealthed ships could be desastrous for the other team.

 

If people can stomach that ... Well, okay.

I wouldn't be able to. But on the other hand I'm the freak show here anyway.

[WiseStranger]

In the hands of aces, stealthed ships could be desastrous for the other team.

 

If people can stomach that ... Well, okay.

I wouldn't be able to. But on the other hand I'm the freak show here anyway.

 

In the hands of aces, ANY SHIP could be disastrous for the other team.

 

And why are we trying to resurrect this thread? There are other things devs could be doing to better the game instead of adding a fifth whe.. I mean ship type.

[Verain]

In the hands of aces, stealthed ships could be desastrous for the other team.

 

What makes a stealth ship (with ANY implementation, mind you) more "desastrous" (don't play the foreign card, chrome puts a red squiggle under it so you were a right click away from fixing it) than any other ship?

 

You could easily argue that a ship with the most shields and sustained dps is the biggest problem, but somehow aces on starguards don't ruin the game. You could easily argue that a ship with the best speed, maneuvering, and burst damage is a huge issue, and while battle scouts are probably too good, they definitely don't ruin the game. And similar arguments for bombers and gunships.

 

Things being different is interesting. Stealth ships could be balanced for sure- note that there's already anti stealth mechanics in game. If the ship could stay invisible essentially forever and only required not being shot at for a few seconds to engage a stealth drive with a short cooldown, and had a big alpha strike out of stealth, then that would be a big problem. But that's not what it has to mean.

[Nemarus]

I did not lose sleep over the cancellation of the Infiltrator class.

 

In my opinion, the worst part about GSF, especially for new pilots, is the dominance of surprise burst damage. Whether it comes from a slug railgun fired by a Gunship you weren't aware of, or the TT pod burst of a Scout who snuck up on you, or the crippling of your hull from a seismic mine tucked around the corner of a satellite, surprise burst damage is generally not a fun mechanic for the recipient, and is a big turn off for new players.

 

The fact that Strikes cannot deal any surprise burst damage is one of the big reasons they can't compete.

 

Traditionally, any "stealth class" in a PvP game works by sneaking up on a target, delivering surprise burst damage, and then using a variety of escape utilities to try and flee before retaliation can kill it.

 

Frankly, we already have that in Scouts and Gunships. Scouts "sneak up" through speed, and Gunships "sneak" through range. Both of them are required to use evasive abilities to escape retaliation once they are noticed.

 

From everything we saw in data mining about the Infiltrator, it was going to follow this pattern. Interestingly, it would've been a harder counter to Gunships than Scouts are today. That might have been a good thing for GSF. Those players who really, really hate Gunships would have a way to basically become immune to them. That might have reduced the overall Gunship population. Then again, it may have further promoted Bomber/Gunship formations.

 

Either way, Infiltrators would have dominated Strikes, who have no defense. And I suspect Scouts would be strong counters to Infiltrators.

 

Of the three Infiltrator variants that were datamined (pure stealth burst FPS, strike stealth hybrid, support stealth), yhr latter sounded the most intriguing, with cool utilities (decoy ships, group cloaks, etc.). The strike stealth hybrid would have been yet another fun strike hybrid that can strike better than a pure strike can, but it probably wouldn't be top tier. But the pure stealth DPS one... It just seems like another ship new pilots will call "cheap" and quit GSF over.

[Verain]

Either way, Infiltrators would have dominated Strikes, who have no defense. And I suspect Scouts would be strong counters to Infiltrators.

 

I strongly suspect that the initial burst damage dealt by these classes (especially their one shot burst tricks) were designed to specifically not be adequate to kill a strike, but reasonable against scouts if they could target them. It was way too early to tell, but based on the descriptions of the weapons and ships that weren't released, it seems like infiltrators would have been pretty great versus gunships, solid versus any scout they could sneak up on (which presumably wouldn't be a lot of them), largely useless versus bombers, and generally countered by strikes.

 

I'm not entirely sure... but that really did sound like the intent. I think the lack of infiltrators actually shifted the meta, because they were supposed to be something that strikes preyed upon. Something that specifically has weapons that can't ownface a strike, while also not having great missile break access, nor auto-winning a turning war...

 

 

Everyone talks about these things like they are scouts with stealth. That was very clearly not their intent. I suspect that strikes position on the bottom of the pool is in part due to the lack of release of this class.

 

 

It just seems like another ship new pilots will call "cheap" and quit GSF over.

 

Just like bombers, gunships, and scouts. Aka, people complain about the good ships, which is a lot of them.

 

 

I do agree that the burst damage can turn off new players, and I think that a poorly implemented infiltrator would be ruinous. But, that's only a poorly implemented one.

[ALaggyGrunt]

There are a few interesting things they could do with this ship.

 

Performance characteristics:

Health would be a little less than a striker.

Engines would be a little faster than a striker, but turning would be quite a bit worse.

 

Primaries:

MLC (cookie cutter gun)

LLC (general-purpose burst, no armor piercing)

Ions (interesting without another primary)

Not BLC.

 

Seconaries:

Sab (decloak->lock -> snare GS -> kill with some LC)

Cluster (decloak -> ions/LLC -> cluster)

Flare (new weapon: locks like cluster, flies like sab, does no damage, wipes out a bit of evasion so someone else can finish the kill)

EMP missile

 

Systems:

The cloaking component?

Booster recharge.

EMP field.

 

Shields:

Directional

Quick-charge

The cloaking component?

 

Engines:

Koiogran/BR/snap turn. Or maybe the cloak-whoops, the only lock break would have to be distortion field!

 

Secondary components:

Shields

Armor

Capacitor

Magazine

 

They could give everything a bad case of myopia and make basically three scout classes: these things (no sensor component, difficult to detect), sensor scouts (T1/3), and battlescouts (fast and lethal, but can't see very well without active TT).

 

The cloaking component itself could be balanced by these: ship's sensors (detection range penalty while cloaked, or no communication with friendly ships' sensors while cloaked), ship's speed, ship's signature/ease of enemy detection, maximum runtime/cooldown.

An assassin type cloak could allow for high speed, one-way communication (can't transmit sensor data to friendlies, only receive data), and not much runtime. This thing would have to sight a target, cloak, approach, attack, and fade.

The support variant would mean much lower speed, better detection range, two-way communication, and long runtime. This would basically be a sneaky sensor platform which would go around sighting targets for gunships. In order for this type of build to have a point, most of the other ships' sensor detection ranges would have to be dropped.

The big counterplays would be:

Sensor beacon/targeting telemetry for scouts.

Proximity mines on bombers. You'd park a gunship with a proximity mine covering its tail if these were enough of a threat.

Strikers would basically have to not hold still for very long (reduce boost power consumption on them a bit). Since there's no thruster component on this ship, most strikers won't have trouble playing keep-away.

 

The big worry I have with this kind of ship (or any significantly new ship) entering the game is the learning curve will get a lot steeper for newbies once all the aces figure out how to play with and against these things.

 

The other thing we could have happen is:

1: Terrain line-of-sight breaks target locks.

2: If someone has a target lock on the cloaker, it can't cloak.

[havokhead]

I am not lying, the ships were developed, their stats, abilities and skins were released by swtor miner on reddit. I didn't mention this because you're not supposed to discuss data mining on the forums but since you called me a liar....Also, the devs back around June 2014, right after the t3 bombers came out releasing a statement saying that although the ships were created and being game tested the developers could not balance them and deemed them game-breaking and there would be no further development carried out towards them, they were "suspended indefinitely" I believe is what they said.