FTL Ship Analysis: Stealth Cruisers
Stealth Cruiser A: The Nesasio
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Mini Beam+Dual Lasers
Maximum of 3 Weapons, 2 different Drones.
Starts with the Long-Ranged Sensors and Titanium Casing Augments.
Bird of Prey
Destroy an enemy ship, while Cloaked, with the ship having taken no Hull damage prior to that Cloak.
Note that shooting with Ion weaponry doesn't count against you, and similarly you can fire non-beam weapons and then Cloak to avoid reducing your Cloak duration. Even hitting Shields with lasers/Combat Drones/whatever doesn't count against you, so long as no Hull is taken off the enemy before you Cloak.
This is actually a pain to organically earn in the Stealth Cruiser A. If you're Achievement hunting, just wait until you've unlocked the Stealth Cruiser B; it's basically guaranteed you'll earn it without even trying.
Phase Shift
Avoid 9 points of damage with a single Cloak.
If you beat the game, this is basically a gimme; you should have over 100% evasion while Cloaked by the time you reach the Rebel Flagship, and its third phase launches a super-attack that totals 7 damage and will automatically fire even if you're currently Cloaked. Activating the Cloak in response to regular weapons fire will often result in in this 'power surge' attack giving you the Achievement.
Meanwhile, the Stealth Cruiser C being defined primarily by starting with a Shield Overcharger Drone... yes, they're one of the more expensive Drones in the game, but even if they were 200 Scrap, it'd still be the case that any ship that starts with a Drone Control could literally luck into it in the first Beacon, totally at random, and be able to use it more or less right away. And even for ships that don't start with a Drone Control, it's a lot more plausible to purchase it relatively early; I've actually managed to buy it in the first Sector a couple of times!
So the Stealth Cruiser C's primary 'unique' quality isn't really all that unique.
So on top of being horribly un-viable, it's not even justifying its existence as a distinct choice through uniqueness.
Yes, its Shield Overcharger Drone is uniquely... 'good'.... but it's just a Power bar being shaved off. That's nice, but it doesn't do anything to resolve the Drone's actual problems. If the Plus version here charged twice as fast and didn't have additional layers take increasingly long to add, the Stealth Cruiser C would probably still be terrible, but it would at least be a solid attempt at making a distinctive ship and I wouldn't bother to bring up other ships being able to loot regular Shield Overcharger Drones. Or if the Shield Overcharger Drone+ stuck with you until destroyed, coming along on Jumps, and your Supershield actually got carried over from one fight to the next, that would still probably be pretty bad but it would at least be fairly close to an attempt at making a more viable Zoltan Cruiser-type ship. (In terms of relying on a Supershield to survive)
And yes the Stealth Cruiser C's Charge Laser is unique and actually one of the better 'never found in the field' weapons, but it's not interesting and it's not like it's great enough to make up for the Stealth Cruiser C's flaws.
If you're playing the game for fun and don't care about '100%ing' the game, don't even bother to play this, and don't worry about unlocking it. You're not missing out.
The frustrating thing is that this is, of course, advanced edition content, and like so much advanced edition content the devs don't seem to have learned anything about how their game works after releasing it. If this had been part of the initial wave of ships, I'd have gotten it, but I find it pretty unbelievable the devs didn't cotton onto how their system is extremely hostile to not having an innate regular Shield (For one thing, they're extremely reluctant to have enemy Ships lack Shields; only certain Autoships that are quick to run away do without), and even with the Shield Overcharger itself being advanced edition content... I have difficulty believing they actually thought it could act as a reasonable Shield System stand-in with its numbers.
How on Earth did this go so wrong?
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Next time, we break from the regular chain of unlocks to cover the Crystal Cruisers, seeing as how the Stealth Cruiser is the last link in the chain of regular unlocks.
See you then.
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Mini Beam+Dual Lasers
Maximum of 3 Weapons, 2 different Drones.
Starts with the Long-Ranged Sensors and Titanium Casing Augments.
Room total: 15
Notice that the Stealth Cruiser A lacks Shields.
On the plus side, you can buy Shields from Stores, and indeed literally every Store offering Systems will include Shields in its list until you purchase Shields, so you can buy them very reliably if you can scrape together the Scrap. On the minus side, it costs 125 Scrap to purchase Shields, so it's generally unrealistic to buy them before you're around Sector 4 or so; that's more Scrap than you're liable to earn across the entirety of either Sector 1 or Sector 2.
Cloak is also not really an equivalent replacement. The game is very blatantly tuned around Shields being an assumed part of combat, with Cloak handled as a bonus, not an equivalent alternative. Asteroid fields, for example, are normally slightly player-favoring on average because the player can deliberately smash the enemy's Shields System to get the asteroids hitting the enemy's ship, where the AI will have to luck into targeting the player's Shield System for an equivalent benefit. For the Stealth Cruiser A, though, you should never enter an asteroid field if at all possible prior to purchasing Shields, because without maxed Cloak and high Engines it's not possible to reliably avoid taking damage from an asteroid field. (By 'high Engines', I'm talking 'so high you can charge your Jump before your cloak runs out'. Which in practice means you have Piloting and Engines maxed, and activate Cloak no sooner than when you see your first asteroid) Similarly, solar flares completely ignore Cloak, but are actually affected by Shields; when Shields are up, you take 0-1 Hull damage from a solar flare and get 1-2 randomly-placed fires. With Shields down, you take 1-2 Hull damage and 2-5 fires will be placed on your ship!
