Cloaked Fighters

Homeworld Remastered Collection Homeworld Remastered Multiplayer
#1

Just wondering does anyone have any good ways of using these? I was doing a bit of a sandbox with them yesterday and they seem pretty worthless at the moment. Since they have to reveal themselves to attack the cloak only seems useful for exiting or entering an engagement and it lasts so little time that there is practically no play in that. It also takes an age to fully recharge.

I just can’t seem to see any way to use them effectively. Perhaps if they could fire while cloaked and the cloaking was a bit less stringent in terms of time you could do some damage with them, or you could keep the cloak time and limitations and up the damage maybe?

#2

I guess you’re supposed to use them for hit-and-run tactics and reconnaissance. Harass undefended harvesting operations, retreat and recloak before the enemy interceptors can strike back. Use them as a distraction.

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#3

Cloaked Fighters are not working properly.

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#4

Well that’s basically what I tried, but in testing I found them to be poor at all those things considering the cost and time to get them. I guess harassment is kind of justified but the threat from the cloaked fighters is so low that I doubt HW2 players would even bother responding to it since their refinerys would be able to handle them. HW1 players would be more vulnerable if they are just using a controller but it will still take either an awful lot of cloaked fighters or a long time to really hinder resourcing.

As in not to spec with the original game?

#5

They’re just bad. They do like 1/3rd or 1/4th the damage of interceptors. Cost a lot to get.

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#6

I think they used to perma-cloak.

They still more or less sucked, but could be fun in certain situations.

If they bring back perma-cloak, then they make excellent intel gatherers.

#7

I believe the cloaking mechanics of the two games are different. If memory serves correctly, cloak fighters would flit in and out of cloak over the course of a dogfight before, which they definitely don’t now. And they actually had better guns than interceptors, which is definitely not true now.

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#8

You are only supposed to see Cloaked Fighters when they are firing. That’s how the original game was.

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#9

They were also useful as an extra fighter type to build together for pure swarmers. Limited to 2 production lines, I’m not sure I would ever build them over a different fighter. maybe interceptor/cloak combo for extra anti fighter/vette? for pretty much anything else I would go interceptor/bomber, Interceptor/defense Interceptor/defender, or Interceptor/scout.

#10

Not even knowing how the mechanic worked at the start, this is how I guessed it would/should work. Like that they’d only be vulnerable for 2 seconds or so after shooting. Like highly defensive, but not a whole lot of DPS, something that you can abuse nicely with micro.
I kind of have no clue how they actually work even after trying to test them. Cloak is an ability, and I can’t really tell how it works.

#11

I’m really not sure how cloak interacts with sensors and whatnot, despite trying to make cloaked fighters happen in a mod for several years now.

In one of my skirmish games shortly after launch I beat up a carrier until it jumped away, and then sent a swarm of ~40 cloaked fighters to finish off it’s sliver of health while I handled mop-up of the combat ships it left behind. When I next looked, the carrier and the handful of ships it managed to build had killed nearly all of the cloaked fighters, and the carrier was still very alive. Very disappointing. Strike craft should be able to conduct strikes.

#12

Proxy sensors were and still are fast to research, no research pre-req (other than now a research ship), and easy to deploy. Not sure what the research requirements are for HW2 to get their anti cloak mod up, but I imagine it is near as easy, absolutely before you can get cloaked units up.

#13

Ya cloak never really worked as it was intended in my opinion. What good is that ability if the best thing you can use it for is to sneak up upon somebody. Hw1 used it properly while running you had an advantage that your ships were actually only truly visible and targetable while firing unless a proximity sensor was in range.

That alone makes many of the utility units somewhat worthless in HW2 and it hasn’t changed in the RM:E.

I would very much love to see getting that thing fixed but to stay on a fair side the HW2 factions should get another advantage then to compensate balance wise. Same as I think the HW1 factions should get their own proper unique looking turrets etc… to balance things out even more. Not for the single player of course but for MP why not. It not just would be very exiting getting few new official unique unit types after over 10 years but it would also make things somewhat easier when it comes down to balancing properly for the devs and modders.

Each faction should in some fashion or another either be able to get the same chances or play differently but therefore catch up among one another in different advantages which makes each faction also unique both in their style and gameplay just as it is the case in Coh2 for example or Starcraft or any other rts games.

#14

So while recording all unit build times and cost (because I do stuff like that) I looked at the stats on the cloaked fighter for the first time in HW:R. The GUI show’s less armor and speed the way I remember, but attack seemed way off. Lower than scouts??? I remembered them being way better then that in HW1. So I went back and checked there.

Yep. In HW1 they had a higher attack than any fighter other than the bomber. Just slower and with less armor (although not much) than the interceptor.

