Bane Loppknow
Pel Industries
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Posted - 2010.01.05 13:14:00 -
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Edited by: Bane Loppknow on 05/01/2010 13:15:08
Didn't read anything but the OP, cos I'm cool like that. That being said, heres my solution:
Gives cloaks a system similar to overheating. Your cloak, while it remains active, slowly accumulates heat, say, on an hour-long timer. After an hour, your cloak begins taking overheat damage and burns out after 5 minutes, and then you need to repair it.
If you deactivate it at or before 59 minutes 59 seconds, your cloak will relatively quickly (say, 5 minutes?) dissipate the excess heat, allowing you to safely re-cloak with no damage to the module. If you reactivate your cloak before all the excess heat is dissipated, it stays there and accumulates slightly more rapidly. If all the excess heat is dissipated, you get the initial 1 hour timer again.
The Thermodynamics skill could increase the rate at which you dissipate heat.
The in-game explanation is simple: Computers generate heat. A cloak is a very powerful computer. It generates a lot of heat, and since the object is to hide, you can't just let it all bleed into space; someone will 'see' it and figure out where you are.
An active cloaker warps around, maybe shoots at some things, possibly drops a cyno, jumps through gates... all of which require the deactivation of the cloak. As the cloak is inactive and you're popping a cyno or w/e, you're also dissipating heat.
Warping rapidly through multiple systems would generate no heat, as you're typically only in a system for a couple minutes, and cloaked (gate cloaks obviously don't count) for three quarters of that. That's maybe a second of dissipation, which you get when you jump through the gate and the next system loads. You can also hold your gate cloak to dissipate heat, as the gate is cloaking you, not your module.
There are many strategies you could employ to keep your cloak from overheating while remaining uncatchable. For example, you could warp across system and de-cloak while in warp. You're invulnerable, traveling too fast for probes, and it takes time to warp... time that you can use to dissipate heat. The point is that this system would require a conscious pilot in order to remain cloaked in hostile territory, while not making it impossible. EVE isn't safe for anyone... except afk cloakers. It's time that changed.
Also, don't nitpick the times I've given. That would be stupid (I know someone will anyway). This is just a hypothetical system. If it were ever implemented, CCP could figure out their own numbers that they find to be balanced.
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