Knowledge Raids

[JgzMan]

Knowledge raids have become much more fun since I researched my first Cloaker Starship.

I'm a big Starship person, at least for my fleets. For raids, I mostly like using Raptors, and I'm eyeballing the raid-fighters.

But I'm really enjoying sending a wave of 20x(fighter,bomber,cruiser) through a wormhole, followed by a Cloaker Starship, followed by a science lab. I've also used a similar method to sneak colony ships through defenses, although I lost the starship distracting the defenses at the second wormhole. (not enough spare ships after the first one. Bigger waves, next time)

I doubt that I'm the first to do this, but I was enjoying it so much that I had to mention it.

[Fleet]

Does the cloaker starship cloak units that are firing?

[JgzMan]

No, it does not. The starship also de-cloaks if it fires.

This technique requires a bit of micro-management, but I have refined it a bit.

1) Starship, powered off, through the gate. Assuming that it is not decloaked and attacked, move it out of firing range of any ships but near the wormhole, and power it back up.
2) Small swarm of ships through the wormhole. Assure that you saturate the tractor beam defenses, so things that are immu8ne to tractor beams are not good here. I like bombers, as they do lots of damage to the defenses.
3)Science Lab through the wormhole. Send it directly to the Starship, and ensure that they are grouped under a number, set to move as a group, and then move them away from combat. If you drag a box around them, you will only select the Starship, and it will move away from the Lab.

Now, I'm only playing against two #6, Turtle and Tank, and my Progress hasn't broken 100 yet, so I doubt this will work forever, but so far it works well.

[quickstix]

In the latest pre-release and hence, upcoming official release, cloaker starships no longer have any weapons, as it was pretty useless and required too much micro. The latest pre-release is considered stable (as Chris is working on the new game) so give it a try. The next official release should be fairly soon, as it is mostly bugfixes and changes.