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Stevedog13: How about this? The "recharging" is actually acquiring weapons lock. This is why a more experienced crew member can get a faster lock. When an enemy ship is present the computer scans the sector and locks on the target, when there is no ship present the computer scans the sector and once it can identify that the sector is empty it simply readies the weapons. The Pre-Igniter is similar to a long range sensor but is highly calibrated to prescan the sector for use by the weapon systems only. When a ship is cloaked the targeting computer becomes confused and continuously scans and rescans the whole sector looking for the ship, it can tell there is something there but not enough of a something for weapons lock.
Still doesn't explain why the computer wouldn't "ready the weapons" when it knows something it cannot effectively discern is present.

I don't really mind the mechanics of cloaking whether or not they are consistent with anything in or out of the game.
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abrigati: So cloaks somehow prevent weapons from powering up. That has to be a bug.
No. It may not make any sense, but this is definitely deliberate.

To the thread in general: Gameplay mechanics are more important than rationality. If you want them to change something, get them to change the description of the cloak, not the way the game works.
Post edited December 28, 2012 by SirPrimalform
Yeah, it doesn't make sense, given that when you cloak, the enemy fires and always misses. Fine as it plays now, though.
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polyorpheus: Yeah, it doesn't make sense, given that when you cloak, the enemy fires and always misses. Fine as it plays now, though.
Enemies do not fire when you're cloaked (except certain spoilerific times in the endgame). Also, if you do cloak after they've already fired, they won't necessarily miss. Cloaking adds 60% to your evade, but there's no guarantee you won't be hit unless your total evade reaches 100%.
Why dwell on this question so much?
It makes sense game mechanics wise, as all of you previously made a number of good reasons why the weapons don't fire, take any and all of those reasons into account. Does everything has to be spelled out why not invent a reason that works for you?

Did some of you play old games? If you were really unlucky, you'd get your hands on a game without a printed booklet or anything. Back then the internet was not like it is today. Not all games had bindable keys. I usually got my games without the guides, I was playing on a machine (an Amstrad 128) I've inherited and a number of games on floppy disks. So I basically played blind. I had to figure the controls out, I had to figure the rules out. Today's gamer would throw the damn thing away in frustration. I know it's not like that anymore, but please. This game is good as it is. It works, and it introduces you to it's mechanics.


I have to add I was really young and stupid back then, and at 7 - 8 years old, I barely knew English. Hell, at that time I just recently learned how to read!
Post edited February 26, 2013 by Mustakhrakh1sh
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AdamR: Simple. When a the enemy cloaks, your crew thinks that they are facing a ghost ship, so they are petrified with fear, and stop charging the weapons.
Brilliant! I think this is the answer. It makes it sound like the ship is run by Shaggy and Scooby-Doo.
Here's a bigger oversight... the FTL drive doesn't seem to charge when there is a cloaked enemy.
I have a slug at the helm warp in see an enemy suddenly cloak and goes I know what I'll do I'll shut off the engine that'll in combat :P
I mean seriously some of the mechanics in this game, well they are rather stupid and quite frankly it's not above the community expectations to have them fixed.
I agree. Cloaking should only affect targetting / firing, not charging.
Listen, you people simply don't seem to get how cloaking works in this game.

When a ship cloaks, it emits a wave of counter-light that is tuned to the wavelength of his usual visual signature. But in order to fool alphascopic sensors, it has to emit both subdepression retrophotons and circular endospeculum (or else the postgravity range of alpha byproducts would resonate with the epicycloidal ghost effects, negating the whole transvibratory nucleation of its gaspic influx spinners - the resulting underwaves would be uptickled by the enemy's passive obstragostolemical perifrontispectarolographers, especially the left ones). So, to make the three detonic follispices coincide alternatively with the retrophononic subdepresser's broadeners and the echocircuiter's virtual pumps, you have to postpone the unshocker's detilts.

No wonder that the gyroaccumulator's gleams get undersliced out of sequence. It gets automatically anti-balanced by the tracting fluosponges along the whole beam (or most of it), shifting the broadeners towards introflobbical hammersauce - at least until the pink-most delinear robbles are resolved.

The consequence is a sterilisation of the grong that mulk the frip of the snatz that prine the gleb. Which, of course, takes the same time as the opposite.
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Telika: Listen, you people simply don't seem to get how cloaking works in this game.