In general, though, with the Stealth Cruiser A you have to pick your fights carefully, kill quickly, and run away from any fight you can't cripple quickly.
Thankfully, Long-Ranged Sensors helps significantly in this regard, but to be honest the game really needed to give the player a lot more information to make this truly, properly, viable. Long-Ranged Sensors doesn't inform you of any details of ships you see at a distance; you can't see that you'll be dealing with a Slug pirate ship, let alone the specific sub-type. This severely limits your ability to intelligently pick your fights.
Still, once you get the hang of using Cloak, it's decently viable. You need to buy Shields as soon as it's not crippling you to save for it, but it's reasonably feasible to get there semi-reliably. The big thing is that you need to learn to use Cloak after the enemy initially fires; if, for example, an enemy ship has two Heavy Lasers (9 second charge time, we'll ignore that they're probably manned for the moment), a Cloak of 2 is mostly-reliably buying you roughly 28 seconds of safety if you wait until they fire before Cloak; 10 seconds of Cloaking preventing their weapons from charging, 9 seconds lost to the initial volley probably missing, and another 9 seconds lost to charging for the second volley. Given Dual Lasers charge in 10 seconds and the Mini Beam in 12 seconds... that's easily enough to get in two volleys, and indeed you can fire the Dual Lasers before you initiate Cloak, potentially while enemy projectiles are on the way, letting you get that initial volley in without shortening your cloak period. For a while, that can often be used to smash through Shields and cripple Weapons, at least long enough for your Cloak to cooldown and start the cycle anew.
That said, it's still only semi-reliable at the best of times.
First of all, initially Cloaking isn't a 100% reliable dodge. Engines 4 with Piloting and Engines manned gives you 30 base evasion; under Cloak, that's only a 90% chance to dodge hits. Stealth Cruiser A runs will periodically go catastrophically wrong in the early-game through no fault of your own simply because eg an enemy laser got through, hit your Weapons or Cloaking System, and set it on fire.
Secondly, the Stealth Cruiser A is severely matchup-y due to its reliance on Cloak for survival. Ships that are equipped with Beam weapons are much less impacted by Cloaking, as they can't miss and will continue hitting once initiated even if you Cloak; against early-game Mini Beam-equipped ships, you can usually arrange to stall with Cloak and fire before they charge... but Mini Beams only require one Power and early-game enemy ships frequently have 3 Power of Weapons and a Shield bubble, so even if everything goes perfectly what will often happen if you target their Weapons with both of your weapons is their Mini Beam fires anyway, nothing you could do to stop it. Even worse is ships with offensive Drones, all of which have extraordinary fire rates normally balanced by their lack of Shield-bursting ability making them reliant on Weapons to get enemy Shields out of the way... when you don't have Shields. If you encounter a ship with offensive Drones before you can reach Cloak 2? You're taking damage unless the RNG is kind. Particularly noteworthy is the dreaded Mini Beam+Beam Drone ship; where for other ships, this is a joke that literally can't hurt you unless you deliberately turn off your Shields, for the Stealth Cruiser A you're going to die if the AI ends up targeting... well, basically any of your Systems. Which is very likely to happen before you can Jump.
This type of issue is why I say Long-Ranged Sensors really needed to give you more information for the Stealth Cruiser A's design to make proper sense. You need to be able to go 'I see a beam weapon and/or offensive Drones, so I'm not going to that Beacon', and you can't.
Thirdly, while the Dual Laser+Mini Beam combination is surprisingly solid against early-game ships, once you're facing 2 Shield bubbles you better have found something else, weapon-wise, or else you're going to be horribly unreliable. (And it needs to be, you know, not a Fire Beam or Pike Beam or otherwise utterly unhelpful at breaking through Shields) If you still don't have anything by the time you're facing 3 Shield bubble ships... you're just dead. And that's not a hypothetical; I've had runs that literally never had an opportunity for a weapon by the time that point occurred, and crashed and burned with no ability to do anything about it, having scoured the Sectors for Stores and found plenty of Stores, just none offering weapons, and not getting weapons from events.
There's also the issue of crew experience. The Stealth Cruiser A is actually one of the better ships at building Weapons experience, but even though 4 Engines gives it the highest initial evasion rate of any ship -only one other ship even has three starting Engines- it's terrible at getting that vital crew-derived evasion. Similarly, you can't build Shields experience until it's so late you're extremely unlikely to max it, and there's no Cloak experience to build instead. This can be eased by luck with crew purchases or crew events, such as getting one of the fixed super-crew that's max-experience in everything, but this can't be counted on. Even Store-bought crew can't be counted on to provide an escape hatch.
Notice that the Stealth Cruiser A lacks Shields.
