Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This is a request for clarification, combined with a suggestion.

I am now encountering Orbital Bombardment ops in Molden Heath, with the dawn of Planetary Conquest battles. I have not been involved with FW since before DUST had an impact there, so this post is based on my very first handful of encounters with ships engaged in planetary bombardment.

The majority of the ships I have encountered so far have been Destroyers, which I expected.
What I didn't expect was for the majority of those destroyers to have both a cloak and warp core stabilizers fit.

It seems their method is to cloak up on grid with the district, decloak only as needed to perform bombardment, and then to recloak.

This isn't much of a major problem, as the delay before they can recloak is plenty sufficient to kill them (evidenced by the fact that I killed them and discovered their fits~), but what is a bit bothersome is that they aren't suffering the same penalties as a ship fit for ship versus ship combat would by fitting a cloak and stabs.

It seems there is absolutely no accounting for decloak lock delay or scan res penalty from the cloak or scan resolution penalties from the warp core stabs as it regards their ability to deliver a planetary strike. I suggest that this should not be the case.


Fortunately, there were quite a number of bombardment gangs out there that brought small defense gangs (usually 2 BCs and a Recon to defend 2-3 destroyers, but in the case of E-UNI, a 75 man blob) but I fear that once pilots start to catch on that they can cover more districts with less manpower by simply cloaking up with stabs, the in-space content creation of this awesome feature is going to die off considerably.

Is this working as intended? Should planetary bombardment ships be able to operate at their full unpenalized potential despite being cloaked and warp core stabilized?

Make no mistake, no one is going hungry, and this isn't a complaint about smart tactics. This is a request for clarification regarding whether the very powerful abilities of fitting a cloak and having superior warp strength should have the same penalties for planetary bombardment as they do for ship versus ship combat.

Edited to add: this thread would not exist if the ships engaged in planetary bombardment had just as much delay in connecting to a district as they would have locking a ship after decloaking.

Simply put, cloaks make you effectively invincible and undetectable, in exchange you move slower and can't lock immediately after decloaking.
Warp Core Stabs are a hard counter to warp disruptors. In exchange, your scan res goes to ****.

These same penalties should apply to Planetary Bombardment, that's all. It would not reduce how clever the tactic is, nor how effective it is. It will merely balance the power addition with appropriate drawbacks, same as they do for ship v ship combat.

That's not the problem. Anything with a sebo and artillery will kill them. It doesn't mean they should be discouraged from bringing a gang to defend them because they can bombard just as well with a cloak as without.

Again, I only know this phenomenon exist because my corpmates and I killed quite a number of ships fit this way, employing these tactics. This isn't about countering these tactics, it's about whether or not ships engaged in planetary bombardment should be able to deliver strikes after decloaking as quickly as they could if they were never cloaked.

They simply mouse over and click the district in order to connect and accept bombardment requests, there is no lock the same as ships lock other ships, but this would be a good way to fix this. If they made the district a lockable object with a battleship or even capital-sized signature radius I would consider this problem resolved 100%

70 man, actually XD And we only got a single bombardment request from our ground force

Yes, we also noticed a cloak on an opposing bomber's cata we popped.

There is at least the penalty of reduced bombardment effect. The only factor in determining effectiveness currently is the number of turrets used in the strike, so 1 must be sacrificed to fit a cloak. I'm not sure if this is a sufficient penalty given the ease of bombing it provides.

A bit if a side note, as most of us were twiddling our thumbs, someone mentioned how great it would be if ground force battles were broadcast on billboards - or potentially from the planetary interface to the district. Sure there out-of-game methods to achieve this, but it's a bigger hassle and the in-game version would give a much more of a connected feeling to our DUST counterparts.

In addition, it would be a distraction to give incoming gankers an opportunity to strike. Fun all around /end hijack