Re: Questions on cloaking

On Sun, 14 Jan 2001, Pat Connaughton wrote:

> What house rules or variants had the 'list come up with?
> Our take is that there need to be a few mods on each side for 
> pro and con. Some greater chance of scan locating the
> cloaked object perhaps? Maybe some flexibility for
> movement or direction chances when cloaked?
> 
> We all agree that cloaked vessels cannot fire or
> drop any sort of mine or small craft while cloaked.

We basically use the following rules for cloak:

1.  When you cloak, you remove your counter from the field and write
down
all move orders for when you're cloaked.

2.  You're not allowed to fire ANY weapons.  If the cloaked ship is
equipped with a wave gun, they are not permitted to either charge it
nor retain any charge on it that they may have had before they cloaked.
(PSB:  The charge on a wave gun is an excellent sensor beacon that even
the most advanced cloaking device cannot conceal.  Issue of balance
reasoning:  if you could charge a wave gun while cloaked, cloaked ships
equipped with wave guns would be pretty much invincible... cloak, charge
it, decloak, turn towards your enemy, fire, cloak again while you
charge.
Since it's pretty much impossible to match the damage a wave gun
inflicts
without advance warning in that one turn, it became pretty quickly
evident that this was a bad thing.)

3.  The cloaked ship cannot be fired on.  Not even with area effect
weapons.  (PSB:  Space is a HUGE place, it has three dimensions, and
the chance of hitting something you can't see in that huge place even
with a mass destruction weapon is miniscule.  In-game issue:  checking
to see whether there are any cloaked ships in the area of an effect
without tipping off to the other player where they actually are is
cumbersome at best and impossible at worst.)

4.  If the cloaked ship overlaps an asteroid while they're cloaked,
they're dead.  End of story.  (Tactical suggestion:  do NOT attempt
to execute fancy maneuvers under cloak in an asteroid field when you
can't see perfectly as to where the rocks are.	I had an opponent
accidentally scuttle half his cloaked force doing that.)

5.  If the cloaked ship goes off the board, they've left the battle
field and may not return.  (We play fixed table, if you fly off the
table, it's assumed that you've run with your tail between your legs
and you cede the contested space to your opponent.)