Are fully cloaked ships possible? What is your cloaker design?

[StarWars1981]

For stealth ships, your best bet is to play them (for combat) as in EvE: Get in quietly, blast something, cloak up and bail. Don't stick around.
Other than that it's perfectly possible to build massive permacloakers, if you don't mind, as stated above, the time.

Also, for carriers - dock things externally, or dock walls and drop them (with a rail-based lid) beneath the ship to dock things inside. When not in use fold them in to save dimensions and also target area for when you come under fire. Or just hang them externally - shouldn't be too hard, really, to come up with a good look for that.

 

[Ghent96]

I tried some smaller designs....................Yes they are possible. Feel free to post your design no matter the size. Keep in mind, that designing a cloaker is somewhat easy as soon as your ship is longer than 20m. My special interest is now in the smallest but also somewhat pretty design. I managed to build the smallest one that barely resembles a ship with dimension of 16x7x9 meter. (2nd page)

The OP might be a bit too small, but yes, perma-cloakers are possible, they're relatively easy and can look quite good as-is right now in the vanilla game. I co-op built a perma-cloaker with a faction mate over a few hours and a few nights.


For people that want more, it's also easy to make custom hull blocks to help with cloakers. On MushroomFleet we made custom stealth armor blocks that are lighter weight but very expensive to build.

 

[Keptick]

Raisinbat I recall you saying that cloaked ships with docked weapons are the best when it comes to combat atm. I'm just curious to know why that's the case. Aren't docked entities included in the cloak's power calculations? (If not it's broken af).

And wouldn't a ship equipped with a scanner and lock-on missile turrets completely obliterate a perma-cloaker? Like, you scan, that drops the cloak on the enemy and your turrets deal high alpha damage to a practically naked ship. Depends if your missiles can reach in time before the jammer can be reactivated I guess, I forgot what the delay is. Otherwise you could equip a turret with cannon/cannon/emp to drain the cloaker of energy and prevent it from recloaking (depends if it has docked hull though).

 

[Raisinbat]

Raisinbat I recall you saying that cloaked ships with docked weapons are the best when it comes to combat atm. I'm just curious to know why that's the case. Aren't docked entities included in the cloak's power calculations? (If not it's broken af).

You're right, dunno where i said that but its wrong

And wouldn't a ship equipped with a scanner and lock-on missile turrets completely obliterate a perma-cloaker? Like, you scan, that drops the cloak on the enemy and your turrets deal high alpha damage to a practically naked ship. Depends if your missiles can reach in time before the jammer can be reactivated I guess, I forgot what the delay is. Otherwise you could equip a turret with cannon/cannon/emp to drain the cloaker of energy and prevent it from recloaking (depends if it has docked hull though).

You've gotta know the cloaked ship is around before you can scan, although i don't think large cloakers are really a thing. Cloak gets you a first strike but i don't think they're currently viable for taking on an actual combat ship, unless its fighter vs fighter and you manage to kill them before they can face you...

 

[JinM]

(..)Cloak gets you a first strike but i don't think they're currently viable for taking on an actual combat ship, unless its fighter vs fighter and you manage to kill them before they can face you...

Well, why not make a stealth fighter, that isn't permanetly stealthed? If you fire you reveal your position anyway. That reduces the uptime you need for cloaking to the times the enemy fires. Or maybe have some really big shields, that recharge in those 30 seconds, in that you are able to cloak. Combine it with some ion damage so you can force the enemy into reduced shooting times. Just an idea...

 

[destroyer7]

My idea is for medium to smaller ships that are the cloaker's targets is to use jump inhibitor so they can't get away and then EMP etc.

 

[kulbolen]

firing doesnt remove jam, which is more important than cloak once the combat actually starts. manually deactivate cloak so you dont get a cooldown, fire away, reactivate. have 2 jammers to help remove threat from 1 block scanners that lots of people use. or if youre brave, and the enemy ship isnt facing you and doesnt have strong turrets, drop cloak and jam, fire, reactivate jam and count to 5 then turn it back off. 9 times out of 10 the enemy waste their scan and you can rejam right after.

just make smart choices about who or what ship you attack, some of them are hugely vulnerable to a good dps cloaker and some of them will tear you to ribbons the second they know youre there. most of the time its really easy to tell which is which.

