Cloaking and combat

[SpaceBadger]

I've read that you can't fight while cloaked. Under what circumstances will cloaked ships decloak to fight in a simultaneous game? Or do you have to give them a decloak order before they'll do any fighting at all?

Say I have a cloaked fleet sitting on a warp point, and some enemy ships approach, unaware (I hope) that my fleet is anywhere nearby. I understand that even if the enemy comes into that same sector to use the warp point, there won't be any combat unless they can see my ships, making my fleet pretty useless as warp point guards. But what if I decide to send my cloaked fleet a-hunting after some of those nearby enemies? Do I need to decloak my fleet first, or can I just send them to seek after the enemy and expect them to decloak upon contact?

SpaceBadger

[geoschmo]

You can fight just fine while cloaked. It all depends on whether the enemy can see you.

In your question of whether you can hunt the enemy down while cloaked, if they cannot see yoru ship then no combat will occur. It doesn't matter if your ship has orders to attack, or if the enemy just moves into the sector with them.

On the other hand if the enemy can see your cloaked ships then combat will occur in either case, whenter you are attacking them or if they move into your square.

If you have several ships in a sector, some cloaked and some not, all your ships will be involved in the combat. This is a good way to suprise teh other guy. You have one ship not cloaked looking all defensless and then when teh enemy attacks thinking for an easy kill they are suprised by a bunch of cloaked ships showing up in combat. This is the exception to the above rule that the enemy has to see you ships to have combat with them. If there is combat occuring for other reasons your cloaked ships will be involved either way. During combat the enemey can see them regardless of their sensors. After combat is over if they survive any cloaked ships will be invisible again.

[SpaceBadger]

Thanks, geoschmo.

Darn, I was really hoping that an attack order would work. Now if I decloak those guys, and tell them to attack the enemy units, then if the enemy happens to move away rather than toward my guys we might not be able to catch them, and end up sitting out in space all uncloaked for the enemy to see. Hmm, maybe if I decloak -one- ship in the fleet, then if we catch them we'll have combat, and if we don't catch them, they'll only see one ship, so maybe they'll try to attack and get a big surprise? I think I'll try that and see how it goes.

SpaceBadger

[ October 09, 2003, 03:13: Message edited by: SpaceBadger ]