How do you use Chamaleons?

[fiorenzospa]

I found unuseful their ability to hide while not moving... actually when their are close to a target they fire automatically and reveal themselves and it is impossible to make them invisible again.
Any good tips?
Thanks!

[TechSY730]

You can put them into low power mode, and that will stop them from firing but still allow them to hide themselves. But yea, its more of a gimmick ability than something that is useful.

However, they do make a great "alternative bomber", thanks to their attack bonus to structural and (I think) ultra heavy armor, so that is one good use for them. Also, they don't have polycrystal armor (they have neutron I think), and as most bombers have polycrystal armor, most counter-bomber units have bonuses to polycrystal armor. Chameleons will laugh at that bonus and just keep on moving while the actual bomber ships may start dieing off quickly.
Of course, the AI rarely specializes in a counter to a specific class of units, and instead of just uses all of the unit types they have in a mix for defense. Thus, it is rare that you will need to get past a "counter bomber" nest, as the AI rarely makes them.

[BobTheJanitor]

Low-powering them should make them stop firing. That said, I don't know how instant their cloaking is. In my playing about with cloaked units, it seems like things will still keep after them and keep firing for 5-10 seconds after they have the blue cloaking circle up, so I don't know how useful these would be. Ideally, if you could low power them and dead stop them so they just instantly vanish, they could be pretty powerful. I have no idea if they work this way though.

Edit: Ninjas. They're everywhere.

[superking]

be cool if somthing else was retasked as the fighter/bomber and chamaleons could be somthing interesting and ambushy

[Red Spot]

be cool if somthing else was retasked as the fighter/bomber and chamaleons could be somthing interesting and ambushy

Load them powered down in a transport, get them to an AI-planet, see how they all pop out of the transport when it gets killed while staying unharmed ... pretty much all potential there to be ambushy.

I havent yet gotten a chance to properly use them but they sound a lot like that cloaked unit with the description of "weak vs fleet, strong vs bigger", comes in a cap double that of regular fleetship.
It sucks so big as a regular unit (except perhaps for their speed and ability to work disruptive), however it is so nice to just have them waiting (low power) on an AI-planet where you absolutelly do not want a wave to originate from (and no desire to unlock counter-wave CCs), just so they can start attacking as soon as you get a message 'warp-guardian spawned on x'

[Sunshine!]

Chameleons are amazing.  Even ambushy.  I've covered this all before.

First, chameleons have 1.5x the DPS of fighters against non-bonus ships, have almost twice the range of bombers (7000 range is amazing on these things), and their DPS is frontloaded.  Second, they're fast enough to get into position for an ambush.  Third, they're tough and have close-combat armor type, so almost none of the things you'd be wanting to ambush will have any bonuses against them.

So how do you ambush with them, you ask?  First, you need to be having a problem with a specific enemy ship that's difficult for your forces to otherwise get to because they are either long range or lag behind the enemy forces because they're slow.  These are usually something like Bombards, Sentinels, Electric Bombers (note that Chameleons have bonus against Neutron, so they're AMAZING against Electric Bombers).

Second, you grab your chameleons (using just your cap of mk1 chameleons should work in most cases, leaving your mk2 to help with frontal defense), and tell them to sit on the wormhole in low-power mode.  When the enemy wave (or CPA or whatever) comes through the wormhole, wait for the stragglers (missile frigates, bombards, electric bombers, blade spawners) to separate from the main attack force, then power up your chameleons and watch as they trash the bombards/sentinels/whatever else is back there.

On offense, if you're making a raid into an enemy system, the high range on the chameleons will allow them to keep faster enemy ships (fighters, etc.) away from your fighter/bomber blob before the enemy fighters can start nuking your bombers.

In short, I will vehemently oppose any attempt to repurpose chameleons.  If you want another more ambushy ship, fine, it'll probably be okay to have two ships with chameleon cloaking abilities since there's also two ships with ignore-FF, two snipers, etc. 

But, don't change Chameleons.