Cloak

[Emden]

So, what is your thoughts on cloak?

[Locklave]

Another stupid addition like spies. It sounds great, it's a great idea, but with brain dead implementation.

The stupid system they use deciding which random techs you get might make it useless for the first 50 years of the game when you would need it. It's great taking bonuses for it with your government and the stupid tech tree just decides no for decades.

[Elitewrecker PT]

That's where using scientists with the correct specialisation comes into play .

[Buzzard]

Cloak is fairly interesting. With a little work, science boats can get into places they normally couldn't, and survey, or spy shamelessly. The Active Recon feature is nice, if you've got a high cloak value, and the target doesn't have enough detectors up to catch you snooping.

[frowningmirror]

I was able to get it early using Fear the Dark origin, they just straight up gave it to me in the quest line, no using leaders to get the tech card. Lucky. I thought it was pretty fun when I had it, I'm a pretty casual player and was cloaking in people's capitals before stealing their relics with barbaric despoilers. However, I feel few are going to enjoy this tech.

1. Cloaking is actually several rare technologies, the first just gets you survey ships that can help with spying and surveying stuff you're blocking off from. It takes a long time to get ships that can do stuff

2. Its got a tier 2 perk that really shouldn't be that helps with cloaking and prevents people stealing from you. Tier 2 perks are usually the utopia ascension perks. I wish it would enhance your chance of grabbing the technology or something, but no.

3. Cloaking is a hassle; you can't go invisible if one person on your fleet can't go invisible. You have to design your ships. This is never the case because....

4. Cloaking takes a lot of power, if you don't have an anti-matter generator you can forget about putting shields good weapons ect on it, although you might not even bother with shields because....

5. Unless you are psi ascended with psionic technology, shields don't work with cloaking

[Cinnamoon_dragon]

I haven't tested this for long enough, but from what I've seen this technology seems to be useless in the late game? You cannot install stealth generators on high tier ships, this component is only available for small ships. If your fleet contains ships without a cloaking component, the entire fleet will not be able to turn on camouflage. My ships automatically became visible when approaching the capital of the opponent's empire.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Originally posted by Static-ghost:

I haven't tested this for long enough, but from what I've seen this technology seems to be useless in the late game? You cannot install stealth generators on high tier ships, this component is only available for small ships. If your fleet contains ships without a cloaking component, the entire fleet will not be able to turn on camouflage. My ships automatically became visible when approaching the capital of the opponent's empire.

You can cloak BBs and titans iirc from the cloaking blog.
This could cause an interesting situation where you have an uncloaked BB fleet escorted by a (more easily) cloaked corvette fleet as bait.

If your fleet was uncloaked its because you got in range of higher detection.

[Cinnamoon_dragon]

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

You can cloak BBs and titans

This is probably a bug then, because the component even did not appear in the list when the corresponding ship was selected.

[Half Phased]

Originally posted by Static-ghost:

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

You can cloak BBs and titans

This is probably a bug then, because the component even did not appear in the list when the corresponding ship was selected.

Higher tier cloaking generators can cloak larger ships. The 3 tiers you can research can cloak corvettes, destroyers and cruisers respectively.

Battleships require dark mark cloaking generators, which are FE exclusive and have to be taken from them.

There’s also a psionic cloak, that can cloak everything (and is the best in the game).

[Cinnamoon_dragon]

Originally posted by Half Phased:

Higher tier cloaking generators can cloak larger ships. The 3 tiers you can research can cloak corvettes, destroyers and cruisers respectively.

Battleships require dark mark cloaking generators, which are FE exclusive and have to be taken from them.

There’s also a psionic cloak, that can cloak everything (and is the best in the game).

Taken from Fallen Empires? Yes, it sounds like too much work if the enemy can still detect your fleets. You can only benefit from stealth in the early game, before the enemy builds a bunch of sensors at each base. Later when you try to enter someone's territory - poof - and you're instantly naked

[alangriffith]

Originally posted by frowningmirror:

I was able to get it early using Fear the Dark origin, they just straight up gave it to me in the quest line, no using leaders to get the tech card. Lucky. I thought it was pretty fun when I had it, I'm a pretty casual player and was cloaking in people's capitals before stealing their relics with barbaric despoilers. However, I feel few are going to enjoy this tech.

1. Cloaking is actually several rare technologies, the first just gets you survey ships that can help with spying and surveying stuff you're blocking off from. It takes a long time to get ships that can do stuff

This isn't quite correct - the survey detection tech is not required to be 'first', I had both it and the basic cloaking tech come up in the same list of research alternatives, I picked basic cloaking, built some cloaked ships and didn't get the survey detection tech for some time. I think one of the dev diaries said that once you have a cloaked tech it makes the others more common? (plus I had the ascension perk that makes rare tech spawn more likely).

3. Cloaking is a hassle; you can't go invisible if one person on your fleet can't go invisible. You have to design your ships. This is never the case because....

4. Cloaking takes a lot of power, if you don't have an anti-matter generator you can forget about putting shields good weapons ect on it, although you might not even bother with shields because....

5. Unless you are psi ascended with psionic technology, shields don't work with cloaking

3, 4 and 5 answer themselves, design cloakable small ships with no shield modules and more armour/crystal plate. Build stealth fleets out of just those ships, and build main fleets out of your normal designs with shields and no cloak.

What with this and archeotech, the patch is very much about building more types of ships rather than just having one design per class. I've not played enough to know if it works (not used cloaked fleets or small elite archeotech fleets in a war yet), but the idea is clear.

[Bisexual Offender]

I like Romulans, I wanted this feature for ages, I love it. Now if only I could load up my corvettes into my juggernaut my list of features I want from Stellaris would be complete.

[Battlespark]

I enjoy the features so far. You have to carefully design your ships, your science ships can cloak, go right into enemy territory and scan or explore. IF detected, they are kicked out.

ive been kicking out an opponents science ships, lol he doesnt know my 2nd station has the detection equipment. ..or i think. Once the tech gets high enough, he might be able to slip past my borders.

Already i can cloak entire fleets (only up to cruisers atm) and its just so cool to me. Now i wonder if the AI determines the fleet power, including cloaked or not. Because if not, i can easily make an opponent think im weak, or have no defenses and kinda...convince them that im weak, only for them to declare war and end up with their fleets destroyed and me moving in with no opposition.

I expect mods to make this even more crazy haha.

[Krake]

The complainig of the Stellaris community has been the biggest flaw of the game to me, but the introduction of cloaking to a scifi game made me so angy and wish I could refund all my purchases.

Now the announced Cooper has gotten me interested again.

Without first contact dlc is there any cloaking in the game?

[Ramonkey]

It violates the treaty of Algeron

[Xaphnir]

I just hope the AI is never given the ability to use it