Everybody loves scan (unless it's being used against their planets), but cloak seems a little hit-and-miss for players. On the extremes, you have the people who love it and can't get enough (then go Zolazin Spy) and those who consider any pure cloak mod a waste of space and upkeep.

What do you consider enough cloak? If you plan on hacking a ton of people and are above rank 200, how much cloak would you consider "adequate"? What if you are above rank 1k?

Rank 757, Cloak 1957 and the only time I had a researched cloak mod installed was as a Zolazin many ranks back. I can hack plenty at that cloak and rank. But Bainar is all full so no need really, except when I see your ship!!

To my understanding, cloak affects hacking, hiding on the BT, and resisting critical hits. I assume for LSBs, the question is moot, since they can just keep adding modules (presupposing they can support the upkeep). When I advise S/MSBs, I generally tell them that cloak is a "dump stat" unless they want to hack, and even then, they can add cloak modules when they want to hack and remove them when they are done (assuming they have the cargo space). Hiding on the BT should be irrelevant, since a serious player should be used to getting disabled/hacked every now and then. I do not consider critical hits sufficient reason to waste deckspace for S/MSBs.

In any case, for S/MSBs, I tell them to check the wiki and try to run enough scan to find the good Elite NPCs for their rank, but dump cloak. If they are really worried about being hacked, they can raise scan, but an arti or two will drop their scan and/or cloak making their efforts moot.

In short, I figure the advantage of a LSB is to keep adding modules, so no reason for them to not keep adding cloak. For non-hacking S/MSBs, cloak should be mostly irrelevant, and even for S/MSB hackers, they can add cloak when needed.

i have 2356 cloak at rank 698 from:

siladon mine core
cybernetic link interface
merged datanode
tej-sheel data drone
r100 apparitious
r100 anubix
r100 bainar
r100 thraccti

if i do want to go on a hacking spree ... i can throw on the cipherbots and decryption frames ... but unless something new comes out that needs blue badges .. that aint gonna happen anytime soon.

the only other reason to boost cloak would be to make it harder for folks near my rank to find me on the bt. anyone over 1k who can badge me will have no trouble finding me.

Yeah, and as Senator Hung has pointed out, in most cases "hiding" really does little more than make it easier for the much bigger fish to see you. Unless you are a Zolazin Spy with every mod and a Dark Pyramid on, you really aren't hiding (and even then, an Explorer can still see you w/ unlimited buffs).

At 4k cloak, I am pretty much left alone on the BT. Sometimes for for more than a week at a time. But go up to 8k cloak and I'm attacked at least once a day by somebody 400-500 ranks higher. Somebody who's able to use my ship as a chew toy. That ain't hiding very well lol.

So I'm kind of getting that you consider cloak a luxury item, and I would tend to agree in that it's far less essential than say, energy, attack, or scan.

If somebody enjoys having a lot of cloak on their ship but isn't a hardcore LSB (large ship, not afraid of adding stuff, but still picky about mods -- if a mod is going to add decks, prefers them interesting or at least efficient), what threshold would you set as "worthy" cloak mod? What items are must-have, what do you consider filler/trash (seems that there are a ton more Cloak Mods of Questionable Ability than scan mods)? Or should you just go all-or-nothing with cloak?

Ah, I see what you are asking. I like hacking but have limited deck space. I deploy the four top researchable modules due to the space efficiency, CipherBot 2.0s for the hacking bonus, and Coalition Databases for the % bonus, which are my "must haves" (if I am hacking). The "worthy" cloak mods are modules deployed for general efficiency (multi stat modules) like Parsers, Cybernetic Link Interface, Decryption Senary-Frames, etc. In all honesty, the multi-stat modules are usually deployed more for the scan, and all of the modules mentioned above stay on my ship currently due to me hacking a lot. Back when I was on a raiding binge, all the pure cloak modules came off in favor of weapons.

Thanks for the input. Very true about the multi-mods. It's funny how many good cloak mods function primarily as scan mods.

In my particular case, went LSB a few days ago (+1.6k decks after almost a year and a half of swearing I'd never do it), but am definitely not an "Add ALL the modules!" type of LSB. There are several cloak modules I can't imagine ever bothering with: Phase Interceptor Drives, Rift-Emitters, Bio-Signature Scramblers, Confinement Chambers, and Xecti Disruptors. But on the next tier up, there are a few modules I'm on the fence about: Kronyn Anomaly Engines (leaning strongly against), Zolazin Jammers (leaning against), and Sha'din Security Terminals - A (leaning toward).

Since cloak is so much less essential, it's proving a lot more difficult to choose what is truly "deck worthy" than it is with scan, where nearly all items are installed at all times. Only exceptions are Stryll Transponders (extremely inefficient), Exo-Temporal Translators (inefficient), Datastream Compilers (even as an Aerlen Explorer, they are fairly meh), and Prejor Beacon Sensors (too ugly for my ship)... took all of five seconds to make that decision. Cloak, on the other hand... trying to make a hard choice on them is almost as irritating as constantly swapping mods

I don't really care about cloak (except on planets)- I find a marginally useless stat. So, my cloak is at 1173 at rank 740

Cloak: 5332

rank 736. lol

Cloak: 14923
Rank 1211