Satellite Cloaking

Grandpa Kim · #1 March 15th, 2003, 08:16 AM

A long time bug has been preventing satellites with stealth armor from cloaking. They simply cloak whether you want them to or not.

Well I just played a turn (v. 1.84) where the satellites did not cloak! I had a sat field set up with some stealth armored sats, intending to bring in a ship or 30 on the next turn. The bad guys beat me to it, but my sats smoked 'em anyway. I looked all through the system and found no enemy ship with the proper sensor to see the sats. Of course its barely possible he has a sensor on a ship that is cloaked to me, but that just doesn't jive with the ships I've been seeing.

This could be a one time blip so if anyone can confirm that this bug has been fixed, I'd appreciate it. (Note: I have not seen this mentioned in the histories; perhaps I missed it?)

Kim

Ruatha · #2 March 15th, 2003, 08:36 AM

Oops.
I didn'y know of this bug.
I've been using cloaked sats in 1.78 and uncloaked them when needed. It seemed to work fine.

Fyron · #3 March 15th, 2003, 10:56 AM

Umm... I have never encountered a problem using cloaking satellites.

geoschmo · #4 March 15th, 2003, 03:05 PM

Ruatha you are mistaken. If you try it you will find that satelites with cloaking, either stealth armor or cloaking devices, will be cloaked immedietly upon launch, and cannot be decloaked. This is a persistant bug. Has been around for a long time. (EDIT: However, you may simply have never noticed before because the sats don't get a dotted line "I'm cloaked" symbol. They look to you like they are not cloaked, but enemy ships cannot see them.)

Also, because of the way unit stacks share abilities, having a single cloaked satellite in a stack will cloak the entire bunch. This is why normally you can't use cloaking sats as warp point defense. The enemy ships will pass right over them without engaging unless they have sensors capable of seeing the sats.

Grandpa, the bug has not been corrected. It's still there with 1.84. It could be a fluke, except that there are no flukes.

He either has a cloaked ship able to see your sats somewhere in the system (Remember, it might not be him, it could be someone he has a partnership with), or there was something in that sector he could see that initiated the combat.

Geoschmo

[ March 15, 2003, 13:07: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Ruatha · #5 March 15th, 2003, 08:56 PM

Ok. That's even better.
Than I can launch my sats from a cloaked ship and they will be cloaked when they are deployed. So the enemy will never know that my spy sat is there.

I've always gone in openly trying to hide my deployed sat by making them think that it's only a ship passing by until I can cloak them. I make sure they've seen the ship a couple of turns before I launch. Now I can keep em cloaked!

PvK · #6 March 15th, 2003, 09:39 PM

I'd forgotten about this one, too. I was fooled by the fact that you can order satellite Groups to cloak and uncloak, and there is a symbol for the group.

PvK

geoschmo · #7 March 15th, 2003, 09:55 PM

Hehe, I've been aware of the bug for so long that I had forgotten you even could give the sat group the cloak and decloak order. Although it doesn't do anything. That really makes it look like they can be uncloaked if you aren't aware of the bug. I believe fighters have the same problem, although in the stock game there is no component to cloak a fighter with. Some mods do though.

Geoschmo

Gryphin · #8 March 15th, 2003, 10:03 PM

When there is one present,
The best place to "cloak" a sat is in a storm that is opaque to most scanners.
Gotta love those FQMs

solops · #9 March 30th, 2004, 03:45 PM

Has anyone written a comprehensive summary on cloaking? Something that answers questions concerning if/when combat occurs, what and when ships can be seen, energy effects, combat effects, detection (if, when and ranges), ad nauseum....

A forum search turned up dozens of snippets, but no single story on the subject.

Arkcon · #10 March 30th, 2004, 04:09 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by solops:
Has anyone written a comprehensive summary on cloaking? Something that answers questions concerning if/when combat occurs, what and when ships can be seen, energy effects, combat effects, detection (if, when and ranges), ad nauseum....

A forum search turned up dozens of snippets, but no single story on the subject.

It's kinda hard to write it down all in one place, but a start can be seen here: {Wiki:}

Explanations tend to go like this: A level 1 tachyon sensor penetrates a cloak level of 2 which is generated by a cloaking device level 1 but only for a cloak type of EM Active ...

Bah, if ships appear out of nowhere, research better sensors.