On the plus side, you can buy Shields from Stores, and indeed literally every Store offering Systems will include Shields in its list until you purchase Shields, so you can buy them very reliably if you can scrape together the Scrap. On the minus side, it costs 125 Scrap to purchase Shields, so it's generally unrealistic to buy them before you're around Sector 4 or so; that's more Scrap than you're liable to earn across the entirety of either Sector 1 or Sector 2.
Cloak is also not really an equivalent replacement. The game is very blatantly tuned around Shields being an assumed part of combat, with Cloak handled as a bonus, not an equivalent alternative. Asteroid fields, for example, are normally slightly player-favoring on average because the player can deliberately smash the enemy's Shields System to get the asteroids hitting the enemy's ship, where the AI will have to luck into targeting the player's Shield System for an equivalent benefit. For the Stealth Cruiser A, though, you should never enter an asteroid field if at all possible prior to purchasing Shields, because without maxed Cloak and high Engines it's not possible to reliably avoid taking damage from an asteroid field. (By 'high Engines', I'm talking 'so high you can charge your Jump before your cloak runs out'. Which in practice means you have Piloting and Engines maxed, and activate Cloak no sooner than when you see your first asteroid) Similarly, solar flares completely ignore Cloak, but are actually affected by Shields; when Shields are up, you take 0-1 Hull damage from a solar flare and get 1-2 randomly-placed fires. With Shields down, you take 1-2 Hull damage and 2-5 fires will be placed on your ship!
In general, though, with the Stealth Cruiser A you have to pick your fights carefully, kill quickly, and run away from any fight you can't cripple quickly.
Thankfully, Long-Ranged Sensors helps significantly in this regard, but to be honest the game really needed to give the player a lot more information to make this truly, properly, viable. Long-Ranged Sensors doesn't inform you of any details of ships you see at a distance; you can't see that you'll be dealing with a Slug pirate ship, let alone the specific sub-type. This severely limits your ability to intelligently pick your fights.
Still, once you get the hang of using Cloak, it's decently viable. You need to buy Shields as soon as it's not crippling you to save for it, but it's reasonably feasible to get there semi-reliably. The big thing is that you need to learn to use Cloak after the enemy initially fires; if, for example, an enemy ship has two Heavy Lasers (9 second charge time, we'll ignore that they're probably manned for the moment), a Cloak of 2 is mostly-reliably buying you roughly 28 seconds of safety if you wait until they fire before Cloak; 10 seconds of Cloaking preventing their weapons from charging, 9 seconds lost to the initial volley probably missing, and another 9 seconds lost to charging for the second volley. Given Dual Lasers charge in 10 seconds and the Mini Beam in 12 seconds... that's easily enough to get in two volleys, and indeed you can fire the Dual Lasers before you initiate Cloak, potentially while enemy projectiles are on the way, letting you get that initial volley in without shortening your cloak period. For a while, that can often be used to smash through Shields and cripple Weapons, at least long enough for your Cloak to cooldown and start the cycle anew.
That said, it's still only semi-reliable at the best of times.
First of all, initially Cloaking isn't a 100% reliable dodge. Engines 4 with Piloting and Engines manned gives you 30 base evasion; under Cloak, that's only a 90% chance to dodge hits. Stealth Cruiser A runs will periodically go catastrophically wrong in the early-game through no fault of your own simply because eg an enemy laser got through, hit your Weapons or Cloaking System, and set it on fire.
Secondly, the Stealth Cruiser A is severely matchup-y due to its reliance on Cloak for survival. Ships that are equipped with Beam weapons are much less impacted by Cloaking, as they can't miss and will continue hitting once initiated even if you Cloak; against early-game Mini Beam-equipped ships, you can usually arrange to stall with Cloak and fire before they charge... but Mini Beams only require one Power and early-game enemy ships frequently have 3 Power of Weapons and a Shield bubble, so even if everything goes perfectly what will often happen if you target their Weapons with both of your weapons is their Mini Beam fires anyway, nothing you could do to stop it. Even worse is ships with offensive Drones, all of which have extraordinary fire rates normally balanced by their lack of Shield-bursting ability making them reliant on Weapons to get enemy Shields out of the way... when you don't have Shields. If you encounter a ship with offensive Drones before you can reach Cloak 2? You're taking damage unless the RNG is kind. Particularly noteworthy is the dreaded Mini Beam+Beam Drone ship; where for other ships, this is a joke that literally can't hurt you unless you deliberately turn off your Shields, for the Stealth Cruiser A you're going to die if the AI ends up targeting... well, basically any of your Systems. Which is very likely to happen before you can Jump.
This type of issue is why I say Long-Ranged Sensors really needed to give you more information for the Stealth Cruiser A's design to make proper sense. You need to be able to go 'I see a beam weapon and/or offensive Drones, so I'm not going to that Beacon', and you can't.
Thirdly, while the Dual Laser+Mini Beam combination is surprisingly solid against early-game ships, once you're facing 2 Shield bubbles you better have found something else, weapon-wise, or else you're going to be horribly unreliable. (And it needs to be, you know, not a Fire Beam or Pike Beam or otherwise utterly unhelpful at breaking through Shields) If you still don't have anything by the time you're facing 3 Shield bubble ships... you're just dead. And that's not a hypothetical; I've had runs that literally never had an opportunity for a weapon by the time that point occurred, and crashed and burned with no ability to do anything about it, having scoured the Sectors for Stores and found plenty of Stores, just none offering weapons, and not getting weapons from events.
