AI War:Cloaking
How Does Cloaking Work?
A: There are three states of cloaking:
- Fully Cloaked (ship is invisible, and unshootable except by the very rare "Counter Spy" ship that AI players sometimes have).
- Partially Cloaked (a lilac halo is all that shows for the ship, meaning that players can't tell what kind of ship it is, but they can still shoot at it).
- Decloaked (same as any other ship without cloaking).
When a cloaked ship fires its weapons, it will have to decloak for around 8 seconds after its last fired shot. When a cloaked ship is tagged by a tachyon beam emitter, it will become partially cloaked for around 15 seconds.
The main benefit of cloaking is of course the surprise factor, but it is also an excellent way for ships to slip past otherwise very-difficult defenses. Even ion cannons can't fire at fully-cloaked ships. This makes cloaked ships great for deep raids, or gate-raids on planets that are otherwise troublesome. All scouts also have cloaking, which is useful for helping them to slip past enemy defenses.
Of course, the enemy will very commonly have tachyon beam emitters in place at key junctions, so this makes your job harder. To properly defend your own wormholes if the AI is using cloaked ships, you'll also want to include some sort of tachyon beam emitters at your wormholes. Otherwise your tractor beams and turrets are pretty useless, since they can't see the enemy ships to grab/shoot them.
