Yet another idea to … smooth perma-cloak down a bit ?
New module mecanic :
When you activate the Cloaking device module, just like it does now, you will cloak.
But this time, it has a cycling timer.
A long one, very long one. I was thinking about half an hour, maybe a whole hour, or even more.
When it reaches the end of its cycle, the player has 10sec, 20sec, it’s up to Eve designers to choose, to reactivate it.
In the meanwhile, the player would still be cloaked, if he clicked before the short timer, if he did not, he will uncloak.
But that’s not all !
At cycle 0, your ship cannot be probed down with combat probes : that’s how cloaking works, right ?
At cylce 1, your ship can be probed down with combat probes, BUT, just like Anomalies, the player trying to probe you down, would have an approximative result. Depending on his scanning skills.
At cycle 2, the signature strength of your ship would go up.
At cycle 3, up again for an amount of X%.
But even at cycle 246, you would not be able to be Directionally scanned down, or seen if you’d be on the same grid of another guy.
With this, if you’re an active cloaky sneaky thingy, your “gameplay” would be enhance, you’d have to be carefull of combat probes, and be aware of your cycles.
The counter to it would be : “Oh yeah ok great idea ! The guy could still just change system to put his signature strength back to 0”.
Yes he could, but that means he’d have to cross a gate or a WH, and therefore, going out of Cloak giving away his position, and potentially getting killed.
Here’s my idea :for going back to 0 signature strength :
Once you uncloak, a new timer will appear : just like Jump Fatigue.
Depending on the number of cycles your module did, your signature strength will slowly go down by X% every Xseconds.
If you jump (gate/WH/Cyno), dock, or change ship in station, or space, this timer would still be there. Until it reaches 0.
What you guys think ?
Instead of adding this mecanic to the module, we could think about a Structure that would make this a thing system-wide on Cloaky ships ?