There's also the issue of crew experience. The Stealth Cruiser A is actually one of the better ships at building Weapons experience, but even though 4 Engines gives it the highest initial evasion rate of any ship -only one other ship even has three starting Engines- it's terrible at getting that vital crew-derived evasion. Similarly, you can't build Shields experience until it's so late you're extremely unlikely to max it, and there's no Cloak experience to build instead. This can be eased by luck with crew purchases or crew events, such as getting one of the fixed super-crew that's max-experience in everything, but this can't be counted on. Even Store-bought crew can't be counted on to provide an escape hatch.
This means the Stealth Cruiser A actually tends to be behind by a fairly significant amount compared to eg the Kestral Cruiser A by the time you're in the mid-game. It's not like Cloak is unpurchaseable, either; it's expensive, yeah, enough so I rarely actually buy it, but honestly part of why I rarely buy it is it's not so amazing as to readily justify the price-point and most runs don't have the mounds of Scrap necessary to justify low-value purchases. And Shields only costs 25 less to initially purchase; the two primary reasons I always buy Shields if possible with a Stealth Cruiser A is that Shields are essential, and that your overall ability to sink Scrap into Cloak is much lower than with Shields (150 Scrap up front vs 125, yes, but upgrading Cloak is 25+50=75 and you're done, where upgrading Shields is 20+30+40+60+80+100=330), meaning the Stealth Cruiser A is much more likely to end up with Scrap laying around to purchase Shields from running out of other things to spend it on than the reverse of buying Cloak with the Kestral Cruiser A. Even if you prefer to stop at three Shield bubbles, that's still 150 Scrap vs 125 for fully upgrading Cloak.
Overall, the Stealth Cruiser A is probably an above-average ship (Simply because, honestly, most player ships in FTL are very bad, and it's merely flawed), and indeed is reasonably enjoyable if you're okay with occasionally restarting over uncontrollable RNG ruining a run before it's even gotten properly started. I do wish the numbers had been tuned differently -I don't get why Cloak doesn't provide better base evasion, honestly, as the primary consequence of it only providing 60 is this dumb point that early-game Stealth Cruisers have low-but-existent odds of the RNG screwing them over- but this is a respectably-designed ship.
Its Achievements are also some of the better-designed ones in the game, being vaguely interesting, connected to its distinctive qualities, and not either horrible RNG-fests or 'easy to get if you throw away a run on it, nightmarish to get in actual organic play'.
Overall, the Stealth Cruiser A is probably an above-average ship (Simply because, honestly, most player ships in FTL are very bad, and it's merely flawed), and indeed is reasonably enjoyable if you're okay with occasionally restarting over uncontrollable RNG ruining a run before it's even gotten properly started. I do wish the numbers had been tuned differently -I don't get why Cloak doesn't provide better base evasion, honestly, as the primary consequence of it only providing 60 is this dumb point that early-game Stealth Cruisers have low-but-existent odds of the RNG screwing them over- but this is a respectably-designed ship.
Its Achievements are also some of the better-designed ones in the game, being vaguely interesting, connected to its distinctive qualities, and not either horrible RNG-fests or 'easy to get if you throw away a run on it, nightmarish to get in actual organic play'.
Speaking of.
Bird of Prey
Destroy an enemy ship, while Cloaked, with the ship having taken no Hull damage prior to that Cloak.
Note that shooting with Ion weaponry doesn't count against you, and similarly you can fire non-beam weapons and then Cloak to avoid reducing your Cloak duration. Even hitting Shields with lasers/Combat Drones/whatever doesn't count against you, so long as no Hull is taken off the enemy before you Cloak.
This is actually a pain to organically earn in the Stealth Cruiser A. If you're Achievement hunting, just wait until you've unlocked the Stealth Cruiser B; it's basically guaranteed you'll earn it without even trying.
Phase Shift
Avoid 9 points of damage with a single Cloak.
If you beat the game, this is basically a gimme; you should have over 100% evasion while Cloaked by the time you reach the Rebel Flagship, and its third phase launches a super-attack that totals 7 damage and will automatically fire even if you're currently Cloaked. Activating the Cloak in response to regular weapons fire will often result in in this 'power surge' attack giving you the Achievement.
It's also entirely possible to earn it by encountering an enemy ship with Cloak late in a run, since they're liable to end up alpha-striking you with four weapons: if there's no non-damaging weapons and no beam weapons in their kit, you'll probably dodge 9+ damage as a result without even thinking of the Achievement.
Tactical Approach
Reach Sector 8 without ever entering an environmental hazard Beacon.
Somewhat luck-based, as the game is willing to generate Sector setups where it's physically impossible to avoid an environmental hazard. Overall, though, you're pretty likely to earn it fairly incidentally; you start with Long-Ranged Sensors, environmental hazards are mostly mildly-to-heavily player-hostile so you should prefer to avoid them with any ship, and the Stealth Cruiser A lacking a Shield tilts things heavily toward environmental hazards being an always-avoid until such time as you can scrape together the Scrap for Shields.
