[Silent Sorrow]

1. Nope. The colonies in the system disappeared. As I say, it's happened a few times before but I went back to a savegame from right before the instance, played through the turn and the colonies were still there. I definitely think it's some kind of bug.

2. I didn't know stealth armour gives you cloaking ability. The other reason it doesn't make sense to me is that these ships of mine had their armour from the beginning yet had no cloak ability. It's only when far into the game that my ships mysteriously gain this cloak ability.