Topic: New cloak not working as advertised

[Holocat]

Is the actual chart for overloaded photons only, all photons only, all direct fire heavy weapons only, all direct fire weapons only, or all weapons, direct or non?

Curiousity only kills slow moving cats that forget to stay away from plasma,

Holocat.

[David Ferrell]

Chart is for all weapons.

Thanks,

Dave  

[Sethan]

Quote:
The reason I never use the cloak in PvP is the flash cube....

<snip>

...For the last 2 years I always thought, "damn, it they take away the flash cube, then I can use the cloak in PvP.  I think I still can't.

The flash is necessary, IMHO - it is the only method for forcing a ship out of cloak.  If there were no way to flash a ship, it would be possible for a Rom or pirate to enter a battle, cloak, and just sit there, (virtually) invulnerable.

Without the ability to flash a cloaked ship, if the cloaker has a ship with a fair amount of spare power (or if the opponent ship is small), there would be no way to do enough damage through the cloak to force a ship out of it.

That would allow a cloaker to prolong a battle indefinitely.

[Holocat]

Alright, so the calculation for cloak is now true range at (R+5)*2 with 1/3 of the damage cut in half, including seekers and plasma that maintain lock?

while were on this slightly off topic topic of weapon damage, I accidentally trolled through WeaponDamage.txt as well, and found this:

Quote:

Seeking weapon 1070,Damage reduced by 0.500000 due to ECM SHIFT

Does this mean a positive ECM shift will cut damage by half a point, or by half its total damage?  Do greater shifts cut damage in greater percents?

Pawing about,

Holocat.

[FireSoul]

Quote:

The reason I never use the cloak in PvP is the flash cube.

Flash Cubing is a standard SFB tactic that made it into SFC2. It's my opinion that it's supposed to be there, and it has to be part of any player's tactics in PvP.
In otherwords... use your negate tractor more.

[**DONOTDELETE**]

"Flashing" of cloaked ships dates back to TOS: The Balance of Terror, which was the birth of the Romulans and the cloaking device. When the Enterprise fired its "proximity phasers" (really photons) and they exploded, you could see the image of the cloaked WB for an instant.

In ST3:TSfS, Kirk and Sulu could see the cloaked BoP with the naked eye on the viewscreen from the distortion it made against the starfield.

The cloak is not, nor was it ever meant to be an all-powerful, "Uber" weapon.

Thats reserved for Fed ships with 100% RE-VER-SE and magic photons.  

HAND!
 

[TarMinyatur]

Quote:
Alright, so the calculation for cloak is now true range at (R+5)*2 with 1/3 of the damage cut in half, including seekers and plasma that maintain lock?

while were on this slightly off topic topic of weapon damage, I accidentally trolled through WeaponDamage.txt as well, and found this:

Quote:

Seeking weapon 1070,Damage reduced by 0.500000 due to ECM SHIFT

Does this mean a positive ECM shift will cut damage by half a point, or by half its total damage?  Do greater shifts cut damage in greater percents?

Pawing about,

Holocat.  

Holocat, that "Damage reduced by 0.5" is only found in single-player games. For some unkown reason to me, seeking weapons always do full damage in multi-player, regardless of the ECM shift. This is a benefit that plasma chuckers (and drone slingers) enjoy. However, the best defense against these weapons is usually speed. Only starbases should consider using this tactic to reduce damage in single-player since they're immobile.

Here's how it works:

Add the ECM shift to a die roll...

Result: Effect on warhead (missile, plasma, suicide shuttle)
1-6: Full damage
7-8: Half damage
9: Quarter damage

As you can see, it is an unreliable approach to dealing with seeking weapons. A shift of +1 only provides a 16% chance of suffering half damage (e.g. 6 from a Type-I missile). 83% of the time you'll still take full damage (ouch!). A shift of +2 is a bit better though harder to manage (especially vs plasma since they have 3 ECCM built-in) with sensor-derived ECM. A good trick is to toggle Erratics just before getting hit to get a quick burst of 4 ECM (and thus a +2 shift). Again, this only applies to single-player.  

[TarMinyatur]

Quote:
Chart is for all weapons.

Thanks,

Dave  

Except the ESG of course.

ESG always does full damage since it seems to flash the ship first (negating the chart), then hits it.

The PPD might still do damage based upon the current target (which may not be the same as the initial PPD target...a nasty exploit which is easy to do in team matches).

[David Ferrell]

Too true.

Being ramming weapons, both the ESG and ESG Lance are unaffected.

PPD should be fine.

Thanks,

Dave

[Corbomite]

Quote:
Too true.

Being ramming weapons, both the ESG and ESG Lance are unaffected.

PPD should be fine.

Thanks,

Dave  

What about Maulers?

[David Ferrell]

Maulers are reduced as they should be.