Curiously, Anti-Ship Batteries don't count against you, even though they get the Sector map visuals used for environmental hazards. 'Natural' ASBs are rare, mind.
As such, it's really not that hard to unlock the Stealth Cruiser B; Phase Shift and Tactical Approach may well be both earned in your first victorious run, or even a non-victorious run.
Stealth Cruiser B: DA-SR 12
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Glaive Beam
Maximum of 3 Weapons, 2 different Drones.
Starts with the Long-Ranged Sensors Augment.
Tactical Approach
Reach Sector 8 without ever entering an environmental hazard Beacon.
Somewhat luck-based, as the game is willing to generate Sector setups where it's physically impossible to avoid an environmental hazard. Overall, though, you're pretty likely to earn it fairly incidentally; you start with Long-Ranged Sensors, environmental hazards are mostly mildly-to-heavily player-hostile so you should prefer to avoid them with any ship, and the Stealth Cruiser A lacking a Shield tilts things heavily toward environmental hazards being an always-avoid until such time as you can scrape together the Scrap for Shields.
Curiously, Anti-Ship Batteries don't count against you, even though they get the Sector map visuals used for environmental hazards. 'Natural' ASBs are rare, mind.
As such, it's really not that hard to unlock the Stealth Cruiser B; Phase Shift and Tactical Approach may well be both earned in your first victorious run, or even a non-victorious run.
Stealth Cruiser B: DA-SR 12
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Glaive Beam
Maximum of 3 Weapons, 2 different Drones.
Starts with the Long-Ranged Sensors Augment.
Room total: 15
I sure hope you love restarting almost instantly 5-6 times for every run that gets to the second Sector!
The Stealth Cruiser B takes all the issues the A has, and then gets rid of a bunch of the advantages. No Titanium Casing, denying you the early-game shot in the arm Scrap-wise from selling it. No ability to rapidly target and disable enemy Weapons or Drones early on to prevent damage to yourself. Horribly unreliable Cloak-evasion, due to insufficient initial Power for your Systems and only 2 starting Engines. Burdened by a terrible layout. Burdened by a Zoltan crewmember, which is overall a negative before you consider the game denying you a unit of Power to 'balance' it. Not able to rapidly flee from bad situations for a long, long time, due to the lackluster Engines.
Yes, the Glaive Beam will kill early game ships in a single attack, but you're agonizingly vulnerable to boarding attempts, Zoltan ships will demand two shots even at the beginning of the game, 10 seconds of cloaking is not enough to make up for 25 base seconds charge time (Which, it bears noting, is the single longest charge length out of any regular weapon by a non-trivial margin; second-slowest is 22 seconds), and unless you get really lucky with free weapons being dumped in your lap it's a nightmare to actually expand your Weapons to include supporting gear.
Furthermore you're only even tolerably competent in the period of the game in which 1 Shield bubble is normal. Once 2 Shield bubbles becomes normal, you're screwed if you haven't managed to correct your Weapons situation; against a 1 Shield bubble ship, you can target the Shield System first/early, do 2 damage to the Shield System and thus automatically knock it out even if it's actually got 3 ranks, and from there do 3 damage to all following Systems, knocking out any other Systems you catch and doing very good damage. Against 2 Shield bubble ships, this same tactic will maybe pop one Shield bubble, depending on if their Shields System is 4 or 5, and then you'll do 2 damage to following Systems... or 1, if you didn't actually pop their Shield Bubble. Your damage is cut by 50-66% the instant Shields go up at all, and in turn this cripples your ability to cripple ships; a 1 Shield bubble ship that survives the Glaive Beam will have all hit Systems completely knocked out. A 2 Shield bubble ship will probably have one or more weapons online, still have Drones functioning, etc.
I sure hope you love restarting almost instantly 5-6 times for every run that gets to the second Sector!
The Stealth Cruiser B takes all the issues the A has, and then gets rid of a bunch of the advantages. No Titanium Casing, denying you the early-game shot in the arm Scrap-wise from selling it. No ability to rapidly target and disable enemy Weapons or Drones early on to prevent damage to yourself. Horribly unreliable Cloak-evasion, due to insufficient initial Power for your Systems and only 2 starting Engines. Burdened by a terrible layout. Burdened by a Zoltan crewmember, which is overall a negative before you consider the game denying you a unit of Power to 'balance' it. Not able to rapidly flee from bad situations for a long, long time, due to the lackluster Engines.
Yes, the Glaive Beam will kill early game ships in a single attack, but you're agonizingly vulnerable to boarding attempts, Zoltan ships will demand two shots even at the beginning of the game, 10 seconds of cloaking is not enough to make up for 25 base seconds charge time (Which, it bears noting, is the single longest charge length out of any regular weapon by a non-trivial margin; second-slowest is 22 seconds), and unless you get really lucky with free weapons being dumped in your lap it's a nightmare to actually expand your Weapons to include supporting gear.
