All the talk lately of EW ships and destroyer smoke screens combined with yet another very boring day at work provoked me to come up with ideas for a BfG cloaking device. And to keep it with the style, I hoped to make it work more like a submarine than anything else. As a disclaimer I must point out that I have done no playtesting on these (making them up as I wrote) so any comments would be appreciated.
At the height of the Gothic War a new type of shield generator was brought to the Phi-Delphi shipyards and fitted to a Lunar class cruiser for testing. The Adepts were stunned to discover that when the shields were switched on the ship vanished from their sensors! However, further testing showed that the new shields had several critical weaknesses which limited its combat utility. It still had some use for scouting and raiding, so it was refitted to several Dauntless class light criusers for further trials.
CLOAKING DEVICE
ACTIVATION
A Cloaking Device may be activated or deactivated at the start of that ship's Movement Phase. Either action is a Special Order (use Reload Ordnance) and so must be rolled for in the usual manner.
DETECTION
A ship fitted with a Cloaking Device is very hard to detect until it attacks, making it ideal for ambushes and scouting missions. An undetected Cloaked ship may not be fired upon or attacked in any way.
A Cloaked ship greater than 30cm from the nearest enemy may not be detected unless it uses a Special Order, launches Ordnance, or takes damage somehow during its turn (ie by hitting Blast Markers).
To detect a Cloaked ship the enemy side must roll the Detection Value of the Cloaked ship or less on 2d6 at the start of their Movement phase.
Detection Value = Starting Hits of Cloaked Ship
For example, a Cloaked Dauntless class ship has a basic DV of 6. A Chaos force would have to roll >=6 to attack it, or >=8 of 2 Chaos ships were within 15 cm.
DRAWBACKS
A Cloaked ship may not fire any weapons while Cloaked, although it may launch Ordnance.
While the Cloaking Device is activated the ship counts as having NO shields. Therefore, Blast Markers and Celestial Phenomena may damage the ship.
COST
(This is the tricky part. I'm estimating 50 pts. but playtesting will have to tell.)