ACU Cloak overpriced

[Chenbro101]

Lets theorycraft for a second about Cybran acu cloak cost being reduced to the same amount as an Aeon heavy shield. What would be the balance issue?
1. Cloak + stealth is OP! Well not really. An omni would still be cheaper and costs less energy to keep online.
2. You would not be able to snipe if acu is out of omni range. Ok but that means the acu is not on the front line using the cloak.
3. You would just be able to strut around without being countered until omni is made. Cloak costs 3000 energy to stay active. Any usage before getting a t3 power gen dedicated to it alone would mean temporary cloak and the need for lots of storage. Since this means that an acu without laser would only be effective with overcharge. That already gates the usage substantially.

The point is that with the energy requirements of cloak, the usage and effectiveness would scale in the mid game in proportion to how much energy overflow the player makes. The main reason to get it would be the HP. The cloak is just an extra.

[armacham01]

I don't think it would be a big problem for team games, because there are so many ways to get omni coverage (an omni radar, multiple ACUs have short-range omni, someone with t3 air can make spy planes, and the ACU probably has to avoid any t4 with or without omni). Also, people can ground fire with strat bombers, artillery, etc.

It might be worthwhile to test whether decreasing the price of this upgrade is balanced. Another thing to consider would be decreasing the HP gain from the upgrade. I know that makes the Cybran ACU weaker in the late-late game but if boosts the ACU's strength in mid/late game, that might be a net benefit to Cybrans.

Or, perhaps when the cloaking is active, the laser should be disabled. Perhaps the Cybran player with both upgrades would get extra HP, but they would have to choose between cloaking and lazering. They could sneak into position with cloaking on, but when they wanted to burninate, they would have to disable their cloak. Cloakmazer ACUs aren't commonly used (as strong as they are, they are still so vulnerable) that this change, if it was coupled with a significant decrease in the price of cloaking, would be pretty cool. It would also encourage people to do something else with cloaking besides just "hide in base" or "cloakmazer." For example, they could use a cloaking ACU with T3 engineering to try to build a sneaky base. Right now, I think the #1 reason people don't do that is because cloaking is too expensive.

[LabPunk]

The problem is that it's an upgrade for both hp and cloak at the same time. It's too expensive for either of these two separately, and you'll rarely need both, as cloak is only available at the experimental stage.

[ThomasHiatt]

With cloak being a permanent thing it is either super overpowered if it is cheap enough to get before there are omnis and spyplanes or it is useless because it is trivial to spot with omni and spyplanes. A much cheaper cloak upgrade that gave the ACU an ability you can activate to cloak for X seconds with a cooldown of Y seconds would be much more interesting and fit in better with the Cybran themes of being a tricky hit and run faction. Disabling the ability to fire while cloaked may or may not be required. It could be used to escape from tricky situations, do some sneaky attacks, or slip by an army undetected, but you only get a short time of cloak then have to wait for the cooldown so it can still be countered easily instead of just making you invisible for the rest of the game.