Unbalanced ships

[Bloody_Lemon]

My Stealth B actyally succeeded and it was a mighty scary game.

I ran with glaive + 1 combat drone till the very end of sector 6 where I bought a lucky Flak 1.

Took no damage during stages 1,2 but had to jump away on stage 3 with 6 boarders on my ship and mind control and wrecked door system where mind control landed and a rocket started a fire (worst stuff ever). Jumping away took me to a rebel fight of course which ported two more guys on my ship (sigh). I carfully repaired doors while occupying boarders with other guys,suffocated them en masse, dodged one asb shot with the cloak and another one through the sheer awesomeness of mt pilot (I shudder to think what would have happened of it landed in the weapons room where 3 of my crewmen on low hp were repairing the wreckage.

Part 2 of stage 3 cost me another crapload of damage as I completely missed my piloting hit by a missile and evasion drop to 20% ( oh how I wish there was a way to tell the pilot - stop repairing this shit and man the damaged system because it will give us full freaking 45% evade instead of crappy 20).

But we still persevered and took out the big guy. Battered crew and ship but no losses. Combat drone aligning with flak in the end was a cookie for me from the game I guess.

http://imgur.com/Q3RFHdl

[Bloody_Lemon]

Hmm, seems like Stealth C is not actually that bad. Sure, you can get into a huge mess (my first attempt ended immediately to 2xHeavy Lasers), but weapons surely beat Glaive Beam in terms of disabling the enemy first. Thanks to a shop I'm now in sector 3, Flak 1 + starting weapons + 2 shield bubbles on my third attempt despite harvesting a grand 107 scrap after the whole sector 1.

But for the love of god, why doesn't this ship has sensors of all things?

[itg]

I asure you Ghaleon, it is not. It's the worst ship you'll ever play.

At a time I also thought the same as you and maybe at that time I was right because it wasn't AE. But with the enemies you often face now in the stealth ships. The stealth B is all but fun. You're going to restart so much it's not even fun.

I really like Stealth B, and it's noticeably stronger in AE, for the record. Hacking works beautifully with the glaive beam, shields are cheaper, and enemy attack drones are much less common. If you're struggling with it, it's probably because you're trying to dodge shots with the cloak rather than upgrading to level 3 and pre-cloaking at the start of every fight. If you do that, the 15-second head start lets you fire your glaive beam before nearly every weapon, and all the weapons you're likely to see in the first 2 sectors.

[spacecadet13]

Best new feature/ tactic with Stealth B in AE is to man sensors ASAP, often instead of engines. With the exception of nebulas, you can see exactly when all enemy weapons will fire, allowing you to time your cloak to take in as many weapons as possible straight after they fire. Of course, you can finish up still taking hits from one or both even while cloaked (till your base dodge is up via engine upgrades) but the percentages 'usually' work in your favour, and really what are the odds that not only would an enemy shot get through your cloaking and hit your ship, but of all the rooms - 15? - happen to hit your weapons room, the one that could really screw you over?
That would never happen, right? Right?

[itg]

Best new feature/ tactic with Stealth B in AE is to man sensors ASAP, often instead of engines. With the exception of nebulas, you can see exactly when all enemy weapons will fire, allowing you to time your cloak to take in as many weapons as possible straight after they fire. Of course, you can finish up still taking hits from one or both even while cloaked (till your base dodge is up via engine upgrades) but the percentages 'usually' work in your favour, and really what are the odds that not only would an enemy shot get through your cloaking and hit your ship, but of all the rooms - 15? - happen to hit your weapons room, the one that could really screw you over?
That would never happen, right? Right?

Seriously, get level 3 cloaking and cloak before they fire. There won't be anything to dodge, because you shoot first and one-shot the enemy.

[spacecadet13]

Seriously, get level 3 cloaking and cloak before they fire. There won't be anything to dodge, because you shoot first and one-shot the enemy

Riiiight...that's why this ship is top of everyone's tier lists, with a 100% win rate. You just cloak first and then one shot the enemy! All the way through to the flagship. It's so simple!

[5thHorseman]

Seriously, get level 3 cloaking and cloak before they fire. There won't be anything to dodge, because you shoot first and one-shot the enemy

Riiiight...that's why this ship is top of everyone's tier lists, with a 100% win rate. You just cloak first and then one shot the enemy! All the way through to the flagship. It's so simple!

No, just through the first 2 sectors.

[itg]

Seriously, get level 3 cloaking and cloak before they fire. There won't be anything to dodge, because you shoot first and one-shot the enemy

Riiiight...that's why this ship is top of everyone's tier lists, with a 100% win rate. You just cloak first and then one shot the enemy! All the way through to the flagship. It's so simple!

If it weren't for attack drones and the several fights before you reach 50 scrap, it'd pretty high on the list, honestly. I've given you some pretty specific advice. If you don't believe me, try it yourself; it'll only take you 15 minutes. You really can one-shot the majority of ships in sectors 1 and 2 before they fire on you, provided you get level 3 cloaking and cloak first.

[Elhazzared]

itg - I have the ship. I've played it to frustating levels to try to get the C layout. 3 cloak won't save you anyway. Most enemy ships will still fire if you cloak first. Only things on the level of heavy ions will not fire. But all initial missiles. All innitial lasers. Those get to shot before you oneshot it and then you have no cloak available. Of course, since AE about 50% of the ships thrown at you are drone ships and most with beams but hey...

[Twinge]

Does tend to make it frustrating to offer advice and try to help when people just dismiss and exaggerate everything. Drone ships are LESS common early in AE than they were in original FTL. Cloaking Level 3 means the enemy weapons have 7.5 seconds to charge; the lowest their timers will be is 8.1 (Heavy Laser and Leto only), which can fire if you choose not to target your beam at their weapons.

With the addition of hacking, the reduction in early drone ships (esp. the Zoltan Bomber), and the cheaper shields Stealth B is significantly stronger than it was pre-AE.