Cloaking

Cloaking allows a ship to become completely invisible to almost all forms of detection. The ability to disappear from view offers many obvious tactical advantages allowing you to observe whithout being seen, launch suprise attacks or to slip away from dangers.

Cloaking devices

A cloaked ship as seen by its pilot. Other players can not see the ship at all.

Cloaking devices are high slot modules that allow ships to turn invisible.

Cloaking device works on any ship and allows them to cloak up. The prototype cloaking device, improved cloaking device and almost all of the faction/storyline/officer cloaking devices count as standard cloaking devices. This type of cloaking device comes with severe penalties: Installed cloaking device will apply scan resolution penalties at all times even if the cloak is offline. While the cloak is active the ship suffers massive speed penalty. -90% on prototype cloak and -75% on improved cloak. While the cloak is active the ship is unable to warp. While the cloak is active the ship cannot target anything. After a ship uncloaks it is unable to target anything while the sensors are calibrated (up to 27 seconds on most basic cloak).

Covert ops cloaking device can only be used by certain T2 and faction ships. Most notable covert ops capable ships are covert-ops frigates, stealth bombers, force recon ships, blockade runners and T3 cruisers with covert ops configuration though a number of faction and limited edition ships can use covert ops cloaks too. The covert ops cloaking device has drastically less severe penalties compared to the normal cloak: No scan resolution penalty. No speed penalty while active. Ship is able to warp while cloaked. While the cloak is active the ship cannot target anything. After a ship uncloaks it is unable to target anything while the sensors are calibrated (up to 9 seconds).

Cloaking mechanics

Cloaking is a nuanced mechanic and knowing the exact way it interacts with other aspects of the game is important.

Once the cloaking module is activated the ship will turn invisible immediately. You will see the cloaking animation on your own ship but other players will just see your ship disappear. Equally when you uncloak your ship becomes visible instantly when the cloaking module is deactivated.

While active the cloak will prevent activation of all modules. However you can activate non-offensive modules during the first 5 seconds of being cloaked. Modules that are active before cloaking will also finish their cycles normally. But some modules, such as MJD, will decloak the ship if they cycle while the ship is cloaked. You are also unable to set modules to overheated state while you are cloaked.

There are multiple factors that prevent ships from cloaking, cause a cloaked ship to decloak or apply to cloaked ships.

• Being within 2000 m from any object will cause cloaked ships to decloak and prevents cloaking. This includes often ignored objects such as jettisoned cans, corpses, drones, and gas clouds.
  • Missiles will decloak cloaked ships.
  • Exceptions: Cloaked ships and scanner probes do not decloak cloaked ships.
• Being targeted will prevent ship from cloaking. This includes being targeted by an NPC or a passive targeting module which does not show as yellow box.
  • Someone trying to target you will not prevent cloaking. The targeting attempt will fail.
• If you are already cloaked you cannot cloak. This may seem like a non problem but this will force you to break the gate cloak before you can activate your cloaking module and in the process reveal yourself.
• Faction police and CONCORD ships are able to locate cloaked ships. If you are being chased by either of them due to low standing or criminal action they will warp to you even if you are cloaked.
• Offensive area of effect modules such as bombs and smartbombs will damage cloaked ships but will not decloak them.
• Command bursts do not apply to cloaked ships.

Skills

Cloaking is the only cloaking related skill. This skill allows you to use cloaking devices and also reduces the duration of recalibration delay that comes after decloaking by 10% per level.

MWD cloak trick

This is a technique that enables pilots to be cloaked while aligning after jumping through a gate. When done properly, this allows the pilot to almost instantly warp the second they decloak.

You will need:

• Improved Cloaking Device II. Prototype cloaking device has too big speed penalty preventing you from reaching the required velocity.
• Microwarpdrive of the correct size for your ship. That is: 5MN for frigates and destroyers, 50MN for cruisers, battlecruisers and industrials, and 500MN for battleships.
• If the ship is slow to align it may need inertia reducing modules such as nanofiber internal structures or inertia stabilizers.

Do these things in this order while you are under the effects of gate cloak after jumping through a stargate or wormhole.

1. Hit align to the object you want to warp to.
2. Immediately hit the cloak.
3. Immediately after you hit cloak hit your MWD (this does work, you can activate non-offensive modules for 5 seconds after you activate a cloaking device).
4. When your MWD cycle is about 90-95% complete, deactivate your cloak and spam warp to your point of interest.
5. The MWD will deactivate automatically, and when it does you will instantly enter warp.

Although you can do MWD then cloak (or do both at once), it is not recommended as having your MWD active before your cloak is a bad idea due to the signature radius bloom and the likelihood of spending more time uncloaked.

While you are cloaked the cloak will apply 75% speed penalty but at the same time the MWD boosts your speed by 500%. As a result your ship is able to reach at minimum 75% of its unmodified top speed in the ten seconds of single MWD cycle while cloaked. And since you hit align before the cloak you will be aligned and at warp speed when the cloak drops. So when you deactivate the cloak (right before the MWD cycle is complete) the ship is able to enter warp immediately. This equals near insta-warp. With practice, you can be uncloaked for literally less than a second total on a gate. Practice in high-sec and you will find this is actually pretty easy and effective.

Part of the requirement to make the the microwarpdrive + cloak trick work is to have a size-appropriate microwwarpdrive, 5MN for a frigate, 50MN for a cruiser, 500MN for a battleship etc. Ships like the  Orca or the  Bowhead are technically capital-class sized but can only fit 500MN microwarpdrives due to fitting restraints. As such they can not use the microwarpdrive + cloak trick.

For normal capital ships (carriers, dreadnoughts, force auxiliaries, supercarriers, titans and the  Rorqual) there are capital sized 50,000MN microwarpdrives, that can allow them to do the same microwarpdrive + cloak trick, although they have a cycle-time of 20 seconds (instead of the usual 10 seconds) and might require additional agility modules to ensure they get the speed up in time.

Video demonstrations:

• MWD Cloak Video 1, Basic Instruction (5:44)
• MWD Cloak Video 2, Detailed Instruction (15:52)

Jump cloak

The jup cloak timer

Jump cloak, also known as gate cloak, is effect every ship gets when they jump thrpugh a stargate or a wormhole. Every time you jump your ship will be cloaked when it lands on the other side.

The jump cloak beahavior is different from cloaking modules. The jump cloak, unlike cloak from modules, is completely immune to everything and can not be broken by outside effects. While under the effects of jump cloak your ship is completely immune to every single possible offensive effect including area of effect. You can not be uncloaked, hit by area of effect weapons such as smarbombs or be bumped by ships. Effectively your ship does not exist while under effects of jump cloak.

The jump cloak will last for 60 seconds or until you move (including warping and fleet warping) with your ship. As soon as the jump cloak is broken by the timer running out or by ship actions the ship will immediately become visible. The 60 second jump cloak timer is visible on the upper left corner.

It is often best to take full advantage of the 60 second jump cloak and assess the situation you jumped in very carefully. Look at the ships on grid, player names in local, objects in directional scan and decide what actions you will take before you break the jump cloak.