Cloaked Ships - Possible?

Not really due to hard coding... lots of discussion about this in the SOA2 (WIP) topic forum pages 40-43 check it out and see if it helps.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/173883/page/41/#replies

some ships have an ability already that forces other ships to stop targeting them for a brief time. Extend the time limit on that and couple it with a particle  effect that will make the ship  see thru. Plenty of mods already have that, although it is usually thought of as a texturing bug, however in this case you can use the bug to your advantage to give the cloaking effect visually.

phasic cloaking is the Vasari scout ship's ability, but it doesn't allow it to move, if that helps

and the search doeasn't really work

Phasic cloaking ALLOWS THE SHIP TO MOVE!!!!

I'm the ability master and itll take a grand total of 2 secs to make the phase cloak movable...and at the same time enable all his weapons in phasecloaking (free firing!!).

Extremely simple to do!

But I thought phasic cloaking gives a semi transparent ship. You can still see the ship right?

Yes you can...btw its more like 60-70% cloaked! Something you could do to make it better would be to go into particle forge and redo the effect, adding even more transparence.. just an idea..I code not particle!

Or instead of making it transparent you make it 100% black...less esthetics but just as camouflaged in a black background !

Just a few ideas...

klingons and romulans can't fire with the cloak up.

surround it with a black particle shower, that way it'll shimmer in and out of existance.

*Twinkle twinkle little star..how I wonder how beautiful you are* Then proceeds to fire its main gun at it blowing it to pieces!!!

I WILL RULE

default game i mean.  And I probably will delve into these game files eventually, but haven't yet.  what I meant was it should be easy to mod it to make it invis.  maybe even take away the antimatter cost.

except in the bright nebula backgrounds.  then it'd stick out like a sore thumb.  (occasionally, you get a nebula background that is really bright)

in my post about specific targetable areas in capital ships a few of us put down some code ideas for cloaking, check it out, I'd like to hear your advice/input

i'm sorry i didn't read the whole thread so if this is reduntant i appologize...

is there a way to "swap models" in-game through an ability?  then either find a way to make a model transparent or a texture highly reflective to it's ambient surroundings?

hmmm... reflective surfaces are generally really hard to master.  (ask bungie how they did the chief's visor!) the best bet would probably be to give it a fightercraft size model (close enough to invisible) and make it dark when cloaked.

The only issue I see with that is that other ships will still be able to see it and shoot it.  Nes Pas?

like I mentioned earlier, just give it an altered phase cloaking ability, too

Good call.

So can't we just give it a phase cloak ability and change the particle effect on that ability?  Excuse my ignorance, but what's holding that back? I'm missing something.

So cloaking is pretty easy then. We just have to change the particle effect and mod the ability so that ships can move while it's initiated?

Really, that simple?

To challenge people...

How could we make scouts detect them? Could we have a passive ability that removes phase cloaking? Or interrupts it or something to that effect?  (within a certain range)

well, first we have to understand the cloaking mechanic. Is it supposed to be an all around invisibility spell or something that gives an added benefit in combat?

If what you want is actual invisibility to both players and to the ships in the game it is very tough to pull off.

However if you just want to cloak it from the ships in the game and not necessarily from the players then it is much easier. This way you can create an ability that uses the "cannot be targeted" or the reduce" percentage chance of being hit" code snippet and associate that with some sort of particle effect. This way the players will see your ship, but their ships would not be able to fire upon it until the cloak dropped. Which would be basically what star trek storyline mechanics would be anyways. The federation always knew cloaked ships were in the vicinity, they just couldn't draw up a firing solution until the cloak ability wore off. Then tie it to a decent particle effect and it would be nice to look at as well.

we would have to create that from scratch.  unless we did put a antimatter usage on it, and they used an antimatter drain, that might work.

Hmm, no such thing as skill-specific interrupts? 

So if we gave a ship the ability to cloak, there would be no way to reveal it specifically?

We'd have to have the cloak antimatter dependent, and have the "detector" ship drain all the anti-mater?... A ship that could drain anti-matter in an area would be gamebreaking though : (

Any ideas on how to make a ship project invisibility to allied ships near it?

look at the code for abilities that do just that, any group buff abilities will have the format you want.

my thought was that it would be interesting if players could still see the blip of an enemy ship on their galactic view, but unable to see/target the ship at planet-view until it decloaks/fires.  That way attentive players would at least have an inkling of the pain that is a comin'.

or we could stick on an ungodly cooldown period after the ability wears off, so set the on ability end trigger to activate a cooldown that lasts like 10 minutes, so cloak would have to be used strategically.