Is cloaking worth it?

[Sinriel]

Simple question, yes or on? If it's not as simple, here is the situation.

Sector 3, Engi Cruiser, upgraded shields 2/4, starting weapons and drones, 5 crew members. Got 170 scrap, in store now. Nothing I really need, no upgrades are necessary at the moment since I don't have any weapons.

I guess it's either cloak for 150 or upgrading shields to 3/4 for 100 + 50 energy.

If you vote for cloak, what's the best use for it? When they fire, use it so they miss?

[Sick Boy]

cloaking is really useful, but not necessary with the ship you're using, if you wanna go with another ion beam, a weapon and some drones to attack/defend, you won't have the scraps to go for cloacking. BUT! if you can afford it and you don't see yourself maxing weapons and drones, it's a great choice, it gives you the ability to charge your weapons and get the first hit which with your ion beam could mean disabling weapons/shield before he can even start charging his weapons. and then like you said, if you time it well, you can avoid some bad missiles.

[aprogressivist]

Simple answer, yes.

If you can get 40% evade (possible with just 4 bars of engines, a master pilot and a master engineer), cloaking will take you up to the magic 100%, meaning you're immune to anything that's thrown at you. You can activate the cloaking when you see nasty incoming fire; missiles or enough fire to get through your shields. While cloaked, your weapons recharge but theirs don't, so on top of dodging a nasty payload you can usually fire from cloak to get another strike in.

In fact, cloaking is one of the easier methods of dealing with missile salvos (remember that shields, even fully upgraded, offer no protection against them). The alternative ways of handling missiles is drones, but a single ship defense drone probably won't save you in the late game...

[Eyjio]

IMO, cloaking is the best system in the game. Not only does level 2 cloaking make the end boss far, far easier, it allows you to dodge all attacks from enemies full stop, sometimes completely crippling them before they can even fire. This is especially true if you have the weapons pre-igniter, where you fire, cloak and then fire again, taking no damage and utterly devastating them. 100% dodge is ridiculous, let alone stopping the enemy charging their weapons.

[Sinriel]

(Does the dodge bonus come only when invisible?)

Anyway - oh boy! - this is probably the best thing that has happened to me so far. It's a life AND money saving machine! Avoiding missiles saves me a lot of repairing. Too bad stealth engine can not be manned for some passive dodge bonus. So, thanks for the advice, guys, it's rocking!

Another question regarding teleport bays - I never used them because I thought it's your crew that has to go there and fight and I never felt like rising their lives. Maybe I am mistaken, it sends some *other* soldiers, other than your crew? I've seen that it's recommended for the final boss (which I am yet to beat, playing my 6th run since the beginning, all on normal). Also, got Fire Bomb and Hull Beam through events, so I am fine with weapons - at least so far, I guess.

What would be the ultimate weapon for my current set up so far, which one to aim for?

[Sinriel]

For fuck's sake, a prefect run ended up because I couldn't find a store to repair hull for more than 10 sectors... fuck that..... fully equipped with 200 scrap and 3 hull left for 10 sectors.

Fuck the shit with stores. Not able to repair your own hull in any way sucks.

[Eyjio]

Agreed with hull thing. I wish there was some way to repair hull with crew if you're out of danger - maybe like 10 scrap per hull point. Yeah, it'd be expensive but a last resort should be a last resort.

Also, yeah, dodge is only active when invisible. You can see your chance to evade near your o2 level. Dying when you had the fire bomb really sucks though, that thing's brutal.

[Litestrider]

For fuck's sake, a prefect run ended up because I couldn't find a store to repair hull for more than 10 sectors... fuck that..... fully equipped with 200 scrap and 3 hull left for 10 sectors.

Fuck the shit with stores. Not able to repair your own hull in any way sucks.

You can get a hull repair drone, having one of those on an agility/cloak specialized ship would be fantastic.

Unfortunately I've only ever seen one of them. Is it just me or are they way too rare?

[Eyjio]

For fuck's sake, a prefect run ended up because I couldn't find a store to repair hull for more than 10 sectors... fuck that..... fully equipped with 200 scrap and 3 hull left for 10 sectors.

Fuck the shit with stores. Not able to repair your own hull in any way sucks.

You can get a hull repair drone, having one of those on an agility/cloak specialized ship would be fantastic.

Unfortunately I've only ever seen one of them. Is it just me or are they way too rare?

Everything is rare. Try aiming for a specific weapon, even a fairly common one like a hull breacher missile or small bomb. Chances are, unless you strike oil, you won't get it. It's one of my few problems with the game - you can't turtle to ensure you're ready for the boss and you can't guarantee load out because of the randomised weapons. Basically, I just think the game should be about 50% longer to mitigate people's frustrations. Plus, then you'd face hard ships before the flagship comes and does its "millions of missiles and billions of drones" thing.

[LaserSushi]

With the stealth cruiser, (especially B layout)is amazing once you get shields. So save that scrap. Even one shield bubble will do you fantastically early on. One tip though is to find a good bomb-launcher, preferably one with an effect. Type B with a fire-bomb, and a ship attack drone is what I killed the boss with. It was... easy. Don't forget to grab any augments that seem relevant.