Thanks,

Dave  

[Corbomite]

Cool. I don't suppose you could answer my Phaser B question?


http://208.57.228.4/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB1&Number=129449&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

[Rod O'neal]

A mauler should require a lock on to fire. I don't have a problem with it being put in with other direct fire weapons though. I imagine if you tried to put in every little detail of every rule we'd never get a game to play. I'm enjoying the improvements a lot. Thanks again    

[TarMinyatur]

Quote:
Too true.

Being ramming weapons, both the ESG and ESG Lance are unaffected.

PPD should be fine.

Thanks,

Dave  

The PPD may have a problem. If a ship cloaks and is hit by PPD fire it will be destroyed and the game will CTD. This is recorded as a volley of 498 damage.

[Corbomite]

I'll do with you Tar

[Corbomite]

Well I got it to do it in SP. I fired at range 4 when it was cloaked and the PPD connected. About 2 pulses in I CTD.

[TarMinyatur]

Interesting, Corbomite. I'm on GSA now.

[Pestalence]

Does everyone here have to number crunch or nitpick for bugs.. reporting them is one thing and the details are nice, however, David already poisted that this patch for OP is FINAL.. in other words, there will not be any more patch support client side for Orion Pirates, so bug hunting and such is pointless, unless it is to just announce them to the community...

as David Ferrell said, go play and have fun and stop nit picking the game to death.. it takes a lot of fun out of it for many of us, especially when the Developer of the game is not supporting the game any more...

I know many want OP to be the PC version of SFB, however many systems and functions have to be approximations of the SFB rules or just changed outright for balance sake.. maybe some look like bugs.... a CTD is a bug, but the Cloak was a slight oversight and has been redifigned by Taldren...

Read the OP Cover page 1 again in the Preamble of the manual... SFC : OP is "Based" on  SFB, not a direct copy of it....

just consider 1 thing before posting, This game is based on SFC and many things are approximations of the SFB rules, however, this game is Taldren's and the changes that they make is completely up to them.. if they want the Energizer Bunny drum across the screen in the middle of a battle because Taldren wants it there.. then so be it.. it is their game and their game engine and coding...

David said to get use to this patch version and play accordingly as the game is now Final version 2.5.4.10 and no future patches are coming out...

as for the damage table, it was an oversight, and David made a statement.. thus changing the way the Readme.txt reads.

just my $.02

[Corbomite]

Quote:


The PPD may have a problem. If a ship cloaks and is hit by PPD fire it will be destroyed and the game will CTD. This is recorded as a volley of 498 damage.

 

The PPD must hit hull to do this while the ship is cloaked.

This is a real show stopper folks. We tested it numerous times. You might as well remove the ISC from the game if this is going to stay that way.

[Cleaven]

Quote:
Does everyone here have to number crunch or nitpick for bugs.. reporting them is one thing and the details are nice, however, David already poisted that this patch for OP is FINAL.. in other words, there will not be any more patch support client side for Orion Pirates, so bug hunting and such is pointless, unless it is to just announce them to the community...

as David Ferrell said, go play and have fun and stop nit picking the game to death.. it takes a lot of fun out of it for many of us, especially when the Developer of the game is not supporting the game any more...

I know many want OP to be the PC version of SFB, however many systems and functions have to be approximations of the SFB rules or just changed outright for balance sake.. maybe some look like bugs.... a CTD is a bug, but the Cloak was a slight oversight and has been redifigned by Taldren...

Read the OP Cover page 1 again in the Preamble of the manual... SFC : OP is "Based" on  SFB, not a direct copy of it....

just consider 1 thing before posting, This game is based on SFC and many things are approximations of the SFB rules, however, this game is Taldren's and the changes that they make is completely up to them.. if they want the Energizer Bunny drum across the screen in the middle of a battle because Taldren wants it there.. then so be it.. it is their game and their game engine and coding...

David said to get use to this patch version and play accordingly as the game is now Final version 2.5.4.10 and no future patches are coming out...

as for the damage table, it was an oversight, and David made a statement.. thus changing the way the Readme.txt reads.

just my $.02  

I find it insulting to think that a quest for knowledge ie "Can you use the PPD against cloaked Rom without crashing?" is some sort of political or personal attack. And the thing that really bites is that this bug (in the truest "accidental" use of the term) is just another excuse by you to accuse people of being ultra orthodox SFB purests, which seems in your post to be right up there with burning the flag. That in my eyes, is just as intolerable as trying to suppress this sort of CTD information. You may not be able to change it or fix it but it is important to know it exists in the game engine. To specifically quote you " to get use to this patch version and play accordingly ".

Next thing you know somebody will be quoting the "SFC is not SFB" mantra as an excuse for criminal acts, along with the Twinkie Defence. Or better still, a good old fashioned book burning. Not acceptable! This is not Oz and The Emerald City isn't.