The terrible truth about Cloaking Fields (with edits)

Have you seen the price of those things? Not quite 10% of the ship's mass and costing twice the mass of the ship.

It has been drawn to my attention that Fleet Book 1 halved the price of Cloaking Fields and slightly upped the mass (it was 1 mass for every ten of the ship and with Fleet Book 1, it's 10% of the mass and 10 credits per mass). Still the most expensive system money can buy, mind you.

Because doing the moves after the fact seems more annoying than it should be, we're suggesting that in future the move be plotted out on hex paper. Suitable hexpaper will be provided.

This suggestion is being made because it's easier, not because I think otherwise people would cheat. It actually gives the cloaking player a slight edge over just writing out orders, because he can see the track properly instead of trying to visualise it in his head.

The working assumption in these parts is that mistakes will be made, people will screw up or make faulty assumptions, and that no-one's going to be either perfectly accurate or perfectly good mannered under pressure. It is assumed that no-one's wilfully breaking the rules. If I thought people were cheating, I wouldn't be playing with them in the first place. So please read suggestions with that in your mind.

We like, but will not enforce, the charming notion that people in cloak ought to leave the room.

Because it's funny.

We're wondering about the campaign impact of cloaking devices, because they make disengagement a little too easy; a force equipped with this technology can never be brought to battle on unfavourable terms. Which is really the only way you ever want to bring someone to battle. This could seriously unbalance the campaign by allowing anyone with cloaking devices to swagger around picking only the fights he's guaranteed to win, and we're not immediately sure we know what the counter to it might be.

The tactical impact is kind of two edged. Witness John's ability to chunk out pretty much half his hull mass in fighters while Eddie was cloaked and in no position to do anything about it. You DO forfeit the tactical initiative. On the other hand, what difference does it make if you're not going to fight at all?

There's an unanswered question about cloaking devices and FTL

I have been told that this question is, in fact, answered by the rules.
; I am ruling here and now that you can't have both switched on at the same time.

Handwaving explanations will involve references to the requirement with FTL that you switch off all kinds of other systems and to the slight insanity of going into hyperdrive when you can't see the universe you're leaving. The game explanation is simpler; once you can FTL in and out in cloak, there's not really much left for anyone to do. It's still open to players to say that they're heading off out of sensor range with their cloaking device, which would have the same net effect, but see the next post, which will be about the edge of the table that we're not going to be having any more.

In practice, this whole area of the campaign rules will be revisited in detail tomorrow, assuming that there's actually still going to be a campaign.