stealth questions

[black mole]

Does any body know what exactly a stealth task force or ship design entails? Does a ghost device for example do nothing for a ship that isn't stealthed? Is stealth task forces the reason why enemy ships sometimes disappear even though they're right there next to my ships unloading all their weapons on mine while I can't counter attack? Are there counters to this invisibility? I've seemed to observe this both in very early and very late stages of the game, and its only sometimes clearly a case where my ships are simply too far away to detect the enemy. I also can't recall ever seeing the opposite, a case where I was clearly close enough to the enemy for them to see me, but they appeared unable to or my units were half transparent or anything unusual. Also, does it cost anything to designate a unit as stealth? I can't seem to remember seeign any cost or space changes when the box was filled.

[Proteus_MST]

For a Stealth-Designs you have to have one of those Cloakingg-Devices.
The checkbox in the Design-Screen is only for Filter-Purposes, I think.
If you have a Cloaking Device installed and have checked "Stealth" then you can see this ship in your current Designs, if you use the Filter for Stealth-Ships.
If you check the Stealth-Box before you have the necessary technology for the worst cloaking Device and click on Autobuild, no Cloaking Device is built into the design and your Ship isn´t tagged a Stealth Ship, after you complete the design.

As for the disappearing enemy ships:
It has something to do with the ECM-Devices.
The higher the technology of the enemy ECM-Devices and the more ECM-Devices the enemy fleet has, the nearer it can get to you until you are able to see it.
The Sight-Range is also influenced by the size of the Ships. The smaller the ships in the fleet the nearer you have to get to see them.

To counter ECM you´ve got to install ECCM. I always install one Sensor and as much ECCM as I can get into my Recon-Ships (often 7-8 Devices on a Recon-Ship with Cruiser or Battleship-Size).
And I also have specialized Counter Surveillance-Ships which instead of the ECCM-Devices install the same number of ECM-Devices.
I normally have at least one ECCM and one ECM - Ship in all of my major fleets.

[Alastair412]

Note that cloaking devices actually have two meaningful stats, one supposedly for "traditional" cloaking, and another one which is the same as ECM. Main difference is that the worst cloak's ECM value is equal to ECM V, but that cloaks can't be stacked.