Cloaking

[C4]

What's the best use for cloaking? It looks like I can't attack an enemy ship while cloaked. Is it basically good for sneaking around and setting up ambushes?

[Taqwus]

I've been using it on a LOT of ship designs.

- Attack ships. Great for ambushes, even better with solar collectors (because you can cloak while refueling), and they let you *choose* your fights. You can uncloak, attack a fleet, and recloak. Very helpful for long-range ships that would otherwise need to return to base periodically, but would risk being attacked frequently if they simply sat there, visible, while refueling.

This is also good for recon, where you may not want to attack/be attacked immediately until you have better info on what you're dealing with.

- Minelayers. They often wander into enemy-controlled warp points to mine the other side, and risk getting nailed by satellites otherwise. Besides, you can manually use 'em to mine your enemies' (and "allies'"...) warp points and planets.


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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Baron Munchausen]

Think "submarine" for tactics that work for cloaking.

1) Scouting around behind the lines, so you know what you enemy is doing -- Equip these scouts with sensors and scanners for maximum payback.

2) Hit and run raids -- mainly on planets since there is no "civilian shipping" to hit, but there are unescorted transports -- Equip these ships with a few beams and PDC so they can defend themselves against small ships and take out transports, but make sure to include some "planetary" weapons.

3) And the occasional terror mission where a whole pack of 'submarines' actually take on a major fleet or base and try to destroy it. These would be equipped with more "regular" armament than your raiders. They just have to out-gun the forces you are attacking by sheer weight of numbers. This will take more than it would with traditional forces since the cloaking device is rather large and reduces your ship's resources in other areas. But as long as your victim doesn't have advanced sensors you have the advantage of surprise and can choose your battle.

4) Secret resupply and support services. It sure does reduce the need for 'escort' for ships crammed with solar generation and/or repair bays if they can CLOAK, ya know? Especially useful for keeping your 'submarines' in service against the enemy, but also useful to support normal fleets. This is also a good thing for mine layers/mine sweepers/satellite layers and maybe even plain old transports. If your transports are cloaked, the enemy 'submarines' will have to have large and bulky sensors in order to find and attack them.



[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 22 November 2000).]