Unbalanced ships

[Elhazzared]

The difference is that other ships I don't take damage every fights. I take 1 damage every now and then, 2 damage rarely. With the stealth B I am almost sure to take a minimum of 2 damage per fight... Once I hit cloak level 3 I also will keep taking damage, less but still damage in almost every single fight.

I never seem to get other decent weapons early enough to change my starting weapons and stores don't help if I'm getting an early cloak 3 since that's 70 scrap flying out the window... Worse yet if i think of cloak 3 first and then shields which is 125 and let's not forget another 40 or 50 for power... My runs never get past the first sector really. By the time I'm close to leaving it I'm either on the red or close. I have cloak 3 and likelly not even enough scrap to repair everything... that is the problem with stealth B. It just can't keep up with the damage it is forced to take unlike all other ships.

Cloak fist is also not the thing to do. I've tested it several times and there is absolutly no weapon that will not have charged in time and shoot at you if you cloak first. The reason i know is because many times I have to just cloak first because of drones (I even wait a second or two until the drone is going to fire). After the cloak is through the enmy ship, no matter what weapon it has still fires before I do.

[Bloody_Lemon]

I don't know how you tested things, but consider this:

Glaive has 25 second charge time. With manned bonus (even without skill levels) it gets to 22.5 seconds. Cloak gives you 15 seconds. 22.5-15 = 7.5 seconds. Barring charge lasers even Heavy Laser I with its 9 second charge time (even taking into account .90 second discount from manned bonus) will not do it in time.

That's said, Stealth B sucks. And statement about no damage with level 3 cloak is simply wrong on account of drones/Zoltan shields. Engi B on the other hand will take damage from missiles only if you choose to upgrade the shields as soon as possible (the same 50 scrap as for level 3 cloak). Likewise, Engi B will not get absolutely helpless after a lucky shot to weapon system. It has also decent reactor level and its weapons/defense mechanisms don't have to borrow into engines/oxygen to actually work.

[Elhazzared]

Bloody_Lemon - The way I tested it was simple. By playing it... I know math wise I should be able to at least avoid the longer charge weapons but the only one I seam to be able to avoid firing is like... Heavy ions. (never got charge lasers in the first sector). Even heavy lasers still charge and fire before I get my shot off. Even if I wait 1 to 2 seconds before cloaking cause of possible dornes.

[Bloody_Lemon]

Well then there may be something that you are missing, because level 3 cloak from the start is the only tactic about stealth B that actually works.

I actually have a very nice Stealth B going on (started a couple of days ago and left it at that) where I made around 230 scrap in the first sector alone by finding Charge Ion and Repair Burst (and immediately selling them) and being generally very lucky with beacons. I think I'm hanging near the end of sector 2 with level 2 shields and a level 4 engines hoarding scrap to find some other weapons/hacking. Hopefully this run will allow me to get a taste of the delicious awfulness of the abomination that is Stealth C.

[Elhazzared]

Well, lucky you. I never get a good start with it, it seems. As for doing something wrong... Well I can't really do that can I?

The weapon auto-charges and I press cloak as soon as possible. Heavy laser still shot before I get to shot and yes I have the weapon systems crewed.

Quite frankly I've already resigned to try a normal run with it. I'm probably just going to restart as much as possible until I can get a weapon pre-igniter on the first sector and then I'll probably have a chance.

[Twinge]

Stealth B is actually significantly better in AE - still a low tier ship, but definitely not dead last anymore. Shields now only cost 125 instead of 150. Zoltan Bombers (the ships with Drones AND Zoltan Shields) can no longer show up at all in the few few sectors. Hacking is easy to find and incredibly powerful alongside the Glaive.

There's a lot of nuance to playing the ship well, though - it will definitely feel like it just gets screwed by luck if you don't know exactly how to handle rough situations.

[Elhazzared]

Well, maybe it feels better for you now. For me however it was completly screwed over in AE. It was already bad before but it's worse now except perhaps for less 25 scrap on shields.

Before I at least had a decent selection of enemies. I wasn't getting beam drones ship nearly every jump and my weapon systems were rarely shot. Now it's just all gone to hell for some reason... Same as for some reason the the sector seeding of beacons is incredibly bad now.

[Diet Water]

Before AE, lvl 3 cloak first was the thing to do because the manning bonus would bring the charge time low enough that your Glaive would fire before even Letos/Heavy Is. Now, since enemy crew start at their systems, if an enemy ship has 3 crew, Letos/Heavy Is will charge in 8.1 seconds compared to the 7.5 seconds of uncloaked Glaive charge. So if the time between the charge and the actual contact of the beam with the weapon bay is >0.6 seconds, they'll still fire. However Shields are 25 cheaper, so that kind of balances out. If you're going to spend scrap before saving for shields, I would buy the 3rd & 4th level of engines so you can at least match the Nesasio's 90% evasion with cloak.

Another thing: facing Zoltan ships is not completely hopeless. If you line your beam up to enter a room or two at the very end of its line, you can hit them after the Super Shield has taken its 2 room damage, potentially disabling dangerous weapons and possibly shields.

Yeah you can potentially get screwed over by one or two beam ships, but you can avoid asteroid fields that other 1-shield ships still fear (enemies with Flak I + basic laser in asteroids SUCK), and running into 10 ships with Artemis missiles in a row is no problem, unlike any other ship not named Basilisk or Carnelian. And dealing without shields for awhile is just a fun way to play imo.
If you can't tell, the stealth ships are my favorites.

[Ghaleon]

I was traumatized by stealth ships a long time ago, and finally had a good run with one recently, but I still haven't unlocked stealth B which looks alot more fun to me.

But yeah, just as an example, on one of my games with stealth A, the very first beacon I went to had an enemy with two beam drones (before advanced mode, advanced seems to have nerfed them). They tore my shield less ship to shreds in no time flat.

Speaking of beam drones though, they seem flat out awful now for the player, I have never ever seen my beam drone hit more than once, the laser is so short now and never targets more than one room. I'm sorry but wtf would I want a beam that never bothers hitting more than one room, and which cannot damage shields like an ordinary assault 1 drone could? blech.

[Elhazzared]

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.