 

[Ghent96]

Raisinbat ...wouldn't a ship equipped with a scanner and lock-on missile turrets completely obliterate a perma-cloaker? Like, you scan, that drops the cloak on the enemy and your turrets deal high alpha damage to a practically naked ship. Depends if your missiles can reach in time before the jammer can be reactivated I guess, I forgot what the delay is. Otherwise you could equip a turret with cannon/cannon/emp to drain the cloaker of energy and prevent it from recloaking (depends if it has docked hull though).

The deterministic missile update will solve that problem - the moment a missile is fired, it has it's target regardless of cloak or jam status after the launch. Only outrunning it or warping away or shooting it down would evade the missile at that point.

 

[El_Shanta]

been a while since i bothered with a combat cloaker but this thread got the ball rolling again.
In a 760 mass vertical stick thing i fit a 70k dps beam, 220k alpha in ion missiles & 115k alpha in punch missiles, 2.5twr, 36k shield capacity/2.6k recharge, & 1.5m regen/600k capacity. Also includes a chain drive ^_^

Only sacrifice was turrets because they would interfere with cloaking, found being able to drop cloak & rapidly recloak without worry about single block scanners was extremely helpful getting kills around homebases.

Spoiler: big img warning

also booped a much bigger drone from some random (though admittedly already damaged but shields up & guns working) without trouble just with the whole wax on wax off approach

 

[kulbolen]

impressive numbers for the mass

 

[Swiftstone]

Ok. So after watching one of Lenscap's videos and tinkering around a bit, a while back I built a prototype that I have only successfully used twice, but most of the failures were due to pilot error in developing tactics.

It is made to be utterly disposable.

Essentially, there is a snarl of pickup rails set up on a docked entity with a public module on the front of a perma-cloaked, perma-jamming 'ship'. The docked entity serves a dual purpose as visual aid for cloaking and to be swept over the docking rails of faction or even pirate ships until it grabs them. At which point, they are rendered essentially inert.

Then you just use it's thrust and jump-drive to tow your victim far from any allies, giving you time. Then you get out, burn through the door and the faction module. The ship is yours.

I call it the Capture Phage.

It's pretty much dirt-cheap to make, so you can try again and again, so long as you can withstand faction attacks at home. Plus trying is actually a pretty fun way to pass the time and break monotony. It snagged me an Isanth very early on in a survival game, for instance. They're easy to push back to base.
If it gets blown up, just fill out another BP and go hunting again.
It's a less brute-force strategy, but one that can net you whole ships ready to use, with relatively minimal investment.

I will note however that theoretically, this could also offer you a ticket to getting in under the guns of some faction stations to do the same with them.

 

[Az14el]

impressively evil

 

[Falcon_One]

Ok. So after watching one of Lenscap's videos and tinkering around a bit, a while back I built a prototype that I have only successfully used twice, but most of the failures were due to pilot error in developing tactics.

It is made to be utterly disposable.

Essentially, there is a snarl of pickup rails set up on a docked entity with a public module on the front of a perma-cloaked, perma-jamming 'ship'. The docked entity serves a dual purpose as visual aid for cloaking and to be swept over the docking rails of faction or even pirate ships until it grabs them. At which point, they are rendered essentially inert.

Then you just use it's thrust and jump-drive to tow your victim far from any allies, giving you time. Then you get out, burn through the door and the faction module. The ship is yours.

I call it the Capture Phage.
View attachment 39307
It's pretty much dirt-cheap to make, so you can try again and again, so long as you can withstand faction attacks at home. Plus trying is actually a pretty fun way to pass the time and break monotony. It snagged me an Isanth very early on in a survival game, for instance. They're easy to push back to base.
If it gets blown up, just fill out another BP and go hunting again.
View attachment 39308 It's a less brute-force strategy, but one that can net you whole ships ready to use, with relatively minimal investment.

I will note however that theoretically, this could also offer you a ticket to getting in under the guns of some faction stations to do the same with them.

We made a similar modification on our faction's disposable scout. We managed to steal a player's ship while he was sitting afk next to his core
Admittedly not very nice, but revenge is a dish best served cold lol

 

[Panpiper]

People really need to learn to put anti-astronaut weapons in their core/faction room.