Furthermore you're only even tolerably competent in the period of the game in which 1 Shield bubble is normal. Once 2 Shield bubbles becomes normal, you're screwed if you haven't managed to correct your Weapons situation; against a 1 Shield bubble ship, you can target the Shield System first/early, do 2 damage to the Shield System and thus automatically knock it out even if it's actually got 3 ranks, and from there do 3 damage to all following Systems, knocking out any other Systems you catch and doing very good damage. Against 2 Shield bubble ships, this same tactic will maybe pop one Shield bubble, depending on if their Shields System is 4 or 5, and then you'll do 2 damage to following Systems... or 1, if you didn't actually pop their Shield Bubble. Your damage is cut by 50-66% the instant Shields go up at all, and in turn this cripples your ability to cripple ships; a 1 Shield bubble ship that survives the Glaive Beam will have all hit Systems completely knocked out. A 2 Shield bubble ship will probably have one or more weapons online, still have Drones functioning, etc.
On top of all that, the horrifically slow Weapons training from the horrifically slow fire rate cripples your ability to reduce how horrible the Glaive Beam's lengthy charge time is. The ship has terrible ability to raise evasion when you are getting shot while not Cloaked, which is pretty infuriating given the Stealth Cruiser B will be getting shot when not Cloaked a lot more than the Stealth Cruiser A. It's horrifically sensitive to One Bad Hit, as any damage to your Weapons System will instantly knock out your one slow-charging weapon; if this happens in one of your first fights, you might as well just restart, because you're not going to win the fight without taking a horrible beating unless the RNG loves you.
So at the very beginning of the game, it's just barely able to cope, assuming the RNG doesn't hate you, and then the very instant things jump in durability a bit, where most other ships just need a little luck to keep up... the Stealth Cruiser B needs a lot of luck to not be flat-out doomed.
No, the fact that the Glaive Beam can be fired from under Cloak without reducing your Cloak time doesn't help at all. That was a nice treat with the Mini Beam, which could recharge before your Cloak ended and potentially thus get in completely free damage. The Glaive Beam takes so long to charge that even if you hold off on Cloaking until the enemy fires with Cloak 3, it may not be ready to fire before your Cloak runs out. The Stealth Cruiser B would honestly be better off with, for example, the Flak II, which also takes a while to charge but doesn't suddenly suck the instant 2 Shield bubble ships are running around. (And yes, I realize flak weaponry is advanced edition content and the Stealth Cruiser B is not, but that doesn't change my actual point)
Oh, and by the way, encountering enemy Cloak-equipped ships is basically guaranteeing you're going to take a bunch of damage. No using your Cloak System to get charge time in peace, sorry!
There's an Achievement for getting to Sector 8 without actually killing enemy ships, and with the Stealth Cruiser B you may honestly be better off trying to do that than trying to win legitimately. The Stealth Cruiser B is duking it out with the Rock Cruiser A and Slug Cruiser B for the title of Worst Ship In The Game.
A big part of the problem is the Hull Damage Death Spiral. Since the Stealth Cruiser B lacks Shields and lacks the ability to quickly knock out enemy Weapons and Drones to prevent damage, it's reliant on RNG to avoid taking Hull damage. Which means it expects to take Hull damage fairly regularly for quite a while. Which means it has to burn dozens of Scrap on repairing itself at Stores if it doesn't get supremely lucky with event-derived repairs occurring in a timely manner. Which delays its ability to boost Engines, buy Shields, or upgrade Weapons and buy a weapon for knocking out enemy Weapons and Drones, increasing the period of time in which it keeps taking damage it then has to spend Scrap on repairing. This is one reason why you really ought to just restart if anything goes even moderately wrong in the early game; losing 20 Hull is 40 Scrap of repairs with early-game repair costs. When individual fights in the first Sector are generally providing 10~ Scrap, maybe 20~ if you eg beat a pirate ship and then get a reward from the ship they were attacking too. You literally can't afford to accept that kind of damage, and there's nothing you can do, player-skill-wise, to actually prevent it.
This is also where it becomes a lot more infuriating the AI/player double-standard regarding Cloak+Shields. With the Stealth Cruiser A, it's irritating to be running into early ships that have Cloak+Shields with absolutely no tradeoffs, but when that's not being shoved in your face the Stealth Cruiser A feels plausibly equivalent to other ships, ones that start with Shields. The Stealth Cruiser B, meanwhile, cannot get by on the strength of Cloak.
If the Stealth Cruiser B had also started with the Weapon Pre-Igniter... it would be outright overpowered for the first couple of Sectors, honestly, but frankly it would still be horrifically luck-dependent to not be in serious trouble the instant 2 Shield-bubble ships were normal. Point is, I'd actually understand it being so bad. Or if it started with an Automated Reloader to make the Glaive Beam's horribly long charge time slightly less bad, that would also be vaguely sensical. Or if it started with Shields, it would be very dependent on getting some mid-game luck, but it would actually be viable!
As-is, I don't understand how such a breathtakingly awful ship was one of the original apex unlocks, and got absolutely no help whatsoever with the advanced edition update. This is a terrible ship on paper, and it's even worse if you play it at all.
