While converting the old cloak balance sheet to the new-style balance sheet, it occurred to me that for a lot of players in the game, cloaks are just used as stat sticks and are pretty boring. Upgrading to the new balance formulas doesn’t really work with cloaks, especially since they are so often used as stat sticks, because the old method was to take power budget out of their cloaking ability based on any secondary augmenter stats that a cloak has. Taken to an extreme, a cloak under the old formulas could give +50% damage, but be really bad at cloaking, which would obviously be a broken item.
So cloaks are getting reworked in a few ways. First, any aug stats on cloaks will increase the energy that it takes to run the cloak, rather than make it worse at cloaking. Second, aug stats on cloaks will only apply when the cloak is turned on. And third, most aug stats on existing cloaks were doubled to make them more impactful. Note that mods on the cloak will still always affect your ship whether the cloak is on or off.
In addition, AI and bots have received an upgrade to their cloaking AI, so they will intelligently activate and deactivate their cloak based on their current energy and visibility. They will turn it on if they aren’t short of energy and the cloak would actually make them reasonably stealthy. They will turn it off if they don’t have full energy and are not stealthy even with it on. Bots with cloaks in the same galaxy as their master who has a cloak will turn on their cloak if the master turns on his cloak, and turn off their cloak if they are less than 100% energy and their master turns off his cloak.
These changes should make using cloaks a lot more interesting and pave the way for us to create a lot more interesting new cloaks. I envision a lot of cloaks that are good for running away, sneaking around, or surviving opening salvos, with shield, resistance, and speed stats on them, so the player will have an incentive to intelligently use his cloak. Hopefully the energy costs are enough that just leaving the cloak on all the time without thought will not be the optimal play style, and hopefully the bonuses on some of the cloaks are worthwhile enough that most people will have a cloak to use in certain situations, not just Seers, Snipers, or Speed Demons.
