Cloaking

General


Fighters

Cloaked Fighters are great for scouting out an area infested with enemy units (ie spying). They can sustain their cloak field only while they have fuel above 10% (the fuelbar goes red at 35%). Make sure you keep an eye on their fuel level. Setting them to 'Evasive' will cause them to use fuel faster. While they sit in space they will use up no fuel unless they are cloaked. It is common practise for Cloaked Fighters to take out any enemy ProxSensors to retain the effectiveness of cloaking. This cuts both ways; when you see your ProxSensors popping and Fleet Command says, "Cloaked ships detected", you know what's coming. If your CF's are finding it difficult to spot enemy ProxSensors, press Caps Lock (Tactical Overlay) and every visible unit will be bordered with green for friendly, yellow for ally and red for enemy.

Salvage Corvettes

When going to capture a particularly vicious opponent (or during a network game) it is worth sending a Hunting Party instead of lone SC's. A HP consists of a Cloak Generator (at the center) surrounded by SC's and a Proximity Sensor. To create this formation, select a load of SC's and one CG, then choose Sphere Formation. Once they're in position, you can add other ships such as ProxSensors. If the party has to remain cloaked indefinately, take along two extra Cloak Genorators so that while one is active, the others can be recharging while still being invisible, due to the active cloak sail. The ProxSensor is essential since your adversary is likely to have cloaking ability if you do. There is little more annoying than sending out your CG and SC's, telling them to rescue a ship, and then find them floundering around in space because their target has vanished. There is little more surprising than finding that some invisible SC's are capturing your invisible ships! Note: once a cloaked SC takes its position on its target, it becomes visible (otherwise it would be stupidly easy!) Once a pair of SC's has taken hold of a Cloak Generator, its cloak sail deactivates. When one CG gets low (watch out for this!) it is time to deactivate it and activate another CG. I tried to activate the second one first so that all the ships were under two cloak fields, then deactivate the first CG. But it works no better than selecting both CG's and pressing 'Z'. There will be half a second when all the ships are visible before the second CG's field activates.

Support Frigates

If your Cloaked Fighters are getting low on fuel, send a Support Frigate toward them, replete with an escort (use Sphere Formation) of CG's. Chuck in a ProxSensor for good measure (they're only 50RU's). Make sure you set the group to Evasive tactics or the SF will start shooting and give the game away. Cloaked CF's can still dock with a cloaked SF no problem. They'll take longer to refuel, though, since they will keep using up fuel to cloak. Since the SF is already in a cloak field, you might as well decloak the CF's until they have all refuelled and are ready to leave the cloak field. Alternatively, you can activate the SF's special over the cloud of CF's (select the SF (but only the SF and not its group of CG's!) and, while holding down 'Z', drag a selection box over the ships to service) as long as they aren't flitting around. Otherwise the SF will just try to chase them and never get anything useful done.

Offensive Capital Ships

All ships under normal operation can be cloaked by Cloak Generators except for enemy ships, Carriers and the Mothership. For best results, position the CG's behind the Cap Ship, select the CG's and the Cap Ship and tell them to assume Delta formation. If they do it wrong and put a CG at the point of the Delta, select that unit and tell it to move to the back. It's left wingman will take point. Tell the rogue to reform Delta with the group. Repeat as necessary. Delta is good because once the Cap Ship moves into enemy territory, you don't want CG's between an ion beam and an enemy!

Most Cap Ships have several weapons and so are firing almost constantly when attacking (whereas Strike Craft burst fire). So enveloping a Cap Ship with a Cloak Field during a battle will do little but waste cloak energy. Cloaking offensive Cap Ships is only feasible while getting the craft to its destination. After that, they might as well group around whichever CG has most energy left and scoot away out of danger. Alternatively, have a few SF's follow the offensive Cap Ship (do this by selecting the SF's and activating their special on the Cap Ship) with one CG 'guarding' each SF. Then you can have the SF's invisibly repairing the Cap Ship while it does its worst and suffers nothing for it <grin>.

Defending the Mothership

It is not necessary in the singleplayer game, but during multiplayer games it is a good idea to position ProxSensors around the Mothership to warn of incoming cloaked ships. The most useful position around the Kushan MS is to have one almost touching the top tip of the banana and one just below the bottom tip of the banana. This ensures that the whole of the MS is being watched and ProxSensors are pretty hard to spot there. On the Taiidan MS they can be put just to the right and just to the left of the slab. If you can manage it, put the right-hand one just inside the last gunarm to give it some protection. Check how much space is being scanned by using the Tactical Overlay (Caps Lock). While in the Sensors Manager, red circles will radiate from any ProxSensor that has enemy units within its field of scannage.