Cloacker Starship - any good use?

[fiorenzospa]

I tried to cloak 100 bomber, I put them in offline mode, sneak in, put online and destroy a post. It worked, but after they fire , when I want to reclock them putting offline it seems there are few seconds they stay visible (as it should be actually) so they get totally destroyed.
So I don't see any good use of Cloacker except for missile that should reach a far target.
Do you know any other clever use of them?
Thanks

[Red Spot]

Put the bombers in transports, the transports stay cloaked all the time as they do not fire.
Once the bombers are in the transports they are in effect cloaked the second they enter the transport.

Or you could just use mk1 bombers in an amount no greater than needed .. and let them die once done.

[BobTheJanitor]

Huh, I had no idea you could abuse that with transports. That's a great tip.

[zebramatt]

Primarily I use Cloakers for insertion only; or to escort my science team around the galaxy.

[Sunshine!]

You can apparently also abuse Enclave Starships, and possibly still Riot Starships with cloakers.  

Something I just thought of, pairing cloaking starships with Spire Gravity Drains.  Keep the Gravity Drains in low power, and you've got a set of (cheaper) Grav Turrets that won't be killed unless the enemy has Sentinels or Tachyon Fighters and get lucky to get those close enough to your Grav Drain.

Need to take out a fortress/forcefield in a hurry?  Make a couple runs on it with a couple Cloaker starships and a pile of Spire Minirams.

Can you cloak Spirecraft?  So long as tractoring something doesn't uncloak the ship, that's an easy way to abuse the tractors on Spirecraft Martyrs to keep enemy attack forces from going anywhere.

[fiorenzospa]

Great tips! I love the Martyr one! Actually you can tractor fleet inside your defence in order to keep low AI reinforcement!
I will try immediately this, I think should be addressed if it works too well 

[Red Spot]

Can you cloak Spirecraft?  So long as tractoring something doesn't uncloak the ship, that's an easy way to abuse the tractors on Spirecraft Martyrs to keep enemy attack forces from going anywhere.

That is disabled, units that are cloaked to not tractor units, and units that have an other in traction(?) dont cloak.

[Irxallis]

I use cloaker starships a lot especially combined with engineers and MRS.

For example, take down a tachyon guardian, enter the cloaker starship with a MRS, position them in such a way that cloaker cannot take the wormhole in range (not to cloak an army over a MRS) and move in. MRS repair range is larger than cloaker starship's cloak range, so I have a repair 'base' on enemy planet I can fall back to easily. With proper maneuvering and positioning an army becomes very hard to kill.

After you down some tachyon guardians cloakers work very well combined with Raid Starships in low power mode. You lose some speed, but you gain safe passage through some... evil stuff (say, Gravity Guardians). Or Golems - I moved an Artillery Golem in low power mode and with decent positioning I was able to snipe all the guard posts without being massacred (MRS + golem + cloaker = win) even if the system was way above my offensive power.

Ah, and there is NOTHING like knowledge raid using cloaker starships. You position an army at point A (with all the gravity turrets, tractors and stuff, a force field and 5-6 engineers at B and position a cloaker starship at B as well). Even if enemy ships move past your army your engineers are immortal (especially if you support them with invisible MRS).

Of course, transports + cloakers = simple deep strikes of whole army if tachyon guardians are down. That makes it really worth it to use Penetrators (or Raid Starships - depends on the difficulty and resources available) to down tachyon guardians simply to enable the 'invisible highway'.

...and I will try the suggested Neinzul Enclave + cloakers as well. Especially as I chose the Neinzul Weasel as my bonus ship, so I can use the 'Neinzul Machinegun' as a screen for the 'proper' army. I wonder how will this work.

[Nice Save]

Only thing I really use them for is cloaking Shards.

[Shrugging Khan]

Unless you already have stealth battleships - in which case they lose a little, but by far not all, of their appeal - they actually make for excellent guard-post-assassination-getaway-facilitators. If you get what I mean.

[chemical_art]

Oh, where to begin...This unit is by far my favorite because it opens so many doors


1. Assuming you clear out tach guardians ahead of time. and the AI has no fleet units that decloack, you can use these to transport any fragile unit in AI territory, including for deepstrikes. Engineers, research labs, transports...

2. Have a near melee unit(s) that always dies by enemy fleets before getting in range? Group move em with a starship, and they'll get in range. Lightning warheads are worth the micro.

3. They can be used on defense to prevent the AI from shooting fragile / expensive unit. Research labs, civilian spire posts (just thought of this, I'll check if I can do this later), the occasional nuke just laying around...

4. After you finish building it, you can cloak MK III stations so they can research in peace.

5. Cloak shards.

6. These things should just marry your warheads. From the moment they are built, till the moment they are detonated, they should be buddied up with cloaking.


This is such a fun unit because there always are new uses I put it toward.


EDIT: Also, you can't beat the price.

[Red Spot]

I just love hidding some EMP-warheads under them when facing a difficult counter-attack.
Let the AI group up around the CCs FF, when they are all there .. boom .. and bring in the fleet.
(If you detonate it when they arrive on planet it might take your fleet the bigger part of 30sec to get there.)

And if the mk1s fail, there is still room for an mk2 EMP-warhead underneath the cloakers cover

[superking]

I use them to facilitate endless assaults with zenith & spire starships; a cloaking starship & 5 engineers follow behind the starship posse and park out of the way on each system under attack. when the zenith & spire clean up or need repairs, they fly over for instant full 14 million HP and resume.

[Shrugging Khan]

They also provide sniper flares, which isn't too shabby if you're up against an AI that uses them, and you have fragile units 

[fiorenzospa]

Oh, where to begin...This unit is by far my favorite because it opens so many doors


1. Assuming you clear out tach guardians ahead of time. and the AI has no fleet units that decloack, you can use these to transport any fragile unit in AI territory, including for deepstrikes. Engineers, research labs, transports...

2. Have a near melee unit(s) that always dies by enemy fleets before getting in range? Group move em with a starship, and they'll get in range. Lightning warheads are worth the micro.

3. They can be used on defense to prevent the AI from shooting fragile / expensive unit. Research labs, civilian spire posts (just thought of this, I'll check if I can do this later), the occasional nuke just laying around...

4. After you finish building it, you can cloak MK III stations so they can research in peace.

5. Cloak shards.

6. These things should just marry your warheads. From the moment they are built, till the moment they are detonated, they should be buddied up with cloaking.


This is such a fun unit because there always are new uses I put it toward.


EDIT: Also, you can't beat the price.

Good tips chemical

Just one questions. I noted that you cannot cloack engineers while they are repairing units or building them... so there is no reason to keep them around with Cloacker starship?
Another thing about missiles. I agree they should stay cloacked and quiet but if I put military FRD in galaxy settings, there is no way to change missiles FRD status and they are always moving towards the enemy. Did I miss somethng?