effectiveness of cloaking

[Taera]

ive been thinking (what a wonder! lol), is cloaking technology is useful? what i mean, does it worth to rush for it in the first like 70 turns of the game?

in one of my games, im generating enough research to reach the tech in .3 years... should i go for it? is it any good as such?

[Baron Grazic]

It all depends on your opponents.
If they only research Advanced Military 4 (or other Sensor tech), for the Ship Training and to stop the Stealth Armor - then YES.

[Phoenix-D]

If on the other hand they do like me: Advanced Military 6, Sats 3 then sensor sats in every system..cloak is pretty much worthless.

EDIT: also, mines make cloaking difficult, since cloaked sweepers can't sweep! Basiclly if your opponent isn't using mines or doesn't have sensors, cloaking is useful. If he is, its not.

[ May 28, 2003, 00:31: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

[oleg]

You can get Stealth Armor VERY fast. Importantly, it is just a byproduct of usefull ship improvement. Unless your oppenent is Temporal/Psychic, he would had to invest much more research points into otherwise (kind of) useless research projects.

But after that... high level cloacking is indeed very expensive.

[Fyron]

Actually, Advanced Military Science is a very, very useful technology. Training your ships is vital. AMS is also very cheap. Researching it past 3 to level 6 to get Hyper Optics 3 is not very expensive at all.

Cloaking devices are almost never worth the investment.

[Karibu]

I have been wondering following thing: Mines claim to stop level 5 active, passive, gravitic, temporal (was there one more?) scan. Is there any way to find out where the enemy minefield is besid ramming it (in PBW where intelligence is disabled)? I think not, but if someone knows a way, let me know...

[Suicide Junkie]

Even with intel enabled, I don't think there is any real way to do it. Perhaps spying on ship/unit locations, but you'd have to get lucky and have the minefield picked randomly for the intel hit.

Just fly around some scout escorts ahead of your fleets, and carry some minesweepers with you.

[PvK]

The other thing that makes cloaking more useless than necessary in the unmodded game is that once researched, high-level detection equipment doesn't even cost any more than low-level equipment, and has no maintenance costs. So making the higher-level detectors cost a lot more and not be placable on no-maintenance units would make it more likely that there would be some places for cloaking devices to be better than stealth armor.

PvK

[tesco samoa]

i cannot remember will this work as a cloak...

Name := Passive EM Cloaking Device I
Description := Field generated around a starship which passes all energy around the ship. This field has the effect of rendering the ship invisible.
Pic Num := 237
Tonnage Space Taken := 40
Tonnage Structure := 40
Cost Minerals := 500
Cost Organics := 0
Cost Radioactives := 1000
Vehicle Type := Ship\Base\Sat\Drone
Supply Amount Used := 100
Restrictions := None
General Group := Cloaking
Family := 600
Roman Numeral := 1
Custom Group := 0
Number of Tech Req := 1
Tech Area Req 1 := Cloaking
Tech Level Req 1 := 1
Number of Abilities := 1
Ability 1 Type := Cloak Level
Ability 1 Descr := Prevents level 1 Passive EM scans.
Ability 1 Val 1 := EM Passive
Ability 1 Val 2 := 2
Weapon Type := None

or do you have to include all the other cloak abilities...

[Karibu]

Only cloack I ever use is Stealth armor and that is only because of its ECM bonus. Well, not only, because it grants invicibility if enemy does not have experience enought to have scanners of any kind. I agree that cloacking device is worthless, because all scanners are so cheap to get.

I have never been able to find out any minefield beside ramming/sweeping them. At the moment it is balanced, because you can sweep them easily after you find them, but you must have sweeper with you all the time.

There should be some alternative to it. One scanner to counter one kind of cloacking. For example: inertial nullifier would counter gravitic scanner, Electromagnetic circulator (would turn any EM signals toward ships instead of sending them away) to counter Hyper Optics, etc.

In practice, you would have to had all kind of scanners to counter all kind of cloacking. Well, Ihaven't thought this through to the end yet, but you get the idea. Also, cloacking should include some percentage to be ineffective against a scanner of certain level (MOO3).