So at the very beginning of the game, it's just barely able to cope, assuming the RNG doesn't hate you, and then the very instant things jump in durability a bit, where most other ships just need a little luck to keep up... the Stealth Cruiser B needs a lot of luck to not be flat-out doomed.
No, the fact that the Glaive Beam can be fired from under Cloak without reducing your Cloak time doesn't help at all. That was a nice treat with the Mini Beam, which could recharge before your Cloak ended and potentially thus get in completely free damage. The Glaive Beam takes so long to charge that even if you hold off on Cloaking until the enemy fires with Cloak 3, it may not be ready to fire before your Cloak runs out. The Stealth Cruiser B would honestly be better off with, for example, the Flak II, which also takes a while to charge but doesn't suddenly suck the instant 2 Shield bubble ships are running around. (And yes, I realize flak weaponry is advanced edition content and the Stealth Cruiser B is not, but that doesn't change my actual point)
Oh, and by the way, encountering enemy Cloak-equipped ships is basically guaranteeing you're going to take a bunch of damage. No using your Cloak System to get charge time in peace, sorry!
There's an Achievement for getting to Sector 8 without actually killing enemy ships, and with the Stealth Cruiser B you may honestly be better off trying to do that than trying to win legitimately. The Stealth Cruiser B is duking it out with the Rock Cruiser A and Slug Cruiser B for the title of Worst Ship In The Game.
A big part of the problem is the Hull Damage Death Spiral. Since the Stealth Cruiser B lacks Shields and lacks the ability to quickly knock out enemy Weapons and Drones to prevent damage, it's reliant on RNG to avoid taking Hull damage. Which means it expects to take Hull damage fairly regularly for quite a while. Which means it has to burn dozens of Scrap on repairing itself at Stores if it doesn't get supremely lucky with event-derived repairs occurring in a timely manner. Which delays its ability to boost Engines, buy Shields, or upgrade Weapons and buy a weapon for knocking out enemy Weapons and Drones, increasing the period of time in which it keeps taking damage it then has to spend Scrap on repairing. This is one reason why you really ought to just restart if anything goes even moderately wrong in the early game; losing 20 Hull is 40 Scrap of repairs with early-game repair costs. When individual fights in the first Sector are generally providing 10~ Scrap, maybe 20~ if you eg beat a pirate ship and then get a reward from the ship they were attacking too. You literally can't afford to accept that kind of damage, and there's nothing you can do, player-skill-wise, to actually prevent it.
This is also where it becomes a lot more infuriating the AI/player double-standard regarding Cloak+Shields. With the Stealth Cruiser A, it's irritating to be running into early ships that have Cloak+Shields with absolutely no tradeoffs, but when that's not being shoved in your face the Stealth Cruiser A feels plausibly equivalent to other ships, ones that start with Shields. The Stealth Cruiser B, meanwhile, cannot get by on the strength of Cloak.
If the Stealth Cruiser B had also started with the Weapon Pre-Igniter... it would be outright overpowered for the first couple of Sectors, honestly, but frankly it would still be horrifically luck-dependent to not be in serious trouble the instant 2 Shield-bubble ships were normal. Point is, I'd actually understand it being so bad. Or if it started with an Automated Reloader to make the Glaive Beam's horribly long charge time slightly less bad, that would also be vaguely sensical. Or if it started with Shields, it would be very dependent on getting some mid-game luck, but it would actually be viable!
As-is, I don't understand how such a breathtakingly awful ship was one of the original apex unlocks, and got absolutely no help whatsoever with the advanced edition update. This is a terrible ship on paper, and it's even worse if you play it at all.
Did they literally never playtest it? This is just baffling.
In turn this makes it a huge pain to actually unlock...
Stealth Cruiser C: Simo-H
1
1
x7
2
3
1
1
2
Charge Laser Small+Mini Beam
Shield Overcharger Plus+Anti-Combat Drone
16
0
16
Maximum of 3 Weapons, 3 different Drones.
Starts with the Long-Ranged Sensors Augment.
Stealth Cruiser C: Simo-H
11x72311
2Charge Laser Small+Mini Beam
Shield Overcharger Plus+Anti-Combat Drone
16016Maximum of 3 Weapons, 3 different Drones.
Starts with the Long-Ranged Sensors Augment.
Room total: 14
The Stealth Cruiser C is unique for a bunch of reasons; its Charge Laser Small is unique to it, its Shield Overcharger is a superior version unique to it, it's the only Stealth Cruiser to not actually start with Cloak, and it's the only non-Engi player ship to have more than 2 Drone slots.
Unfortunately, while I like the idea of a Shield Overcharger-based ship, Supershields still suck (This Shield Overcharger is better than usual... by virtue of costing 2 Power instead of 3. That's it), Shield Overchargers can't take the place of a regular Shield or even a Cloak System, and your offensive prowess is a very slightly better version of the Stealth Cruiser A. In practice... you're a bad version of the Stealth Cruiser A. Simple as that.
