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

[JinM]

I tried some smaller designs, but I am not totally satisfied with the outcome. My smallest ship has two jump drives and a little more than 20 seconds cloacking abillity, the medium one is able to cloack around 13 seconds with thrust, has 2 jump drives and an overdrive, and my biggest one can do about 10 seconds and has nothing but one bigger jump drive. Except for my biggest one, they need to be docked to a bigger power supply to not take ages for having their jump drives charged up. I think having at least one jump drive in a scout designated to explore the enemies battle formation is neccessary, isn't it?



edit, Feb. 2017: 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)

 

[alterintel]

Yes they are however you need a finely tuned power generation system and there needs to be a lot of sacrifices.
here is an example of one: ISS Raven

 

[Olxinos]

If you want, here's a 40x13x23 box (I mean, real box, I didn't greeble or make an interior or anything) of snaking reactors and thrusters covered in dark grey hull which should be able to cloak, jam and fly at full speed (2.5 thrust/mass ratio, the energy consumption of thrusters have also been taken into account) with up to 586.47 mass (maintaining the 2.5 thrust/mass ratio). Currently at 529.2 mass including the grey hull cover, a jammer and a cloaker. You can use that as a template to build your cloaked ship if that suits you by modifying the hull (and maybe replacing it by motherboards which weight 5 times less than hull blocks) and copy/pasting the whole to move the core where you want.

Note: I've chosen the dimensions a bit randomly, didn't try to optimize that much, but that should be enough to make a decent 580 mass cloaked ship without too many shape constraints

 

[Crusade]

It's all about balancing power use and power generation.

Cloak requires 1450 e/sec per 1 mass.

Have fun!

 

[Sgtwisky]

It's all about balancing power use and power generation.

Cloak requires 1450 e/sec per 1 mass.

Have fun!

Is that just cloaking or does it include jamming as well?

 

[Crusade]

That's just cloaking. with jamming it's 1500e/sec per mass

 

[Proxima_Centauri]

Full cloak & jam, 2.5 thrust/weight, full overdrive, primary and secondary jump drive, and built to still resemble a ship

It's also a design that's more than 2 years old and still works

 

[Crashmaster]

Isanth Stealth;

8x18Missile/18Beam
2 emergency jump drives

 

[DrTarDIS]

Heliphunt - cloaker
"If you're gonna explore, do it with rich walnut dashboards"


Bar 1 has: 6 jump drives docker, cloak, jam, armor increase passive
bar 2 has : armor damage reduction, momentum immunity, gravity immunity, scanner

Crew interior, cargo bay, emergency escape hatches.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

I tried some smaller designs, but I am not totally satisfied with the outcome. My smallest ship has two jump drives and a little more than 20 seconds cloacking abillity, the medium one is able to cloack around 13 seconds with thrust, has 2 jump drives and an overdrive, and my biggest one can do about 10 seconds and has nothing but one bigger jump drive. Except for my biggest one, they need to be docked to a bigger power supply to not take ages for having their jump drives charged up. I think having at least one jump drive in a scout designated to explore the enemies battle formation is neccessary, isn't it?

View attachment 27492 View attachment 27494View attachment 27493

As you've seen, it's definitely possible to build a ship with a stable cloak/jam system. The best approach is to build long chains of reactors in lines, "L" shapes or cross shapes to get as close to the 2 million e/sec power soft cap as possible.

If you want to get fancy, use the motherboard blocks to simulate hull plating Don't count on much armor or shields on your ship. They'll increase the mass to the point where cloaking is only temporary. Here are a few of my stable cloaking designs.


Blue Raven

Prototype Stealth Bomber and my very first stable cloaker
- Perma-cloak/perma-jam.
- Basic Jump drive
- No shields
- Light guided missiles
- 8 logic torpedoes



ASC Atlantis

Prototype stealth reconnaissance frigate

Mass: 664
Dimensions: Length 115m, Width 57m, Height 27m.
Thrust to mass ratio 1.3:1
Power grid: Capacity 568,499. Recharge 1,000,094 e/sec.
Shields: Capacity 28,950. Recharge 121 e/sec.

Armament:
- 4 Repeat fire cannons (4000DPS)
- Heavy ion beam weapon: 200,000+ anti-shield
- can mount a 25x launcher

Equipment:
- Radar Jammer (stable)
- Cloaking Device (stable)
- Primary and secondary warp drives (can charge while cloaked, jamming and moving)



SR-SB1 (Dare Devil)

Ultra light deep space reconnaissance craft/stealth bomber.

Dimensions: 11m long, 11m wide, 6m tall, mass; 12.4.
Equipment: 2 torpedoes, cloaking device, radar jammer. Both the cloak and jammer can be run continuously while moving.

Armed only with 2 torpedoes; this little guy can be used to sneak behind enemy lines, scout, grab intel, damage or destroy high value targets then fly back home.

 

[Raisinbat]

just overhauled my old stealth fighter after seeing this thread:

RAI Delirium

 

[JinM]

Now, as I read that you need to get some high power regen, I going to try to make some cooler stealth scout. I mean thats great that you can have big ships in perma stealth. But for me it would make more sense, if a cloaker could only be in perma invis, if he is really small. Thats why I thought bigger stealth ships aren't possible at all. I give it a new try now.

Nice ships though!

But stealth ships for battle have that problem, that they will be revealed by a scanner as soon as you notice the ambush. So they are really hit and run.

 

[Sgtwisky]

Also if you fire ANY weapon (except for torpedo's) you will become visible. Firing weapons removes your cloaking.

 

[splatthecat]

Here is my stealth scout ship The Unseen Eyes. She can maintain cloak and radar jamming travelling at maximum speed AND charging its 800 module jump drive (fully charged in about 8 seconds). It also has a scanner which has a single antenna block. It also carries a Transporter!

Spoiler: The Unseen Eyes

 

[JinM]

My new concept. Well I am still not satisfied, because even if I make this ship look pretty or remove the bottom beam for aestetical reasons, it will still be too big and hard to steer around. I mean it's a scout, it's meant to be agile and small. =) And the motherboard blocks are not meant for building or even looking somewhat nice.

I want to have this 4 branch-reactor design. Does someone have a really small knot for this reactor setup? I might try another ship, and will try to make that one as small as possible. It just doesn't feel right for me to explore and scout the space with some big bug.

 

[Anthros1984]

Here is my stealth ship. The Panther class. full cloak, radar jam and full speed over drive with a jump drive. can go full speed with overdrive on and maintain full stealth mode. Only draw back is you have to watch the power if do all that and charge the jump drive all at once.

AFW Panther Class Recon Corvette

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

 

[Dr. Whammy]

That looks like it would be VERY hard to hit...

 

[JinM]

I like the ships you guys build, even though they are more intriguing than "scouty".

So thats my smallest working design right now. Its not pretty, but its not totally ugly as well. =) That one has full time cloaking at max speed with overdrive at 38%, and two jump drives. The jump drives are not chargable while cloaked ofc. Thats a thing for the bigger ships (still making no sense to me ).

 

[Sgtwisky]

This thread makes me want to try my hand at a stealth ship again. But they are hard to get looking good, be small, and not run out of power.