On occasion (but too often for it to be just a coincidence) I get shot shortly after pressing 'f' to uncloak, but while I'm 100% invisible on my own screen, and the enemy would have to be cheating to see me any other way. It gets worse when the server is acting up, which I think reinforces my theory. Can anyone confirm this? It would be awesome if someone could catch this on video, since it's yet another serious bug that's sapping the fun out of being a cloaker.
Here's my theory: you press F to decloak, your client sends to the server "i'm decloaking" message, and then the server sends message "itg is decloaked" to all clients in the area. So if the enemy has lower latency than you, they will see you decloaked earlier. But the difference would be very small, even in worst cases of 50ms of your enemy to 200ms of you, it would still make only 0.15 seconds. A thought from another angle: when the enemy shoots you, you take damage on your screen only ~200-400ms later, so if you take damage as you decloak, it means the enemy actually shot you while you were still cloaked on his screen, meaning he either saw you through your cloak, used cheats or just had a lucky guess.
Your first theory is pretty much what I was thinking, but I don't think it's quite the full story. The thing is, I've had ~40ms ping during a couple recent instances of this, and even if my enemies had 0ms ping, it wouldn't be enough explain my problem. One instance could be explained by the guy seeing me while cloaked (still quite a coincidence that he picked that exact moment to open fire, considering I was sitting in front of him for several seconds), but the other one was 100m+ away, while I was in deep cloak. I guess I might have been afflicted with the sprint-cloaked head bug, which he saw through his scope. In several other instances of this, the server was lagging, and I got shot during the buggy cloak delay that sever lag tends to cause. I think there's definitely a connection there.
I am not sure you completely understand the nuances of cloaking. If this is the foundation of your argument, you should change your thinking. Firstly, you are never 100% invisible. Secondly, there is a whole system for properly cloaking to minimize your visibility. Once you learn that, you'll learn how to properly approach your target or destination without worry.
No need to be so condescending. I didn't literally mean 100% invisible. What I mean was in deep cloak, stationary, not looking around or reloading.
Sorry if it came off that way. But still, the point is valid. Yesterday, I was defending a point from two stalker cloakers and an Engineer by myself. They were not very good Stalker cloakers (although they avoided my sensors). Sure, it's more difficult to see Infils now but as long as you know what you're looking for, it is still not impossible.
That's true, but I know when an infiltrator might be visible but can usually get by unnoticed, and when one definitely isn't without some kind of bug or hax. You're not going to see a deep cloak infiltrator from 100m+ against a normal terrain background, even with a scope. If they're close, they sort of stare at you a little, then tentatively fire a few bullets, they probably saw a shimmer legitimately, but if they run straight up to you from 30m and headshot you without so much as squinting, something's wrong. You get the idea.
I may have experienced this tonight: Circumstance its Friday night and my apartment internet is just terribad. An oblivious enemy looking at my direction but had no idea i was there takes cover behind the side of a building with his back to a yellow box. As he is reloading I press decloak, and he immediately begins to wiggle. I am technically still cloaked when the medic aims direct on my position and opens fire. The first shots hit me while cloaked and finally it allows me to decloak on my client as he finishes me off. Despite the fact the medic originally had no shield the ambush ultimately failed. Unfortunately there is some ambiguity because I cannot be sure if the enemy saw distortion while wiggling... I'll never know if he wiggled out of surprise or if he just had a sudden urge to wiggle around while reloading. I'll try and see if I can record this the next time my internet decides to throw a fit. The battle was also huge for the record over 96 v 96. Also you could actually tell there was a cloak delay on my end. So its not like something like this was completely unexpected. I just obviously didn't think the delay would be so pronounced or his reaction would be so swift.
As someone who lives in an area with only old-school DSL and as such has pretty slow internet, I know what you're talking about with the delay in uncloaking. It doesn't happen all the time, but when I'm having a slightly slower connection it's much more noticeable and occurs more frequently. I also seem to get killed more often as I try to uncloak due to the delay... it makes ambushing very awkward. I'm not sure if they are seeing me uncloak before I come out of the delayed action, or if it's just throwing my own (already pretty poor) timing off.
