Opinion: Being able to see the enemy is "cool"

I think it's cool when you can see the enemy forces, as well as your own. In this regard, cloaking seems to present a problem. It's cool to do special ops with a group of Knights/Reavers, and surprise the enemy deep in their territory. OTOH, general invisibility of all enemy forces on the frontline is not cool.

I think cloaking could be reworked to keep the more cool things and deemphasise the uncool ones. One thing that strikes me is that cloaking is also unboundedly synergistic. No matter how many and what units you have under the dome, they all stay cloaked. I'm thinking that a rework based on heat emissions of cloaked units could improve gameplay here. Two variations on this:

i) Give individual units a "heat" bar which bounds their maximum cloak time - this doesn't affect synergy but does at least bound the usefulness of cloak overall. However it does clutter up unit display even more.

ii) Give cloakers a maximum cloak capacity (a capacity and dispersal/recharge rate, like shields). I'm thinking when the cloaker overloads it would shutdown and expose everything. The cloak field could be animated to show that it is about to break. Firing from the cloak field would rapidly overload the heat - perhaps firing into it too? You'd still be able to keep your entire frontline cloaked, but only at the cost of deploying multiple cloaking units with enough combined dispersal.

To be clear the aim is that you should only be able to continuously cloak your frontline at very high cost - making the game "cooler" by keeping enemy forces on the frontline visible - but making sure that special ops missions on a smaller (time)scale can still be carried out.

Very much agreed. It is much more fun and interesting being able to actually see how many enemies there are and plan around that. Should also reduce stalemates due to people being fearful to advance (or punish that Lance ball) because they don't know how much invisible stuff is there.

My preferred solution is to only let cloakbots be cloakable, but that might destroy the only hard counter to shieldballs (cloaked snitch), but either of your two solutions sound better than the current one.

Usually when you send in light units to check whats under the cloaked area you can see it.
But if light units die... you cannot.
What about a trace to see already scouted units under the cloaker? trace could be visible for 1 min and slightly disappears?
And it shows the position under the cloaker for this 1 min.
Then there is only a need to scout for new units under the cloaker.

Also agreed, cloakers should consume more energy.

quote: Just give area cloaking a very high energy cost proportional to the number of cloaked units.

Brackman:
I think this doesn't work because it creates conflict between team mates where one's actions can severely harm the team in a non-clear-cut way (by putting their own stuff in the cloaking field).
This would either be ineffectual or lead to a lot of fights.

quote: That retains cloaked imp.

Anarchid:
Cloaked imp is a soft counter. Imp has a smaller radius, requires follow up (which may not be possible if most of the ball is still alive) and can't be stacked.

Isn't this just complaints about cloaking's effectiveness? If you are having trouble with cloaked frontline units, how bout using artillery, such as the Tremor, Firewalker, Badger, or even an Inferno. Or, maybe, don't give your opponents enough time to be able to even set it up.

Vision is a premium, not a right.
A thousand raiders have to die for your ability to see. Please mourn for them and make sure their metal cost wasn't sacrificed in vain.
If you can see the enemy, you can kill it. If you can stop the enemy from seeing you, they can't shoot you. Simple as that.

Shitposting aside, Mobile cloaking costing more energy depending on how many are in the cloakball would probably be better than a hard limit-- Sneak too many inside of it and then it starts struggling having them all cloaked at the expense of your powergrid. Should not affect stationary cloaking, as that is easy to defeat once detected. It would balance out the discrepancy of shieldballs vs cloakballs for cost/support units needed to keep it viable, although you have to realize they don't actually defend anything at all (artillery can still shell you to pieces if they just forcefire).
After all, other factories have to pay a hefty premium in energy consumption for any cloaking unit that is mobile.
That other idea about traces/radar pings is also good, if you scout something under a cloak and still have radar coverage over it, it should be possible for the radar to faintly detect/predict its existance or movement for a few extra seconds before the jamming does its work, allowing artillery or skirmishers to fire on their last known location without having to manually forcefire it.

