Uses for Eye-Bot Cloaking Boost

[Fleet]

Funny feature this "cloaking boost" is for the eye-bots.

If the eye-bots are in low-power, the cloak booster is non-functional, meaning a tachyon beam will decloak all eye-bots in the area.

If the eye-bots are at full-power, but there is an enemy nearby, the eye-bots immediately open fire, thereby decloaking all of them...even if no tachyon beam is present. So, cloaking boost does not help eye-bots get by planets

So in either case, cloaking boost does not seem to serve much of a purpose. Either they try and sneak by low power, in which case if there is a detector they are all boned. Or, since the boost only functions at full-power, send in all the eye-bots at full-power and cloak boost is disabled when every eye bot attacks.

Thoughts? Not an angry rant, I just found this really odd so I paused the game to type this up.

[keith.lamothe]

That is a pretty good point.  The boost could be useful to cover scouts you're trying to get through or if you're trying to only sneak part of the eyebots through (in low power), but it does seem like it would really help to have a mode for simply holding fire, though that would be non-trivial to add.

[Fleet]

Would it be easier to have cloak-boost work for low-power eyebots? (I'm thinking of scouting past high mk planets through sheer numbers of eye-bots as a possible strategy)

EDIT: In any case, I appreciate your thoughts and time on this issue. Good luck on continued unity work (which is way more important than this)

[MaxAstro]

I would support a hold-fire mode for other reasons, too, such as Z-Bombards; if you want them to kill something beyond the front line of enemies, you have to wait for them to reload at least once after they all fire on the first wave of enemies.  Giving them a preferred target makes sure the second volley goes to the right place, but you still have to wait those 30 seconds for some or all of them to reload.

[HellishFiend]

I would support a hold-fire mode for other reasons, too, such as Z-Bombards; if you want them to kill something beyond the front line of enemies, you have to wait for them to reload at least once after they all fire on the first wave of enemies.  Giving them a preferred target makes sure the second volley goes to the right place, but you still have to wait those 30 seconds for some or all of them to reload.

I may be mistaken, but doesnt low power mode work just fine for that purpose?

[keith.lamothe]

Generally low-power mode works fine for hold-fire cases; it does have the dubious side-effect of suppressing the ships shields, but that's usually not the end of the world.

To my knowledge, the eye-bots are the only guys where it makes sense to have a high-power-only ability on while still not shooting at anything.

[Ranakastrasz]

How about Etherjets, They have an attack, and when they attack, they decloak. It could be advantageous to have them stay cloaked while towing the units back to your planet. If you set them to low power mode, they cannot use the tractor beam.

[HellishFiend]

How about Etherjets, They have an attack, and when they attack, they decloak. It could be advantageous to have them stay cloaked while towing the units back to your planet. If you set them to low power mode, they cannot use the tractor beam.

Personally I think that that's fine, for balance reasons.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, something staying cloaked while tractoring would be unacceptable balance-wise

[Ranakastrasz]

OK, that is a good point, However, I would say that the cloaking boost of the eyebots are almost 100% useless, except in one case that I can think of, being a planet that is has no wormhole defenses, and a planetary tachyon emitter. That is the only case that the cloaking boost helps. Otherwise, due to them all opening fire on the wormhole defences as soon as they emerge, thus shedding their cloak and cloaking boost. I suppose you could have them escort scouts tho, and have the eyebots boost the scouts too.

[HellishFiend]

I suppose you could have them escort scouts tho, and have the eyebots boost the scouts too.

Yes, that is the primary use for the eye bot cloak boost at the moment, in my opinion. Although more typical for me is to actually send the eye bots through with a decloaker and have them tear up the tachyon emitters and turrets so that the scouts can move through. The cloak boost also does have limited use when making an attack run on tachyon equipped turret balls, although I'm skeptical that it actually helps to minimize losses.