 

[Gasboy]

People really need to learn to put anti-astronaut weapons in their core/faction room.

It would do far more good for people to actually pay attention. And to conveniently place turrets where they can shoot the sides of your ship, allowing you to scrape little phages off. :P

 

[Swiftstone]

Ooookaaayyy....I'm just gonna leave this here....

I did the devil's work last night guys. I can't help it. I try to build in anticipation of even occasional need. Once I thought of it, I had to see if I could build it with my admittedly limited skills. I'm sure someone has done it before, but here's my effort at covertly delivering ship and station assault squads. If only I hadn't seen Drakkart's Time Bomb...

It's just a working prototype, but for those of a pvp bent, it might help some.
I call it the Breach Phage Covert assault sled, but it might as well be called 'Why I Don't Use Universal Docking'.
It is only configured to deal with USD's with docking at the bottom, but the bomb can be reconfigured to need.

It cloaks, jams, jumps and goes around 225 m/s.

On the front is an adaptation of the Capture Phage's interface docking snarl. Once docked, the pilot hits the first button on the hotbar, making a couple of things happen. The bomb slides forward to be flush with the exterior lock door, a force-field cage erects around the seated 12 man assault team and the cloaking ship un-docks.

At this point, the assault team should move forward on either side of the bomb and orient on the victim ship's hull in case of sudden maneuvers. Then one of two things may be done. Either the cloaking ship is simply left as chaff for the turrets if the pilot chooses to participate, or it may be flown away and kept safe before breach begins. The time bomb may then be triggered either remotely by the pilot with the second button, or the breach team hits the wireless remote on their end to begin at a time of their choosing.

The breach team then moves to the back of the force cage and waits till the bomb does their initial entry work for them, while the force cage buys precious seconds to get inside.
It's a bit clumsily built, but it's basic functions offer a proof of concept prototype that better systems and tactics may be developed around.

I make no judgements. Do with it what you will.

 

[KiloZulu]

King of Anime had a suggestion thread a while back that proposed a multi-block cloaking system. I would like the idea - particularly if the individual blocks had a relatively expensive crafting recipe to make it end game/advanced tech. It could utilize a similar setup to the proposed power system for the sake of uniformity. The end result is that it scales with the size of the ship - small or large, allows for greater ship customization, makes scanners more useful, and (most importantly) limits fire power.

 

[Swiftstone]

It would do far more good for people to actually pay attention. And to conveniently place turrets where they can shoot the sides of your ship, allowing you to scrape little phages off. :P

Look at my post below about the Breach Phage. I'm afraid I remembered you saying this when I built it. Like I said, I kinda had a late-night mad scientist-ish session of building something evil.
Behold my mad genius and cringe at the poor engineering! It's just a brute-force proof of concept build, but nevertheless basically functional.

MOOHOOHAAAAAAA!!...Ahem...

As I was saying, I apologize to everyone in advance of this seeing service...

 

[Gasboy]

Look at my post below about the Breach Phage. I'm afraid I remembered you saying this when I built it. Like I said, I kinda had a late-night mad scientist-ish session of building something evil.
Behold my mad genius and cringe at the poor engineering! It's just a brute-force proof of concept build, but nevertheless basically functional.

MOOHOOHAAAAAAA!!...Ahem...

As I was saying, I apologize to everyone in advance of this seeing service...

No pics, no clicks.

 

[JinM]

Ooookaaayyy....I'm just gonna leave this here....

I did the devil's work last night guys. I can't help it. I try to build in anticipation of even occasional need. Once I thought of it, I had to see if I could build it with my admittedly limited skills. I'm sure someone has done it before, but here's my effort at covertly delivering ship and station assault squads. If only I hadn't seen Drakkart's Time Bomb...

It's just a working prototype, but for those of a pvp bent, it might help some.
I call it the Breach Phage Covert assault sled, but it might as well be called 'Why I Don't Use Universal Docking'.
It is only configured to deal with USD's with docking at the bottom, but the bomb can be reconfigured to need.

So you basically dock at a bare rail at at ship? I like the idea. =) Even though every carefully designed ship doesnt care much about it. Interior turrets and such stuff.