I like to call the two uses of cloak described in the OP "strategic cloak" and "tactical cloak".

• Strategic cloaking is cloaking to make your opponent unaware that units are present. It is the type of cloaking for sneaking around or through bases.
• Tactical cloaking is when your opponent knows basically where your units are, but precisely count or target them since they are invisible.

People tend to like, or at least accept, strategic cloak. It's somewhat rare and can be cool when it happens, although at the time it sucks a bit to be on the receiving end. Tactical cloak is the domain of permanently cloaked frontlines. It is worth noting that these aren't strict categories as something like a cloaked Lance is unknown until it fires. This falls somewhat under strategic cloak as the cloak is making the unit unknown, rather than just making it hard to target.

Tactical cloak has been nerfed pretty steadily over the past few years, while strategic cloak has barely been touched. This was mainly done by increasing decloak time when firing, but I think decloak radius was also increased at some point. Mobile cloakers had a radius nerf quite a while ago. Cloak parameters work on this idea of innate cloakers and non-innate cloakers. Non-innate cloakers have a set decloak radius based on their size and long decloak delays. Innate cloakers have whatever decloak radius is appropriate for their balance, but when they are under an area cloaker they get the default decloak radius, if it is smaller, and don't drain any energy. This is to prevent anti-smart or anti-synergies with innate cloakers and area cloakers.

The decloak times are currently pretty high.

	Proximity decloak time	Every other decloak time
Innate cloakers	1.5s	3s
Non-innate cloakers	3s	6s

What this means is that a non-innate cloaker cannot cloak for six seconds if it fires a weapon while cloaked. I recall doubling this from 3s, and it was a pretty big nerf to Scalpel fighting under a cloaker. Previously Scalpel was cloaked for half the time while fighting normally. It made Scalpel vs Scalpel pretty silly given how homing works. The nerf also made it possible for an alert air player to snipe Lances after they fired within the 6 second window.

Tactical cloaking possibly needs another nerf. I don't want it to be useful though, and I'm aware that the point "not useless" will still see some people complaining about it. But anyway, a nerf probably requires some new tech. Here are the ways area cloaking can currently be adjusted.

• The usual unit stats. Build cost, move speed, health etc...
• Increased energy drain.
• Increased decloak radius while area cloaking (these are not reduced by being under an area cloaker).
• Increased decloak radius for non-innate cloak.
• Increased decloak time for non-innate cloak.

It's worth thinking up new mechanics that could nerf cloak, and this thread has a bunch of ideas. In general I would like to avoid mechanics that are "too numbery" or anti-smart.

• An anti-smart mechanic is one that gives units new "choices" (or perceived choices) and thus new ways to be less than smart. As dyth68 points out, paying energy for every cloaked unit could lead to situations where someone doesn't want a cloaker to pay to cloak their allies units. Being anti-smart can be fine, but it has to be balanced with player frustration at things that they feel their units are doing stupidly.
• A "numbery" mechanic is one that only changes the numbers behind the 3D world the units exist within, while barely impacting the ways units interact and move around space. Such mechanics run the risk of being invisible to new players, and can cause experienced players to play the game in formula-land rather than spatial-land.

I like the idea of a cloak capacity, either soft or hard, but I'm not sure how to make it work. It can't work on unit count because then it just makes people cloak a single Dante rather than a bunch of Kinghts. A threshold based on metal cost or mass feels very numbery. Perhaps we could reuse the Light/Medium/Heavy transport categories, but then Blitz and Flea would be in the same category. So this approach seems tricky. I am also not sure about large energy costs as they would just push cloaking into the lategame.

It's worth noting that strategic cloak is broken as soon as any unit under a cloaker is revealed. The enemy knows that something is there, so the whole unit blob no longer has pure strategic cloak. So perhaps we could make a system that "penalises" cloakers whenever their inhabitants are decloaked. It seems hard to do this without either making it too hard to recover from a strategic decloak or designing something very numbery. Mobile cloakers are already made easier to find by their large decloak radius.