I was thinking that maybe the ROF adds to the equation. But defenders in HW1 had a lower attack (lowest of all fighters) and also have a lower attack than interceptors in HW2. Things just are not adding up.

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#15

DPS on the HUD does not account for accuracy.

Their accuracy is stupid. It’s like 8.4% vs fighters.
Laser corvs are like 10%…

#16

Well this would certainly explain why I found them to be so useless!

#17

Fighters, Corvettes, and Assault Frigates need their accuracy doubled.

#18

Ok but for what was and is written in the descriptions.

HW1
Scout 12
Defender 8
Interceptor 25?
Cloak 34?
Bomber 39?

HWR
Scout 15
Defender 35?
Interceptor 40?
Cloak 17
Bomber 49?

Forgive me, I’m working from memory, but those numbers are close. Why is the cloak so low by comparison?

#19

Oh oops. In the JSON dump of stuff I had a few modded wepaons still there. Didn’t realize weapons weren’t in the HW2ships.big and HW1ships.big.
I’ll have the pastebin updated in a little bit. Cloaked fighter’s weapon is one that was wrong.

#20

There you go.

Pretty clear to see why it’s so bad

"kus_cloakedfighter": {
  "config": {
    "type": "Gimble",
    "fireType": "Bullet",
    "activation": "Normal",
    "velocity": 2200,
    "range": 1760.0000000000002,
    "radius": 0,
    "lifetime": 0,
    "misc": 0,
    "fireRate": 0.7200000000000001,
    "fireDuration": "1.3",
    "fireDelay": "0.8",
    "trackingH": 0,
    "trackingV": 0
  },
  "effects": [
    {
      "on": "Hit",
      "do": "DamageHealth",
      "to": "Target",
      "effectMin": "14.7",
      "effectMax": "15.3",
      "spawn": ""
    }
  ],
  "angles": {
    "gimble": 13,
    "hMin": 0,
    "hMax": 0,
    "vMin": 0,
    "vMax": 0
  },
  "damageMultipliers": {
    "penetrationChance": 5,
    "defaultDamage": 1,
    "LightArmour": 0.92,
    "MediumArmour": 0.7,
    "PlanetKillerArmour": 0,
    "SubSystemArmour": 3,
    "ResArmour": 0.6
  },
  "accuracy": {
    "enabled": 1,
    "Fighter": 0.0824,
    "Corvette": 0.253,
    "munition": 0.14,
    "Frigate": 0.6,
    "SmallCapitalShip": 0.6,
    "BigCapitalShip": 0.6,
    "ResourceLarge": 0.6
  }
}

Fires a 2 round burst every 2.1 seconds for only 14.7-15.3 damage per shot and only 8.24% accuracy.

That works out to 14.2 dps. Not really sure why it says 17 in game.

Compare to Hiigaran interceptors

"hw1_interceptor": {
      "config": {
        "type": "Gimble",
        "fireType": "Bullet",
        "activation": "Normal",
        "velocity": 2200,
        "range": 1760.0000000000002,
        "radius": 0,
        "lifetime": 0,
        "misc": 0,
        "fireRate": 0.54,
        "fireDuration": "1.3",
        "fireDelay": "0.8",
        "trackingH": 0,
        "trackingV": 0
      },
      "effects": [
        {
          "on": "Hit",
          "do": "DamageHealth",
          "to": "Target",
          "effectMin": "21.7",
          "effectMax": "22.3",
          "spawn": ""
        }
      ],
      "angles": {
        "gimble": 14,
        "hMin": 0,
        "hMax": 0,
        "vMin": 0,
        "vMax": 0
      },
      "damageMultipliers": {
        "penetrationChance": 5,
        "defaultDamage": 1,
        "Unarmoured": 1.06,
        "LightArmour": 1.03,
        "MediumArmour": 0.73,
        "PlanetKillerArmour": 0,
        "SubSystemArmour": 3,
        "ResArmour": 0.48
      },
      "accuracy": {
        "enabled": 1,
        "Fighter": 0.111,
        "Corvette": 0.26,
        "munition": 0.2,
        "Frigate": 0.6,
        "SmallCapitalShip": 0.6,
        "BigCapitalShip": 0.6,
        "ResourceLarge": 0.6
      }
    }

33.31 dps with 11.1% accuracy. And faster, more manuverable, cheaper, etc.

Not to mention the Hiigaran interceptor does 66 damage from its burst. The burst from the Cloaked fighter can be too low to kill the 30 health fighters.

It’s a copy/pasted nerfed version of what HW2 interceptor gun is. When its later tech and so on. And it’s ability is awful, from what I can see. Can’t really tell exactly how it works. Heh.