When a ship cloaks, it emits a wave of counter-light that is tuned to the wavelength of his usual visual signature. But in order to fool alphascopic sensors, it has to emit both subdepression retrophotons and circular endospeculum (or else the postgravity range of alpha byproducts would resonate with the epicycloidal ghost effects, negating the whole transvibratory nucleation of its gaspic influx spinners - the resulting underwaves would be uptickled by the enemy's passive obstragostolemical perifrontispectarolographers, especially the left ones). So, to make the three detonic follispices coincide alternatively with the retrophononic subdepresser's broadeners and the echocircuiter's virtual pumps, you have to postpone the unshocker's detilts.

No wonder that the gyroaccumulator's gleams get undersliced out of sequence. It gets automatically anti-balanced by the tracting fluosponges along the whole beam (or most of it), shifting the broadeners towards introflobbical hammersauce - at least until the pink-most delinear robbles are resolved.

The consequence is a sterilisation of the grong that mulk the frip of the snatz that prine the gleb. Which, of course, takes the same time as the opposite.
So basically it uses multimodal reflection sorting.
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Telika: Listen, you people simply don't seem to get how cloaking works in this game.

When a ship cloaks, it emits a wave of counter-light that is tuned to the wavelength of his usual visual signature. But in order to fool alphascopic sensors, it has to emit both subdepression retrophotons and circular endospeculum (or else the postgravity range of alpha byproducts would resonate with the epicycloidal ghost effects, negating the whole transvibratory nucleation of its gaspic influx spinners - the resulting underwaves would be uptickled by the enemy's passive obstragostolemical perifrontispectarolographers, especially the left ones). So, to make the three detonic follispices coincide alternatively with the retrophononic subdepresser's broadeners and the echocircuiter's virtual pumps, you have to postpone the unshocker's detilts.

No wonder that the gyroaccumulator's gleams get undersliced out of sequence. It gets automatically anti-balanced by the tracting fluosponges along the whole beam (or most of it), shifting the broadeners towards introflobbical hammersauce - at least until the pink-most delinear robbles are resolved.

The consequence is a sterilisation of the grong that mulk the frip of the snatz that prine the gleb. Which, of course, takes the same time as the opposite.
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Jonesy89: So basically it uses multimodal reflection sorting.
No. The proper term is Wibbley Wobbley Cloakey Woakey
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Telika: Listen, you people simply don't seem to get how cloaking works in this game.

When a ship cloaks, it emits a wave of counter-light that is tuned to the wavelength of his usual visual signature. But in order to fool alphascopic sensors, it has to emit both subdepression retrophotons and circular endospeculum (or else the postgravity range of alpha byproducts would resonate with the epicycloidal ghost effects, negating the whole transvibratory nucleation of its gaspic influx spinners - the resulting underwaves would be uptickled by the enemy's passive obstragostolemical perifrontispectarolographers, especially the left ones). So, to make the three detonic follispices coincide alternatively with the retrophononic subdepresser's broadeners and the echocircuiter's virtual pumps, you have to postpone the unshocker's detilts.

No wonder that the gyroaccumulator's gleams get undersliced out of sequence. It gets automatically anti-balanced by the tracting fluosponges along the whole beam (or most of it), shifting the broadeners towards introflobbical hammersauce - at least until the pink-most delinear robbles are resolved.

The consequence is a sterilisation of the grong that mulk the frip of the snatz that prine the gleb. Which, of course, takes the same time as the opposite.
Like a balloon, and... something bad happens!
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Mustakhrakh1sh: Did some of you play old games? ... So I basically played blind. I had to figure the controls out, I had to figure the rules out.
;-D I remember those times, hitting every key on the keyboard and checking if something is happening. Then all keys again with shift, alt and finally ctrl. It was the time when we called the Strg key the Strange-Key (aka Strong-Key), because we didn't know better - some Germans will know what I'm talking of ;-)

(Strg is the German equivalent to English Ctrl; Control in German is "Steuerung", hence the label "Strg")
Post edited July 01, 2013 by DeMignon
I don't see how it isn't internally consistent. If I cloak at the start of combat, the enemy's weapons don't charge, and I get the first shot in. If the enemy cloaks at the start of combat, my weapons don't charge, and they get the first shot in.

Whether it makes sense in the lore (to the extent this game has lore) is a different question, I guess.