Cloaking Cost

[Spacecowboy87]

A ship cloaks and pays for the first four impulses (5P2). Could a ship, if it felt the need, go ahead and pay for more impulses right then? I realize you wouldn't want to pay too far in advance for tactical reasons, and of course you couldn't cross the turn break. But I hate record keeping, and if I intend to spend the whole turn cloaked I'd like to just pay for it all up front.

[mjwest]

How you handle it within your group is up to you, however, by the rules, no, you can't "prepay" for cloak any more than you can "prepay" for an unfired disruptor bolt.

After those first four impulses, it is purely pay-as-you-go and impulse-by-impulse.

[Kang]

Personally, I just set aside the number of energy tokens I anticipate using for the cloak

[Maldus]

Sorry for the necro on this ancient thread but...same topic basically...

Cloak rules say you pay for cloak in Other Functions. There is also a sentence in 1E1 that mentions "Pay to begin or continue cloak". I get the feeling that the 1E1 reference is not correct...that cloaking is not handled in EA at all.

[mjwest]

Yeah, that probably shouldn't be there. I think it either left over as an SFB-ism (a vestige of the original SFB rule that doesn't apply in FC) or we original thought of optionally letting the cloak be paid for in EA, too.

Regardless, it doesn't apply anymore, as it is only paid for in the Other Functions phase.

[Maldus]

Many thanks. Makes sense. I've found a few bits and pieces in the rules like this but honestly, very few. Really well done overall.

[Mike]

I hope a note is made to correct this and whatever other little things have been uncovered for a new update of the master rulebook (especially the electronic version).

[mjwest]

Yeah, this stuff gets noted. However, I have no knowledge of when the next update is scheduled, so there's that.