Cloaker starships, cloaking boosters, and scouts

[Lancefighter]

So in my current game, I've taken to using cloaker starships as a good way to get things around. They seem fairly useful, except that any cloaked tachyon emitter will make your entire group of them useless... and with their low health they dont seem to last at all.

Now usually I suppose, you arent taking cloaker starships through too many gates.. But then, how would you get anywhere?
after a while it seems every wormhole has at least one tachyon thing at it.. and most of them have both cloaked and uncloaked ones it seems.

This isnt an issue for scouts, of course, because they cloaking boost each other.. *idea!* ill stack scouts with cloaking starships, so the scouts will cloaking boost the starships. sure, ill lose a scout or two or 5 on each run through, but I've got enough..

Alas, this doesnt seem to work. Instead, the starship boosts the scouts! This was rather unintended of my grand scheme..

My next idea.. Surely, if I cant use scouts to cloaking boost them, perhaps another starship will do! I stack three mk2 of them together.. and well, they still seem rather pointless. They did not assist each other in any way, besides extended the area of effect.

So I ask; Was this really intended? Were cloaker starships meant to only be low-class ferries of some sort? as it seems, they arent exactly useful.. unless youve already dealt with the wormhole guards.. wait, then why are we cloak-and-daggering our way through the system?!


Thereby I also extend the question; What are they useful for, if not prolonged knowledge raiding in hostile space? Alas, even that can be troublesome.. having to clear the wormhole guards for both the in and the out passage..
They are somewhat useful for keeping support ships out of the line of fire..

[Aegis]

I only used cloaker ships one time. I sent in the cloaker ship, then sent in a sci lab and moved it to the cloaker, out of the way of everything. when I finished mopping up with my military units and captured the planet, I let them hide off by themselves, which came in handy during a warp raid. Cloaker ships are like cardboard boxes. Dont move in them, just hide under them

[MaxAstro]

I've gotten some definite use out of Cloaker starships.  I find the best thing to do is send in a scout or a low-power Space Plane or something like that first to test for tachyons before you devote yourself to any kind of cloak and dagger affair.  That said, if you are lucky enough to find a planet not fully tachyon guarded there are some decent benefits.  The obvious one is you can sneak some labs into the planet for knowledge raiding.  Also, if the planet is in a good location and you know you can defend against the forces there (but would have trouble beating them on their terms) you can use a cloaker to sneak some low power frigates or bombers into the system at which point you can easily take out the command center with minimal losses.  Resistance frigates, if you are lucky to have them, are especially effective; all forty will fit under a tech III cloaker's range easily, and there aren't many things they can't safely eliminate in one salvo, at which point you put them back into low power mode and sneak them out with hopefully minimal losses.

I actually find the biggest drawback of Cloaker ships is the lack of formation movement mode, which makes it hard to keep fleets near the starship's cloaking capacity all underneath its range, especially when moving.

It's also possible to create opportunities for Cloakers, though, with a little work; if you time it carefully, you just need a strike to take out the tachyons around the wormhole for a minute or so to get cloaked forces safely into the system where they won't be found.  Raid starships work great for this and will often survive doing it, although you'll need to bring along something with tachyons if there are stealth emitters.

Now the disclaimer for all of this is that the game I'm in currently (where I'm doing most of this) is AI6, so no promise this will work on higher AI levels.

[Lancefighter]

raid starships dont have tachyons :\ id have to bring either a cloaker starship with its tachyons.. or.. is there anything else that tachyons without supply? Decloakers dont 

[MaxAstro]

I haven't experimented much with doing really deep cloak raids; usually whatever I need to take out is adjacent to a planet I own.

If you are lucky, patient, and willing to devote the research the absolute best thing to send with your Raid starships would be the Mark IV Scout (that thing really needs to be a named unit, like a hero unit in another RTS...  XD ).

[Lancefighter]

well yousee, thats part of the problem. In the game the OP is referring to, I havent a mk4 factory yet - Both of them are behind mk3/4 worlds that I would rather circumvent, but the only option is to go through.


However, this thread has led me to remember scout starships + raid starships... Those would in theory be able to engage tachyons fairly well.. But still, having to soften up defenses just to get cloakers through? :\ I had imaged some sort of boosting I could do with multiple of them or similar.

[Ruges]

I have a question about Cloaker starships. I built a coule and placed them with my warfleet. They do a little damage and have a decent amout of HP. But I had a few plans for them.  they where supposed to shoot at stuff in range, they where supposed to spot stuff that was cloaked, they where supposed to absorb a little bit of damage that would have otherwise been shot at a lesser ship, they where supposed to cloak support ships (speed boosters, tugs, repair platforms).

However I am not positive, but when ships around it are cloaked becouse of them, does this cause them not to shoot? or if they do shoot they shoot at a lower range/damage? Becouse it seemed like once I put the cloakers with my fleet they where taking way higher causualties. and doing less damage.

[Lancefighter]

Cloaking starships shouldnt reduce your fleets combat effectiveness, that must have been something else.

When a ship is cloaked, it will merely uncloak to shoot.

[x4000]

Cloaking starships shouldnt reduce your fleets combat effectiveness, that must have been something else.

When a ship is cloaked, it will merely uncloak to shoot.

Yep.  Most likely you ran into an interplanetary munitions booster or something like that.

[Kordy]

Cloaking units don't get fleet bonuses from starships, either, that might be the reason of your lower dps if you're using flagships and whatnot.

[Lancefighter]

not entirely true - cloaked units dont get a bonus from starships, yes.

However.. as soon as they are uncloaked, the bonuses are applied (i believe for the first shot, I'm not entirely sure)

Also keep in mind, cloaked starships can give out bonuses... Might not be intended, but its possible to munitions boost snipers or the like with cloaked starships.. then turn off the snipers when the enemies get too close.. or perhaps load them into a transport or three.

Hrm.. ideas...

[Goekhan]

raid starships dont have tachyons :\ id have to bring either a cloaker starship with its tachyons.. or.. is there anything else that tachyons without supply? Decloakers dont 

scout starships?

[Lancefighter]

yeah.. i meant scouts >.> cloaker starships dont tachyon...

I still think tachyon resistance of some sort is a cool concept, or perhaps let cloaking boosting starships cloaking boost each other, so that for each cloaking booster applied, one tachyon beam is resisted.
(meaning a pair of scouts ignores one tachyon beam,
a trio of mk2 scouts ignores 2 tachy beams
a quad of mk3 scouts ignores 3 tachy beams..)