if your scan is lower than someone's cloak is it impossible to find them on your battle tab?

I think it's supposed to work that way, but occasionally I'll find someone with 3 CipherBots on (when I only have 6 scan). Refreshing the tab won't always make them go away.

I don't think so, as it doesn't work the same as planetary scan vs. cloak.

Just the amount of cloak a person has cuts down the % of them being found on someones battle tab rather than making them invisible.

My reason for thinking the above is that in the past i've been running with 2k scan, and been able to find those who have over 4k cloak, it was rare that they would appear but they did appear.

is it possible that at the moment ur BT updated, the guy actaully have a firewall debuff on?
and when you looked at them, you either didn't check or it just expired/removed

the only way that one can be sure is to comm them the next time you see such a case and ask if they were at full cloak power at some specific point in time

I check the effects tab on every person i hit before i even attack, one to see if they're online, two to see if they have any neg effects and three, because i'm nosy like that.

considering it's a rare occurance, it's still fully possible for the guy to be active and happened to pop a null in the 3 secs between he showed on ur BT and u opening his face~

Not all the time. Like I've said, I'll have someone on my tab with 3 CipherBots - No other affects dependent on cloak - and I can refresh the tab and he'll still be there (multiple times).

Unless he's managing to hit a QFT just before I refresh the tab and null it away just before I check his ship 15 times in a minute, something's busted with cloaking sometimes.

well..... we also don't know what really triggers a refresh-off-BT other than a tap do we?