Cloaking is a defensive system.
Overview[]
- During an active cloak:
- Evasion of the ship is increased by 60%. Destroyed Piloting or Engines systems don't affect this increase. The total evasion - due to functioning Piloting, Engines - can reach or exceed 100%.
- Weapons and artillery systems stop charging and cannot target a cloaked ship (unless a friendly or mind-controlled enemy crew is onboard). Targeting with weapons in advance can help circumvent this limitation (setting a beam trajectory prior to the cloak will make the beam weapon fire if the weapons charge time is <=20 seconds, e.g. Glaive Beam with fully trained crew, Artillery Beam at system level 4).
- Friendly crew cannot be teleported to or from an enemy ship.
- Hacking and Boarding drones hold their position in space. They will continue their move when the cloak is over.
- External combat drones move around the ship, attempting to attack but don't actually fire.
- When an enemy ship is cloaked, you lose vision of its interior unless you have friendly or mind-controlled enemy crew onboard (upgraded Sensors, Slug telepathy, Lifeform Scanner augmentation, and Hacking don't provide any vision functionality in this case). Hence, without vision, you cannot use mind control; however, this does not apply to enemies, who can use mind-control against your ship even while you are cloaked (because they don't need vision).
- Each system level of Cloaking provides 5 seconds of cloak time, up to a maximum of 15 seconds at level 3.
- When the cloak ends, the system takes 4 ion damage, so it cannot be used again for 20 seconds.
- Firing weapons disrupts cloak, except for beam weapons and artillery systems (both player's and the enemy's). Each non-beam weapon (and non-player artillery systems) fired during cloaking reduces the cloak time by 20% of the full amount. For example, firing a 5-shot Burst Lasers III will remove 2 seconds from a 10-second cloak (the de-cloaking effect is applied immediately upon firing the first projectile).
- However, Ion Charger and Charger Laser I will remove 20% of the cloak time with each shot. Laser Charger II reduces the cloak time only by 20% irregardless of the number of shots (the de-cloaking effect takes places after the final shot of the volley, e.g. after the 4th shot).
- Stealth Weapons augmentation removes this penalty.
- Cloaking duration can be increased or decreased by adding or removing Zoltan power to the system. (the maximum cloak duration cannot exceed the maximum system level duration, but the minimum duration can be as short as a fraction of a second)
- Can be used as a blue option in some events.
Tactical uses[]
Cloaking is mainly useful to dodge enemy weapons after they fire. If your "base" evasion from engines and crew skill is 40% or higher, then evasion during cloak will be at least 100%, guaranteeing that every shot misses. Note that beams cannot be evaded; once a beam has started to fire, it will continue firing even if you cloak.
While level 1 cloaking is sufficient to dodge a volley of enemy weapons, higher levels delay enemy weapons even more. This can give you "free time" to charge your weapons. It can also buy time to escape a bad fight.
Unlike weapons, environmental hazards are not delayed by cloaking; they operate on an independent timer. Anti-ship Batteries and the Rebel Flagship's power surges are environmental hazards. Using a longer cloak may mean it's not ready for the next ASB or power surge. You may want to use a level 1 cloak, or fire weapons to shorten your cloak time once the hazard has passed.
At the start of a fight, enemies will use their cloak immediately. They will randomly decide whether to fire weapons freely while cloaked, or hold fire until cloaking ends; this choice is then fixed for the rest of the fight. [1] However, if the enemy swaps weapons when its Weapon Control is damaged, - either to shoot an almost charged weapon or when it powers up another weapon if a high power weapon goes offline during a hacking pulse, - then the shooting pattern during cloaking is changed. On a side note, enemies are actively swapping weapons to power up as many weapons as the Weapon Control allows when they are running away.
System Upgrades[]
| Level | Cost | Cloaking duration |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 150  |
5 sec |
| 2 | 30 |
10 sec |
| 3 | 50 |
15 sec |