Add a short cooldown to the traitor invisability cloaker.

[Scrumpys]

Cause the nerf it already has is enough. Hardly anyone uses it as it is, then one guy complains about it and you want to nerf it further. Please refrain from insults I don't intend to insult anyone else or to attack their opinion. I was a little frustrated because from my point of view you guys add new content and then when your out of ideas you got on a nerfing crusade and nerf something to oblivion. Also please explain how it is a exploit and how you feel instead of justify why it needs another nerf without calling people names. I use to think you nice and could get your point across without needless insults.

Coding does things to you
What you may perceive as knee-jerk nerfs are really things that were deemed too powerful for minimal effort long before, we just got around to it then. See also: custom medborg infini-hell patches.
The cloaker is one of these things. It's an item which has exactly two hard counters on the entire station, one possessed by a whitelisted job, the other possessed by a job that has no less chance of being traitor than anyone else. All other counters, including all the ones you brought up, are extremely situational. On the other hand, the cloaker gives you an instant escape mechanism and an unparalleled opportunity at a first strike at someone - which is all you need to take them out, really. Couple this with some quirks of the engine (it actually can take up to two seconds to become visible when your cloak is interrupted due to Dumb) and the ability to quickly reactivate the thing with the press of three buttons in the right order and you effectively circumvented the last nerf, with the only downside being your ID name being announced repeatedly.

This change would only complement the last nerf for it to actually take effect. I wouldn't compare this to quickly reloading guns. I'd compare this to bug abuse.

It doesnt completely circumvent the last nerf, you still cant beat people to death while invisible. I think itd be better to add more thermals, but it looks like your mind is made up. The cloaker will probably need to be removed eventually if things keep going the way they are.

[Dauntasa]

The cloaker is one of these things. It's an item which has exactly two hard counters on the entire station, one possessed by a whitelisted job, the other possessed by a job that has no less chance of being traitor than anyone else.

this only became accurate after they took away sec's thermals and then made flashes not disable cloaks

[Klayboxx]

Glass is a hard counter too

[Scrumpys]

The cloaker is one of these things. It's an item which has exactly two hard counters on the entire station, one possessed by a whitelisted job, the other possessed by a job that has no less chance of being traitor than anyone else.

this only became accurate after they took away sec's thermals and then made flashes not disable cloaks

Flashes disabling cloaks would be a good counter. Alternatively, maybe make the t-ray scanner disable it for longer?

[Ed Venture]

Make disable cloakes again, give sec thermals since they are no longer OP. There doing those two things would greatly balance it out.

[Ed Venture]

Make Flashes disable cloakes again

oops

[I-Sett]

I seem to recall there being a security-spawning set of thermals a while back, when thermals made you a nigh-omniscient securigod (slight exaggeration perhaps). Why not just bring back this extra set, introduce a few more cloak counters (flashes) as others have suggested and call it a day? It's far preferable to have a cat-and-mouse game than make everything out of soft foam-rubber, in my opinion.
In summary: Powerful Items need powerful counters, not simply to be made less powerful.

[Paineframe]

I seem to recall there being a security-spawning set of thermals a while back, when thermals made you a nigh-omniscient securigod (slight exaggeration perhaps). Why not just bring back this extra set, introduce a few more cloak counters (flashes) as others have suggested and call it a day? It's far preferable to have a cat-and-mouse game than make everything out of soft foam-rubber, in my opinion.
In summary: Powerful Items need powerful counters, not simply to be made less powerful.

No, the whole "counter" concept is unfun, because then either you have the counter and the original item is harmless to you, or you don't have the counter and you're helpless to resist an enemy that picks you apart with impunity. Back in the days of cloak rampages, you were totally helpless if you weren't one of the two people on the station with thermals, so the only things you could do were hide away in a locker or one-tile-wide hallway and huddle there in fear clutching a flash until the detective or HoS caught the cloaker - assuming, of course, that either of them was still alive.

[BaneOfGiygas]

I agree that giving security thermals again is probably a good idea now that they aren't omniscience-goggles anymore.

[Marquesas]

In summary: Powerful Items need powerful counters, not simply to be made less powerful.

This is where we disagree, because:

No, the whole "counter" concept is unfun, because then either you have the counter and the original item is harmless to you, or you don't have the counter and you're helpless to resist an enemy that picks you apart with impunity.

Exactly. I don't think adding items which are powerful and require hard counters or luck to put a stop to are a good addition.

[Dauntasa]

powerful items don't need one powerful hard counter they need a shitload of weak soft counters, that's what makes things interesting

Flashes disabling cloaks was a great mechanic, because Flashes are everywhere but just disabling a cloak didn't do anything beyond give you a bit of a window of opportunity to fight back. You could activate the flash and the cloaker would become visible, but he could also bug out and reactivate it. Plus if he had sunglasses on you were using an item that you couldn't actually hurt him with, and needed to be smart or work in groups.

The cloaker still had a huge advantage from the cloak without leaving the crew helpless. And then that got removed, for some reason, and the only counter against it was thermals which basically just made it completely worthless against the 2 dudes on the station who had thermals and completely unbeatable for the other 40 dudes who didn't.

[BaneOfGiygas]

the only counter against it was thermals which basically just made it completely worthless against the 2 dudes on the station who had thermals and completely unbeatable for the other 40 dudes who didn't.

I think that this–the availability of counters to the cloaker–is one of the bigger complaints going around. As far as I'm able to tell, there are three counters to cloakers: Robots, thermals, and flashes. The problem is that the first is notoriously unreliable at times, the second is ludicrously scarce in almost all cases, and the third is only marginally more readily available and has decreased counter power anyways.

The problem isn't that the cloaker has no meaningful counters, the problem is that the things you can use to counter cloakers aren't something that can be acquired by a majority of the crew and therefore leaves them as sitting ducks.

[Dauntasa]

flashes are everywhere and having them counter cloaks in the way that they did was fine: the cloak was still a large advantage(which it should be since you have to spend crystals on it) but you could fight it if you were smart or had backup

[BaneOfGiygas]

flashes are everywhere

The pockets of staff heads, the robotics lab, and the sec vendors do not combine to equate to "everywhere". Robotics is probably the easiest available source of flashes for the common public, and that's right in medbay, one of the biggest chaos centers of the station.

[Frank_Stein]

What if the cloaker was more like the cloak of darkness mutation?

Complete invisibility in low light.
Partial invisibility is bright light, like the cloaking field's static look.