I could try to pretend there's a distinctive, interesting strategy here, but there isn't. The only thing the Stealth Cruiser C has going for it is that strategic RNG slightly favors it due to being able to immediately put looted Drones to work. If you find a Combat Drone early on, great! But most of the time this doesn't meaningfully help. You've got all the usual Stealth Cruiser issues like 'Asteroid Fields are a death sentence' and 'if you can't kill your enemy fast you're probably going to take damage' as well as 'beams are extra-effective against you' and 'external offensive Drones will murder you', and then you don't even get the benefits of a built-in Cloak System.
Part of the problem is the consideration of loot. A Cloak System is not just the single most expensive item in the game, it's a System, and you can't loot those. The Stealth Cruiser A and B having a Cloak System to start is thus 100% reliably distinctive from every ship that doesn't get Cloak built in; even if a different ship saves literally every point of Scrap it acquires and finds a Store the very instant it has 150 Scrap, that's still going to be something along the lines of the entire first Sector cleared out, and realistically you're not playing like that and won't get a Cloak System installed until very late in a run, if ever.
The Stealth Cruiser C is unique for a bunch of reasons; its Charge Laser Small is unique to it, its Shield Overcharger is a superior version unique to it, it's the only Stealth Cruiser to not actually start with Cloak, and it's the only non-Engi player ship to have more than 2 Drone slots.
Unfortunately, while I like the idea of a Shield Overcharger-based ship, Supershields still suck (This Shield Overcharger is better than usual... by virtue of costing 2 Power instead of 3. That's it), Shield Overchargers can't take the place of a regular Shield or even a Cloak System, and your offensive prowess is a very slightly better version of the Stealth Cruiser A. In practice... you're a bad version of the Stealth Cruiser A. Simple as that.
I could try to pretend there's a distinctive, interesting strategy here, but there isn't. The only thing the Stealth Cruiser C has going for it is that strategic RNG slightly favors it due to being able to immediately put looted Drones to work. If you find a Combat Drone early on, great! But most of the time this doesn't meaningfully help. You've got all the usual Stealth Cruiser issues like 'Asteroid Fields are a death sentence' and 'if you can't kill your enemy fast you're probably going to take damage' as well as 'beams are extra-effective against you' and 'external offensive Drones will murder you', and then you don't even get the benefits of a built-in Cloak System.
Part of the problem is the consideration of loot. A Cloak System is not just the single most expensive item in the game, it's a System, and you can't loot those. The Stealth Cruiser A and B having a Cloak System to start is thus 100% reliably distinctive from every ship that doesn't get Cloak built in; even if a different ship saves literally every point of Scrap it acquires and finds a Store the very instant it has 150 Scrap, that's still going to be something along the lines of the entire first Sector cleared out, and realistically you're not playing like that and won't get a Cloak System installed until very late in a run, if ever.
Meanwhile, the Stealth Cruiser C being defined primarily by starting with a Shield Overcharger Drone... yes, they're one of the more expensive Drones in the game, but even if they were 200 Scrap, it'd still be the case that any ship that starts with a Drone Control could literally luck into it in the first Beacon, totally at random, and be able to use it more or less right away. And even for ships that don't start with a Drone Control, it's a lot more plausible to purchase it relatively early; I've actually managed to buy it in the first Sector a couple of times!
So the Stealth Cruiser C's primary 'unique' quality isn't really all that unique.
So on top of being horribly un-viable, it's not even justifying its existence as a distinct choice through uniqueness.
Yes, its Shield Overcharger Drone is uniquely... 'good'.... but it's just a Power bar being shaved off. That's nice, but it doesn't do anything to resolve the Drone's actual problems. If the Plus version here charged twice as fast and didn't have additional layers take increasingly long to add, the Stealth Cruiser C would probably still be terrible, but it would at least be a solid attempt at making a distinctive ship and I wouldn't bother to bring up other ships being able to loot regular Shield Overcharger Drones. Or if the Shield Overcharger Drone+ stuck with you until destroyed, coming along on Jumps, and your Supershield actually got carried over from one fight to the next, that would still probably be pretty bad but it would at least be fairly close to an attempt at making a more viable Zoltan Cruiser-type ship. (In terms of relying on a Supershield to survive)
And yes the Stealth Cruiser C's Charge Laser is unique and actually one of the better 'never found in the field' weapons, but it's not interesting and it's not like it's great enough to make up for the Stealth Cruiser C's flaws.
If you're playing the game for fun and don't care about '100%ing' the game, don't even bother to play this, and don't worry about unlocking it. You're not missing out.
The frustrating thing is that this is, of course, advanced edition content, and like so much advanced edition content the devs don't seem to have learned anything about how their game works after releasing it. If this had been part of the initial wave of ships, I'd have gotten it, but I find it pretty unbelievable the devs didn't cotton onto how their system is extremely hostile to not having an innate regular Shield (For one thing, they're extremely reluctant to have enemy Ships lack Shields; only certain Autoships that are quick to run away do without), and even with the Shield Overcharger itself being advanced edition content... I have difficulty believing they actually thought it could act as a reasonable Shield System stand-in with its numbers.
How on Earth did this go so wrong?
-----------------------------------
Next time, we break from the regular chain of unlocks to cover the Crystal Cruisers, seeing as how the Stealth Cruiser is the last link in the chain of regular unlocks.
See you then.
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