What exactly is the problem with tactical cloaking? Is it artillery poking away and disappearing when a response appears? People massing shorter ranged units to defeat attempted pushes? Cloaked Snitches? Cloaking Dante to close the distance with defenses? Just not being sure what your opponent has? And which source of area cloaking causes this? I least like the defensive aura style cloaking for fire-at-will artillery which just uses cloaking as a way to make the unit a bit harder to respond to. I'm fine with units that aren't strictly "in combat" being cloaked, and closing distance with cloaking seems like a nice active use of it.

I'm starting to think the best approach may be some relatively simple nerfs. The issue might not be any particular use, but more the fact that a single cloaker has enough range to fill multiple roles on a front. A single static cloaker behind a wall can simultaneously cloak some backline Lances, provide a safe place for short ranged units to mass, and even allow for some defensive Snitching. Mobile cloakers don't need that much range for their strategic cloaking use. Perhaps a good rule of thumb is that putting any significant number of units under a cloaker should make them weaker to area of effect damage. That is not true at the moment, as cloakers cover so much area that players need to barely change how they position their units to benefit from it. So what about something like the following.

• Cut mobile cloaker range by a bit.
• Make static cloaker directional (with some turn rate?). There would be a "point in a direction" command that could be targeted on allied units.

Static cloaker could go down to something like 70% radius, but still have the same reach via an offset cloaking sphere. This would make it about as useful as it is currently at covering Lances or defensive Snitches, but it couldn't do both at the same time.

quote: What exactly is the problem with tactical cloaking? Is it artillery poking away and disappearing when a response appears? People massing shorter ranged units to defeat attempted pushes? Cloaked Snitches? Cloaking Dante to close the distance with defenses? Just not being sure what your opponent has? And which source of area cloaking causes this? I least like the defensive aura style cloaking for fire-at-will artillery which just uses cloaking as a way to make the unit a bit harder to respond to. I'm fine with units that aren't strictly "in combat" being cloaked, and closing distance with cloaking seems like a nice active use of it.

In the current iteration it is sufficiently good and cheap that in a longer game it is practical and optimal to cloak your entire frontline.

This (list not exhaustive)
- Feels like a chore rather than a strategy and has no downsides
- Makes opponent unable to strategize, removing interplay, and if both sides do it, the game becomes basically a bad variant of poker
- Makes attacking usually a bad idea, since you are almost guaranteed to be acting on wrong info
- Separately, current cloak enables cloaked snitch, which in turn acts as a balance crutch that prevents shields from visibly being oppressive
- There are no cool robots to look at. Are our models really so ugly that they need to wear a paper bag at all times?

quote: It's worth thinking up new mechanics that could nerf cloak, and this thread has a bunch of ideas. In general I would like to avoid mechanics that are "too numbery" or anti-smart.

The recent thread about smoke missiles could provide another option. Something along these lines:
- Large Area Cloak replaced with Smoke Field
- Smoke Field is visible to the enemy, so is explicitly tactical cloak only
- Units inside the smoke field also have their vision massively reduced, requiring spotters outside the field for any long range shenanigans
- Strategic cloak is retained in Conjurer

My suggestion is to make decloak time scale with unit cost. (For non-innate cloakers)

That said, I'd say that nerfing cloaking is an extreme change to to the way Zero-K is played and you should be extremely careful.
Please don't end up nerfing cloaked snitches. They are way too useful at countering lots of normally uncounterable strategies.

Juno.

BA had Juno, anti jammer/radar/scout/mine missile launcher. To keep enemy front unjammed and blind, and to stop flea spam, effect stayed on ground for a while. Hmm, Ba had much better fog of war and radar wobble, ah good times.

Here, similar could disable cloaker field in its blast radius for x moments.

[Spoiler]