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Author Topic: Activating Phase cloak woes  (Read 1334 times)

bobucles

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Activating Phase cloak woes
« on: November 10, 2019, 01:19:40 PM »

Ship shields are extremely responsive to the mouse button, turning on or off with any mouse click. The phase cloak has a different behavior, due to its cooldown. If you attempt to cloak while on cooldown the attempt fails, essentially dropping the mouse click.

Battle is hectic and filled with bright flashes, so the visual feedback on phase coils is not always visible. So what do I do? I mash the mouse button. Bad things are happening and I gotta get that cloak up ASAP, after all. What happens next? The phase cloak goes up, and then it drops immediately.

The game is not always responsive to cloaking requests, but it is ALWAYS responsive to decloaking requests. Does this annoy anyone else? It's gotten me killed quite a few times.

I'd like to see a slightly friendlier system to phase ship lovers. A simple solution is to queue up the request. Once the player asks to cloak, the ship should do it at the next opportunity. This way the button request is always accepted, you click an odd number of times to be cloaked and an even number of times to be uncloaked. It's very easy on the muscle memory and it lets players get the most out of their phase coils.

SCC

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Re: Activating Phase cloak woes
« Reply #1 on: November 10, 2019, 01:41:24 PM »

Even with shields this can sometimes happen, if you use shield-reliant ships, vent aggressively or use ships with ship systems that disable the shield.

TaLaR

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Re: Activating Phase cloak woes
« Reply #2 on: November 10, 2019, 01:42:00 PM »

Optional indicator for target cloak/shield state would be nice too (on cursor, for example). Maybe even some simple audio cue for target state (would be especially helpful for switching it during pause).
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Vind

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Re: Activating Phase cloak woes
« Reply #3 on: November 11, 2019, 04:45:36 AM »

You cant cloak then phase coils are lit. And you camera usually centered on your ship so you always see them. I cant imagine better indicator than ship itself.
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bobucles

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Re: Activating Phase cloak woes
« Reply #4 on: November 11, 2019, 04:52:53 AM »

You cant cloak then phase coils are lit. And you camera usually centered on your ship so you always see them. I cant imagine better indicator than ship itself.
Sounds good. Feel free to tell me when I'm ready to cloak.

[attachment deleted by admin]

Vind

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Re: Activating Phase cloak woes
« Reply #5 on: November 11, 2019, 05:05:58 AM »

Even on this small ship phase coil is visible so i dont understand the problem. Once coil is not lit cloaking is available.

Phase coils still lit - cant cloak:


Phase coils ready - can cloak:
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bobucles

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Re: Activating Phase cloak woes
« Reply #6 on: November 11, 2019, 05:31:48 AM »

So it looks something like this, right?

The point I'm making is that battle is incredibly flashy and the visual phase coil feedback is not always clear or visible so when you DO attempt to cloak, it's a shot in the dark(hehe).

[attachment deleted by admin]

SapphireSage

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Re: Activating Phase cloak woes
« Reply #7 on: November 11, 2019, 05:40:39 AM »

+1 I'd like this idea too, all too often have I clicked at about the time venting ends only for the shields not to raise in the chaos.

Even if queuing isn't added, then maybe a more pronounced audio indicator that shields are raised/cloak activated then the current subdued sound we have for activation.

In the afflictor picture above, its easy to see that part of the phase coil is lit, but its also a still picture with no other action going on or things diverting our attention away from analyzing the afflictor which is plentiful in combat. In that situation with movement it would be difficult to tell at a glance.
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Megas

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Re: Activating Phase cloak woes
« Reply #8 on: November 11, 2019, 05:49:54 AM »

Like SCC says, even shields can be hard to see.  Sometimes, I click mouse to raise shields, and shields do not always raise when I want them to.
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Serenitis

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Re: Activating Phase cloak woes
« Reply #9 on: November 11, 2019, 10:09:17 AM »

I've also done this with both cloak and shields.

One other thing about your ship being the visual indicator is that depending on how you play, your ship is not nescessarily where you are focusing your attention most of the time.
If you are using turn-to-pointer behaviour, there's a good chance your view is going to be centred on whatever you're targeting rather than your ship.

Not sure how you'd approach this though.
Putting an indicator on the pointer might make it more visible, but it also might make it more distracting.
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DatonKallandor

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Re: Activating Phase cloak woes
« Reply #10 on: November 11, 2019, 11:56:47 AM »

A queue for shields and cloaking would be a big improvement.
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Plantissue

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Re: Activating Phase cloak woes
« Reply #11 on: November 12, 2019, 09:37:31 AM »

Perhaps the code can be changed so if you press and hold the right mouse button whilst decloaking/venting, you would automatically phase cloak/shields turn on as soon as the timer/venting runs out. Kind of like how if you press and hold weapon and special ability buttons, you would automatically shoot/activate with them once you dephase/finished venting.
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DatonKallandor

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Re: Activating Phase cloak woes
« Reply #12 on: November 12, 2019, 10:35:51 AM »

That's be another good option. Though you do lose the ability to put something on hold-right click in the future.
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Plantissue

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Re: Activating Phase cloak woes
« Reply #13 on: November 12, 2019, 02:40:30 PM »

I wrote right click as that's the default button for phasing and shielding. I don't know what button you use but it can be any button. You don't lose anything.

Like I said, press and holding buttons works already for weapon fire and ship system special abilities, so there is no reason I can think of that it wouldn't work for phasing or sheilding.
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Thaago

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Re: Activating Phase cloak woes
« Reply #14 on: November 12, 2019, 04:04:00 PM »

Perhaps the code can be changed so if you press and hold the right mouse button whilst decloaking/venting, you would automatically phase cloak/shields turn on as soon as the timer/venting runs out. Kind of like how if you press and hold weapon and special ability buttons, you would automatically shoot/activate with them once you dephase/finished venting.

This would be nice. I get my shields wrong right after a vent sometimes when things are hectic, holding down the button during vent would be a nice way to make sure it comes up ASAP with no need to guess.
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