Sneaky AI

[Elowan]

I've been replaying a game in order to get a handle on dealing with an alien culture. One of the things happening was puzzling me but now I think I know what's up.

Here's the situation:

I have a farpoint system that is adjacent to an empty system filled with a nebula which prevents scanning. The empty system has 3 warp points:

1) to my system
2) on the farside directly opposite my system 'gate'
3) one below mine on the same side.

In previous games - if I put a sentry fleet on the nebula side of any of the warp points - the alien fleet gets by me. If I place them on my or a normal system side of the WP - I catch them.

I suspect that they are invisible within that nebular system and sneak by. This was/is not expected by me because I thought that visual worked. That is - I have no sensors on any of my ships at this point - so I thought that i should be able to see them.

I'm new at this but it appears that a nebula 'cloaks' any ship within the system. Right?
Seems obvious - now. But I'm just checking with the experts.

[geoschmo]

Some do, some don't. If you click somewhere in the nebula on the system map you will get a description of it's properties on the right hand side where you normally see the planet window.

If you see:

•This system is opaque to most scanners

That means it offers some level of cloaking. Different nebula offer different levels of cloaking. Some can be defeated with sensors, some cannot. There is no way to tell from within the game what level scanning is required to defeat the nebula cloaking. You can tell by looking at the data files, but that is only for sure if you are playing a stock game. It has to do with the color of the nebula. I can't remember the color code off hand. But some mods have made it so you can't rely on the color code.

You can mine a nebula even if you can't see in it and their ships will not be able to get past without hitting the mines.

Also, some nebula also have other properties, like making combat sensors inefective, and maybe shields. These only have effect during combat though.

Geoschmo