Cloaked SSC in EnergyYou may need to cloak your ship at some point (usually when you are ambushing an enemy).

The chance of successfully cloaking relies on only three things – your ship size, the resource type you are on and your Cloak skill.

  • you have a better chance to cloak in a small ship than a large ship
  • the easiest resource to cloak in is Energy
  • having a high Cloak skill will improve your chance of cloaking

This guide explores how you can increase your Cloak skill – preferably before you have taken ownership of a Mooncrusher!

Ways to improve Cloak skill

You can improve your Cloak skill by attempting to telerob another pilot without being noticed, or cloak your ship (via the Nav screen).

Telerobbing costs 50 APs and requires you wait 90 seconds before repeating. It would take almost 3 hours to use your daily 5,720 APs.

Cloaking costs 100 APs and has no waiting penalty before repeating. Even if you are not successful in a cloaking attempt, your Cloak skill will still improve a little (unfortunately this gain is minuscule compared to that gained when successfully cloaking).

Cloaking a ship is the fastest route, and this guide continues assuming you are going to be cloaking your ship.

How long does it take?

Assuming you are using an SSC in Energy, not doing anything else with your APs, and not using Drugs at all – then use this to guide you:

Starting
Cloak Skill		 Ending
Cloak Skill		 Days of
Cloaking
15 20 ~ 11
20 25 ~ 18
25 30 ~ 26

You can reduce the time through use of Drugs:

Starting
Cloak Skill		 Ending
Cloak Skill		 Days of
Cloaking
15 20 ~ 6
20 25 ~ 11
25 30 ~ 16

Without Drugs it would take about 55 days to go from 15 to 30 Cloak skill. Using up to 18t Drugs per day would cut this to about 33 days.

What do I need to do?

Change into the smallest ship you can – ideally a Shadow Stealth Craft (size 7) or Interceptor (size 8). Don’t invest in any weapons, armor or equipment. Then find a starbase built in Energy – and make sure you are safe from attack.

Press the Cloak button from the Nav screen – and once cloaked, press the Uncloak button. Repeat until you are out of APs… and then come back the next day and do it all again!

Why should I do this again?

If you end up in your “end game” ship, it will most probably be large in size. If you have low Cloak skill then you will have fewer successful cloaks. This could really hinder you if setting ambush – the enemy has a better chance to notice you setting.

When in a small ship = better chance to cloak = more successful cloaks = better gains per APs

Doing this task before you move into a large ship is the fastest and most AP efficient thing to do. You may consider the Cloak Boost Advanced Combat Skill if you are already in your large ship. Crew members can also help. But it will take a lot longer doing it this way.

A more detailed breakdown of AP costs (averaged gains for an SSC):

Starting
Cloak Skill		 Ending
Cloak Skill		 Required
Action Points
15 16 9,500
16 17 10,300
17 18 12,000
18 19 13,300
19 20 15,300
20 21 16,500
21 22 18,400
22 23 19,700
23 24 22,000
24 25 23,700
25 26 25,600
26 27 27,400
27 28 29,900
28 29 32,200
29 30 34,000