From: leonard@mimsy.umd.edu (Leonard Dickens)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Cloaking in bases
Date: 12 Aug 92 15:20:23 GMT
Organization: Universal Export Ltd, Regent's Park, London

One of the myriad uses of bases is the very simple, yet boring one of
local space control/army collection.  Often you can choose your one or
two planets on the front line, which is best for several reasons.
Your amazing combat power can prevent the enemy from easy access to
important areas behind you.  Being near the wall is generally a win:
it ameliorates your huge speed disadvantage.  You can collect armies
pretty much any time except in the heat of a determined ogg.  Your
teammates may very well be ogged if they slow down to pick up on the
front line.  Finally, you are far from any HKs that appear and can
pull back before they get near you, if necessary.

Sometimes, however, the agri is not at the front; also there will be
times (usually in a comeback) that your team will have just taken the
"side" planets, and they need defense:

Paul Petonak writes:
>I wanted to say a few words about an unusual, and amusing, tactic
>used by Wreck while basing a day or two ago on rwd4.
>
> ... Eri was agri and Wreck base moved over to protect it and
>sir and to pick up any armies which might surface. After a while I noticed 
>only a ?? near eri. 
>
> [let's cut to the chase:]
>
>-- explosion
>
>GOD->ALL  jackass (F0+5 armies) was kill 23.30 for Wreck (Rf)

In this game, I knew the Feds were hot to take both Eri (r/f/a) and
Sir (f, maybe r too.)  So that was the place to guard.  After I moved
over there and toasted a few people, the customers stopped coming.

So, I cloaked.  I think that cloaking is really an underused tactic in
bases.  Bases have 60000 fuel; they can cloak practically forever.
When you have nothing else to do (few armies on board for your team to
use, the enemy is avoiding you, and you are not near enough to them to
force them to fight with you)... why not cloak?

The costs to your team are most likely small.  You lose a little fuel
that you can almost instantly regenerate, but more importantly,
sometimes it confuses your less clueful mates into zooming out toward
you and venting their fuel tanks, which is Bad.

Weighed against that, though, are several benefits.  First, you always
have the hope of catching and toasting clueless enemies.  In fact,
even the clueful ones have to be careful; if they are moving in at
high warp and you are moving towards them, they may have only a few
seconds to notice your '??' before they are in tractor range.  Second,
the enemy DOES NOT KNOW where you are; as time rolls on and they
haven't come close enough to see you, the area in which you might be
increases... this breeds uncertainty for them, which is good.  Often
you can sneak to armies you might not have otherwise gotten and pick
them up before the enemy realize you are gone from where they last saw
you... and by that time it is too late for them to exploit your
absence.  Finally, there is a distinct cost to the enemy just to
determine if you are still there or not: namely, one of them has to
spend the time to fly over and see.


>Really, this was very amusing. I saw it happen once, I don't know how
>many people fell for it. I know Panther didnt as he sat on And and waited
>for me to come over and kill him. This was the first time I had ever seen 
>this done; I hope I see it many more times BUT I hope I never fall for it. 
>I don't think the guy who fell for it was stupid or anything, it's just
>not something one would expect. 

Yup.

-Wreck