Enemy Cloak stops weapon charge

[James_Manring]

When you first enter combat you see an enemy ship before he cloaks. You will see him, but your weapons stop charging as soon as it cloaks. This does not make sense to me. Surly your crew should still continue to charge weapons in an attempt to hit them when they de-cloak.

[actionhero112]

You are actually locking on (I'm pretty sure). So it does make sense that when you can't see them, you have trouble locking on with your weapons. From a gameplay perspective it makes sense as well. Stealth would be pointless if your enemy could lock onto to you in that state.

[Mottikhan]

Still seems more like a bug to me. If you were just locking onto your enemy, the Weapons Precharge thingy wouldn't make much sense.

Still, it's not a major bug, so I'd put it way down there on the priority list.

[DrNoid]

I's not a bug, it's a required game mechanic with a sub-optimal technobabble explanation.
If it didn't stop weapon charge/lock/whateveryoucallit, then the cloak would actually be a detriment instead of a benefit. It would not actually slow enemy fire much and it would cause all the enemies weapons fire at the same time as soon as your cloak drops.

So one of the main points of the cloak is that it stops weapon charge.

It's a sci-fi game, not all tech needs to make sense

[Phasma Felis]

I love this game, but with all respect, if a "required game mechanic" is indistinguishable from a bug in practice, maybe it wasn't properly thought out in the first place. Admittedly I'm having trouble thinking of what a cloak should reasonably do in a game without tactical maneuvering, but I'm sure there's something. Maybe it boosts your Evade chance, I dunno. (Or...hang on, it already boosts your Evade chance. At least that's what the description says. What does that even mean, when you can't attack a cloaked ship anyway? They're better at dodging asteroids?) Maybe there's no good way to implement it at all, in which case it should be left out, or changed to something else that fits the mechanic better ("weapon system disruptor"?). A sci-fi game doesn't necessarily have to hit every one of the Star Trek cliches.

Not really related to the topic, but it's a pet peeve of mine:

It's a sci-fi game, not all tech needs to make sense

If you believe that, you've been reading/watching some really terrible sci-fi. Sci-fi doesn't need to be possible in the real world, but it does need to be internally consistent. A writer can say that aliens from the planet Qwarg can shoot lightning bolts from their butts, fine; but if your Qwargian character suddenly starts shooting rockets from his nose, you need to explain why and what's changed. When you call something a "cloaking system", we all have a pretty good idea of to expect, and "stop the enemy's weapon capacitors from charging" isn't it.

[Kaerius]

(Or...hang on, it already boosts your Evade chance. At least that's what the description says. What does that even mean, when you can't attack a cloaked ship anyway? They're better at dodging asteroids?)

You can activate cloak while attacks are incoming. After launch but before impact. This is indeed the optimal time to activate cloak.

[onikuma255]

Hello,

I imagine what we see for our little cool-down bar is a combination of weapon warm up time and the time it takes to lock on to the targeted ship. You have to imagine the enemy ship is performing evasive maneuvers like tilting and rolling, and your own ship is doing the same!

Now add cloaking into the mix; you can't hit what you can't see. Maybe the weapon systems on ships in the FTL universe might not be able to stay fully charged without a lock on. Take all that into consideration and it makes sense that the cool-downs go back to 0. You'll need to reactivate the systems and lock on again once the ship comes back on radar!

[Icehawk78]

I love this game, but with all respect, if a "required game mechanic" is indistinguishable from a bug in practice, maybe it wasn't properly thought out in the first place. Admittedly I'm having trouble thinking of what a cloak should reasonably do in a game without tactical maneuvering, but I'm sure there's something. Maybe it boosts your Evade chance, I dunno. (Or...hang on, it already boosts your Evade chance. At least that's what the description says. What does that even mean, when you can't attack a cloaked ship anyway? They're better at dodging asteroids?) Maybe there's no good way to implement it at all, in which case it should be left out, or changed to something else that fits the mechanic better ("weapon system disruptor"?). A sci-fi game doesn't necessarily have to hit every one of the Star Trek cliches.

It's a question of semantics, then.

The system was intentionally designed both to increase evasion (for incoming shots which have not yet landed) and stop weapon charging. It works both ways (ie your weapons stop charging when the enemy cloaks, the enemy's weapons stop charging when you cloak), which (combined with numerous comments from the devs in the past stating the same thing) shows that it's functioning exactly as intended.

The naming might be better or made more explicit (as you said, "weapons disruptor" or whatnot cold work), but it's not a bug so much as not necessarily the most clear in-game explanation.