Cloaking device

Some ships have a built-in cloaking device allowing them to be invisible for enemy races. The device needs to be switched on by setting the ships mission to "Cloak".

Cloaking burns Max (5, Floor((hull mass / 100) * 5))kt of fuel per turn.

Cloaking has some useful side effects:

• the probability to hit a mine is much lower (just 25% of the normal probability)
• cloaked ships can not be attacked

A cloaking device can fail too. In this case the owner of the ship gets this message:

We've had a problem in our engine room. Our cloaking device has failed!

The The Empire of Birds has two ships with an advanced cloaking device.

Counter Strategies

Being attacked by ships with a cloaking device can be tough.

There are mainly two more or less effective counter measures:

• lay many minefields where you suspect cloaked enemies (preferably overlapping minefields)
• get in hold of Lokis which will decloak any cloaked ships with in 10 ly around it (doesn't work versus advanced cloaking device, Lizard and Fed ships).