I probably just missed it, but I can't find any information about cloaking/decloaking times or other penalties in the manuals. When a ship decloaks, it's not instantaneous or a free action, is it? I would think that would be a maneuver, but there is no cloak/decloak maneuver.
Without some sort of penalty, what's to stop a ship from locking on weapons, and matching speeds in one round, then decloaking, fire and fire again in the second round, then cloaking again at the end of the second round? The power of such a tactic tells me that it can't be done that way, but other than common sense, I can't find anywhere that tells me how it works.
My guess is cloak and decloak is a maneuver all its own. Raising or lowering shields is described as taking one action, that's a crewmember's action, not a ship maneuver action, right? So I would guess you could decloak and fire in one turn with shields up by the end of the turn? Then next turn, fire again, drop shields, and cloak once more to maneuver for the next attack?
Any clarification here would be great. Not that I plan on having a cloaked ship in any of my episodes right away, but it's a confusing point in the rules for me as there are no rules (that I can find).
One last question while I have your attention. On page 123 under Structure it reads, "Additional crewmembers participating in the test add +1 per contributor to the test result (as per the combines test rules page 85)." Yet page 85-86 under Combined Tests reads, "Every participant but the leader makes the test at -5 TN to determine how effectively they contribute to the effort. A marginal success provides the leader a +1 test result bonus, a complete success +2, a superior success +3, and an extraordinary success +4. On the other hand, failure adds +0, complete failure imposes a -1 test penalty, and disastrous failure a -2 penalty." So if each participant adds +1 per the rules on page 85, then they don't automatically add one. Which is it, +1, or roll against TN -5?
And even that's a bit confusing. Is the TN reduced by 5? That makes it easier for participants to help out more, which seems like it would be opposite, meaning the TN would be 5 harder (or +5 TN). Again, your thoughts please?
Cloaked Attack is a Tier Two maneuver that lets you decloak and fire in one action. It also requires you to close by two range increments in one maneuver (which makes it sound like you should be closing fast).
What if you want to match speeds and get a target lock, then decloak and fire normally, without doing a high-speed strafe? There has to be something out there, unless all narrators who use the cloak at all have house rules which fill in this gap in the published rules.
Well it just appears that it's an expansion of the rules. Only the people who are helping get a -5 to their roll, and only contribute +1 - which also comes the problem of how do the Borg ever fail any test!
I think you can take it with a pinch of salt - either you add +1 OR you risk failing and getting -4 to get up to +4, if you have some super duper roll. You probably want to make it so that NPC engineers simply add +1 to make it simple, but if PC's get involved they have to roll - it also spices things up if they don't even know engineering!
As a house rule I also let players pool their courage points on group work, because they are all putting in the effort.
I have had a cloacked attack and it did get nasty as I also realised there wasn't a way to get round it easilly. Point in case: If a vessel is badly damaged and decides to flee the fight - they engage their cloak BUT at the same time they have to drop the shields. allowing a a crew that got the initiative, to get the drop on them. However In that case i ruled that they had to have an oposed initiative test, to see if the crews ship could react in time to the Cloaked Vessel.
Originally posted by Fab
Without some sort of penalty, what's to stop a ship from locking on weapons, and matching speeds in one round, then decloaking, fire and fire again in the second round, then cloaking again at the end of the second round? The power of such a tactic tells me that it can't be done that way, but other than common sense, I can't find anywhere that tells me how it works.
Yes, I thought about this too, a bit, since I was planning to run a Klingon storyline, and expected my players to do just that.
But.
While detecting a cloaked ship isn't very easy, (atleast not if it has a decent cloak), it's not impossible, and I'd probably rule that the crew of the target ship (the "victims") got to roll system ops(sensors) each round while you were maneuvering about this close to them. And the accumulated probability of being noticed got pretty nasty, very quickly, especially against some of the newer scout ships and the like, which tend to have awfully good sensors (and therefore sensorbonuses)
Also, I seem to recall something about the targeted ship can detect a lock on, which would probably make it impossible to do while cloaked, but that may've been a house rule I wanted to introduce, not sure.
Arguing for this type of tactics being possible, ofcourse, is that DS9 episode where the Klingons want Worf extracted, for having destroyed "one of their transports" (season 4, I think, not sure).
Actually that makes me think. In the ESO book by Killer Whale (available to dowload somewhere on these forums) there is a firing blind manouver - basically shooting out and around in several directions to see if you can hit your target blindly. The Enteprise E was seen to do this very thing in nemisis, when it fired a volley of phaser blasts in a sphere around it's sef, to see if it could hit Shinzon's ship - and it did, but most often it was moving quite quickly, so they would have lost the lock.
Generally I would say that if a ship was cloaking and decloaking alot in combat, then it increases the chances of it being hit by such a manouver, unless it effectivelly 'warps away' from the scene, because a tactical officer might be able to predict it's location based on it's speed and motion. I would suggest that the tactical (or science officer) would be able to use a computer (simulation modeling) roll TN:15 - and if he makes itit reduces the difficuty of hitting the cloaked ship by 5. Older model cloaking devices aren't that good, so if you have somewhere to focus your sensors, then you stand a good chance of detecting it!
Depending on how your game goes too, your crews ship (or the enemy if you run it that way ! ) could develop a blind luck advantage to detect cloaked ships (of a certain type)
True enough about being detected, but only if the target ship suspects you're there. If they don't think there's another ship there, they probably have shields down and no particular scans running, or if they do, they're looking at volcanic activity in the northern hemisphere of some planet, not for cloaked ships.
I think for an opening volley, it would be very easy to match speeds and get a lock, then come out of cloak and nearly cut the target ship in half with the first shot. But if cloak is not a maneuver, then you can decloack, fire twice, and recloak in one round and that's not right it seems.
So if cloak/decloak is a maneuver, what would be some good rules surrounding it? Does it take an extra maneuver before shields can come up? Meaning decloak on the first maneuver, then for the second maneuver shields are down and won't come up until the start of the next round? If so, then trying this maneuver without first taking out the enemy's weapons is asking for a beating. I just need some ideas and guidance since it seems obvious that the writers didn't think to put in ANY cloaking rules other than a brief sentence on how to detect a cloaked ship. Big glaring omission if you ask me.
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