Missile Reloading

[take]

Yes, currently weapons stop charging when enemies are cloaked by design. If we don't, cloaking significantly helps AI opponents when players cloak because they will wait for the player to decloak and fire all weapons at once. It made using cloaking a terrifying prospect.
Of course all this is subject to refinement during testing, but I figured I'd clarify what's in the video.

this makes sense, because as the player is locked in a specific perspective, you don't get the whole "we're floating in space at hundreds/thousands of miles per hour" intense feeling that comes with one's idea of a fight between ships in open space. in the case of a space battle, if your enemy is cloaked you have no idea where or when they'll pop back into existence, if at all, since maybe they jumped away, are flying behind you now, or whatever other possibility.

it is essentially simulating that, in a 'real life' [i know, i know.. hypothetical] situation you would need to target your enemy again, gathering your bearings to fight all over again.

it would be interesting if another layer of strategy was added to this, ie: do you charge your weapons at cost of energy your ship could use otherwise to repair shields, heal crew more quickly, etc., or do you have them ready to blast away once your target has been 'recalibrated', if and when they reappear.

[Freyar]

Perhaps a better route would be to make evasion significantly high for X seconds after cloak comes off?

[AJTilley]

Is it possible to have the cloak be an upgradeable component where level 1 means you cant use weapons and higher upgrades mean you can charge or even fire while cloaked.
Or have a special component that allows weapons to charge without anything to lock onto similar to that ability to have weapons full functional as soon as you arrive in a new system.

[Dahn]

Yes, currently weapons stop charging when enemies are cloaked by design. If we don't, cloaking significantly helps AI opponents when players cloak because they will wait for the player to decloak and fire all weapons at once. It made using cloaking a terrifying prospect.
Of course all this is subject to refinement during testing, but I figured I'd clarify what's in the video.

Eep! That could be very scarey! LOL! I hadn't thought of that, glad that you did!

[soratidus999]

it certainly is a tricky decision whether or not to allow weapons to charge versing a cloaked opponent

the way ive always looked at is just like someone said earlier

missiles can sit reloaded with no danger, so allow then to do so

beam lasers/weapons/whatnots, that have to store massive amounts of energy and have the potential to overload - dangerous

[Red Ruin]

Why not split the weapon reload time into two pieces? Actual reloading/powering up and tracking. Cloak wouldn't allow the weapons to lock but they would be able to reload. That way you aren't completely destroyed when you drop out of cloak. Just my two cents.

[Warbird]

Then it would be delaying the same end by X seconds unless the latter times were edited to take different lengths of time to track and fire. Currently if the present settings are changed, then you'd be better off not wasting the scrap on a cloak and using their full range of time to attack instead of allowing the enemy time to prepare/repair.

[Gorlom]

Gameplay > explanation of events. A few people seem to focus on the explanation or justification why some gameplay mechanics work as they do. It worries me that they would rather twist the mechanic to suit the justification, then adapting the justification to fit fun gameplay mechanics.

So what if the reload sequence getting paused doesnt make sense to you? It's more fun then getting blasted as soon as cloak ends. It's also more fun then the other option: a complex and contrived gamemechanic pushed/forced into the reload sequance to prevent decloakers dilemma.

"Realism" or logical events aren't allways ideal/preferable. Consider it from the gameplay mechanics point of view instead to make sure it's acctually fun instead of "realistic" (for whatever measure of realism can be applied to the spaceadventure concepts ). Thankfully the devs seem to be doing this properly (and can probably combine gameplay with good explanations, without compromises).

[Warbird]

Gameplay > explanation of events.

If you make a good enough game, then the audience will provide explanations themselves. I once saw a thread that used some impressive pseudo science to explain how TF2's Medigun worked.

[salbris]

I think our resident dev brought up the point that this is a cheap way to solve the problem for now. In the future I assume the AI will be reworked so that they don't do that.

At the moment they aren't smart enough to hold on to weapons so that they fire in a barrage, but the cloak would cause the AI to do that.

I'm suggesting that the AI should always fire randomly, but not necessarily when each weapon is ready. So when the cloak falls off and the enemy has a number of guns ready it should only fire one or two. And if the enemy is smarter than it will fire in barrages anyways.