opinion) always among the most tantalizing options to increase your tactical benefit are devices that make you invisible, so called cloaking devices, but however cool it seems to be completely invisible to your opponent i don't believe this will benefit the gameplay in any way, still the matter of being as elusive as possible to an enemy is an important aspect of space combat and the possibility of exploring this factor by putting things on your ship is exiting, even if it helps just a little, the point is not to give anyone an advantage that could be considered as 'truly unfair', so the few ideas outlined below are kept reasonable and all have obvious drawbacks, things like these should't make you invincible too easily, but they can make the vista of tactical possibilities a lot more interesting

a) light-absorbing black foam coating (cheap, no internal space used), does as the name implies, grants the user a black non-light-reflecting ship, it is ofcourse still visible against a non-black background, decreases agility one level (because of all the 'stuff' on your ship)

b) device to shield your radar signature to a certain degree (pricey, uses a fair amount of internal space), just the radar blimps that the other players see are affected, appearing further away (dimmer), when such a ship is locked/selected the target distance indicator shows you the actual range (which is closer than the radar indicates), this device can only operate properly when the craft is not moving and the weapons are powered down

c) device to scramble the target-lock another player has on you (expensive, uses a small amount of internal space), when installed this device will automatically try to throw off hostile locks only (somebody not your ally with weapons powered up), roughly every 5 seconds or so this device sends out a calculated, targeted beam of anti-frequency to the closest hostile craft maintaining a lock on you, which then possibly (the closer the enemy, the harder it is for the device to throw the lock) loses it's lock and has to lock on again manually, the effect can just annoy the enemy or it can save your life, when hostile ships are locking onto you the device kicks in, but also starts using a small amount of your battery while working, decreasing your battery's recharge rate by a tiny amount, the benefits of this device may seem small, but it will also try to throw missiles off your tail, sending them flying aimlessly

I'll hold off until after Celebrim gives his inevitable initial hazing.

I'd just like to say that the format of the post makes my eyes hurt.

go-go power celebrim!
/me gives gnypatul a cookie

I love #a)! Really cool idea, Gnypatul!

Having it decrease your maneuverability (i.e. add to your mass. The maneuverability "levels" are really not accurate, each ship has a different mass and hence maneuverability. See this thread:

http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=2126&page=16 )

...is a good idea *deep breath*. This just gave me another idea for a similar device:

d) active camouflage: this would use up a small portion of your ship's battery (10 e/s or so) but when it was activated *and* your ship was motionless, it would gradually fade from view and become invisible (it would take about 5 seconds). Your ship would still be visible on radar, but as long as you remained motionless you would "blend perfectly into the background."

That is fairly useless because the autoaim will ensure that by targetting you, the enemy can hit you. So you're now a sitting, half-invisible, duck.

Actually, I don't have much hazing to do here, except to agree with genka that the post could be formatted better.

I think a) and b) are good ideas, though before anyone drops to the floor with a heartattack, let me say that I'm just agreeing with myself because they are both items on my 'toys' thread ('custom paint job' and 'stealth suite'). In both cases, I think I've got a cleaner implementation, but then again, the first time I thought up things it wasn't always the cleanest implementation either. They get cleaner by arguing with you guys.

Device 'c' is actually a new idea, and not surprisingly, I don't like it. ;) Mostly I think it would be just annoying to face. I've got 'target what I'm aiming at' mapped to a joystick button, so it wouldn't slow me down a significant ammount but it would annoy the heck out of me to have to peck that button regularly. And as far as protecting you against rockets, the ECM device would do the job better without the annoying 'break lock' thing happening randomly. Also, I'd like to eventually have both 'passive' (think an eye/ear/etc.) and 'active' (think a flashlight/radar/sonar/etc) sensors and the ability to turn on and off radar and power down and so forth. It makes a slight bit of senses that the device can jam an 'active' sensor, but it makes no sense that it could jam a 'passive' sensor, and in fact emitting a jamming beam just makes it easier for a passive sensor to find you.

On the whole though, I like the post. There aren't many posts by newbies that contain at least one original idea, and there are even fewer such posts in which the author seems to have put some time and thought into the ideas, and there are even fewer such posts in which the author actually tried to balance his ideas.

So, on the whole, good job. Keep posting.

Phaserlight: If you are invisible but visible on radar, what's the point? I'd much rather be visible but invisible to radar. Otherwise, your device is just a cloaking devise without the cool part.

True, it would be much more useful if you were also invisible to radar, but in this particular flavor it *would* be useful in the following situation:

You are out of radar range and you want to watch what is going on without being picked up visually.

But I guess I'd agree with roguelazer and Cele, it wouldn't be very effective unless you were also invisible to radar.