The cloaking device doesn't "work" in SFC, mostly because Taldren did not incorporate several key features from SFB:
The Problems===================================
1) Incoming weapons fire is not reduced by the Damage Reduction Table when cloaked (makes cloak useless for phaser defense)
2) Seeking weapons do not make an immediate check for loss of lock after fade is complete (makes cloak useless for seeking weapons defense)
3) Tractor/Anti-tractor cannot be charged while you are cloaked. (making it simplicity to flash and grab a cloaked ship; exacerbates point 2)
4) Cloaked ships can be 'flashed' with phaser fire (for crying out loud!) and then hit with H&R boarding parties. (This makes Romulan ships with R mounts very vulnerable while cloaked.)
(Upfront: I don't include lack of a hidden cloak because hidden cloak isn't part of the standard rules of SFB, isn't part of the
Balance of Terror source material, makes for a boring game, and simply isn't needed. Besides, I just don't like it; not even in SFB where I was mostly Romulan.
Those are my opinions only . I understand some people like hidden cloak, and I include my opinion on the matter here only to explain why I don't consider it in this post.)
How to fix the Problems?===================================
There are three things I can think of to do in order to move the cloak closer to SFB capability.
1)
Give Romulan ships innate ECM--------------------------------------------------------------
This would help alleviate problem 1. The effect of the damage reduction chart can be duplicated by using ECM. However, this takes power that the claoked ship does not have and can be countered with ECCM. (The hunting ship will have no problem putting up ECCM, since he can slow and stalk the cloaked ship without having to pay for a cloak himself.) Giving the cloakable ship free ECM can be done with a simple shiplist edit and gives the cloaked ship an edge in the ECM battle.
The complication is that this gives the ship an ECM edge even when not cloaked! This may not be as serious a problem as it first appears. Romulan ships do not have plasma-bolt torpedos (Even though Khoro-Mag could have done it in 15 minutes; thanks, Taldren!) and thus have virtually no chance of hitting a fast moving target with their heavy weapons. This forces them into a phaser-boat contest. The Gorn can try to compete here because of their strong phaser suite, but Romulans have a very weak phaser suite. (Roms are supposed to have a weak phaser suite because they can use cloak for seeking weapon defense; but see problem 2 above.) Giving an ECM bonus may in fact move the dualing ability of Rom ships closer to where it was always supposed to be.
2)
Reduce Romulan Cloak cost by (2?) points-------------------------------------------------------------
This would help alleviate problem 2. Reducing the cost of cloak would give you more speed during fade. Perhaps this extra speed would force seeking weapons to finally getting around to checking for lockon (instead of just slamming into your cloaked hull.)
This would also help alleviate problem 1. Once you were fully cloaked and had shed your unwanted seekers, you could slow and feed your extra power into ECM. You'd have the choice of copying an SFB power curve and having an additional ECM edge to simulate the Damage Reduction Table, or going faster than SFB would have allowed and being easier to hit than you would have been in SFB.
The complication is listed above: it would be possible for cloaked ships to travel faster than they were designed for (if their captains were willing to suffer the SFC cloak handicaps.)
3)
Make WE's unable to be boarded.-------------------------------------------------------------
This seems a bit cheesey, but give it some thought. In SFB you could assign boardng parties to specific systems, and any WE captain would have assigned one to his R-torp. Performing a H&R raid on a gaurded system was tantamount to suicide. In SFC, you cannot assign guards. See problem 4 above. It is far too easy to kill a WE's only gun, even when he is still cloaked!
The complication is that no one will ever be able to capture a WE. However, it is easy to imagine that such a small and Romulan ship would perform a quick self-destruct before any boarding parties could secure a capture. WE captains probably sleep on the self-destruct button.
The KE could also be considered, but since it has three torps I'm not sure such a step is warranted.
MY SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS===========================================================
I suggest a combination of the steps listed above:
1) Give 2 points of free ECM to all Rom ships
2) Reduce the cloak cost of all Rom ships by 2 points. (Combined with solution 1, this give the Rom a four point gain in ECM; enough to counter the three points of ECCM innate in Gorn Plasma Torps and hopefully help make the "chuck and duck" possible.)
3) Make WE's non-boardable. (Change their special role marker to NT in the shiplist.) This helps protect their single gun from phaser-flashes.
4)Curse (loudly) because anti-tractor is a part of tractors rather than an innate function of the hull, as is the case in SFB.
There is jack-all else we can do to fix problem 3.
What are your thoughts? More? Less? Any agreement or flames?
LATE EDITAlmost forgot to mention, I wouldn't do any of this for Kestrel hulls. They were never designed to use the cloak anyway.
-S'Cipio
Topic: Salvaging the Romulan Cloaking Device (Read 4480 times)