Does a subsystem takes power

Aim

When it comes to the cloak, a good offense is the best defence.

Rather than the consistent protection of shields, a cloak gives you a front-loaded period of excellent defence, followed by a period of relative vulnerability while it's charging. You need to use that initial period to disable the enemy's ability to fire back at you while the cloak's recharging.

Generally speaking, you'll cloak through the enemy's first volley, but you'll be vulnerable for their second. It's therefore your goal to prevent them from getting off that second volley, by disabling their ship before it comes to that.

All about timing

In more detail, bear in mind that your weapons will charge while you're cloaked but the enemy's won't. As such, cloaking can be a bit like a western gunfight - it's all about who fires first. In the best possible situation, if you charge faster than the enemy, you can get off three "free" volleys:

1. Your weapons charge before the enemy's - you take out their shields with your laser, then damage their systems with your mini-beam.
2. The enemy fires his volley at you; you cloak and it misses.
3. Your weapons charge back up while the enemy's are at zero.
4. You fire a volley coming out of cloak.
5. Both you and the enemy are now charging weapons from zero - and since you're faster, you get off your third volley first.

As such, the skill of the crewmember manning the weapons system is incredibly important, and both the Automated Reloader and Weapons Pre-Igniter augmentations are great for getting more shots off before the enemy's second volley, which you can't cloak through.

If you charge slower than the enemy, you'll normally only get one "free" volley off. The Stealth Weapons augment helps a lot here by letting you cloak on the enemy's first volley, fire shortly afterwards, and come out of cloak with more charge on your weapons.

Priorities

If you are faster at charging weapons than your typical opponents, upgrading your cloak can give a huge bang for the buck. Notice that in step 4 above, you cloaked immediately after firing, and are able to fire again as the cloak wears off. If your weapon charge time is around 10 seconds, upgrading the cloak to last 10 seconds lets you get this extra "free" volley. Otherwise, it won't do enough to let you get your third volley off before the enemy's second.

Asides from that, it's mainly about the alpha strike with the stealth ship (as is hinted at by the Bird Of Prey achievement). Spend your scrap on buying more weapons, and fitting/powering them. Lean towards faster-charging weapons that you'll be able to fire in rapid volleys as above, rather than heavier weapons (5x1 damage from a Burst Laser III is awesome for a slugger, but the 19 second charge will inhibit your ability to fire volleys around stealth).

You really need to keep upgrading your weapons, in order to punch through shields and disable enemy weapons systems before they get another chance to fire.

Hazards

Asteroids are bad, bad, bad. Thankfully(/essentially) you start with the Long-Range Sensors augment; don't jump to a node with environmental hazards.

Anti-ship drones are an incredible pain, too - they're almost like a portable asteroid field (regular, light damage). In this case I try to cloak immediately and prioritise the enemy's drone control bay above its weapons bay. I feel this is still a bit hit-and-hope; I don't feel confident dealing with drones in general.

Beam weapons don't have travel time like lasers and missiles, so you can't cloak while they're "in the air" to avoid all damage. I'm not sure whether cloaking when the first room is hit reduces damage to the other rooms; I suspect not as beams don't seem to ever miss.

Ships that have weapons of different sizes don't have a single volley that you can dodge (e.g. if their guns fire 3s apart, you cannot cloak while they are both in the air). This lessens your front-loaded defence, since you can't avoid all of their first shots. In this case you need to decide which weapon will hurt less, and cloak for the other one(s).

Take ships intact when possible

Acquire a Crew Teleporter so that you can send boarding parties over to capture ships intact. Intact ships tend to yield more scrap, plus sometimes other benefits such as free crew members (such as when you take over a slave ship). Starving them of O2 is also a possibility, but I personally have trouble making that one work very often. Don't worry about damaging the ship, the only thing that matters is that you don't destroy it.

Don't be afraid to accept surrender from enemies that are near death, particularly in early systems. Not only are the rewards often as good or better than what you'd get if you destroy them, but it means the fight ends sooner and you end up taking less hull damage compared to finishing the fight out (assuming you didn't completely outclass them). Later in the game this seems to change a bit and destroying them is often worth more than having them surrender (unless, again, they'll beat up your hull a lot while you finish them off).

See Also:

• Tips for Killing Enemy Crew Without Use of Boarding Parties
• Effective strategies for boarding enemy ships

Scrap Recovery Arm

This one is pretty obvious. Get the Scrap Recovery Arm in the early sectors. The earlier you get it the earlier that +10% scrap bonus will pay back the 50 credits you had to spend on it. Probably not worth picking up in, say, Sector 7.

Make use of the "special" traders

You'll often run into special encounters where you can trade fuel for missiles, drone parts for scrap, etc. Decide early on what your end-game strategy is and sell the stuff you don't need whenever possible. If you're not going to use drones, unload those drone parts every chance you get, since you won't have any other use for them. Keep an eye out for good deals. Even if you plan on using missiles, trading 2 missiles for 10 fuel is a good deal unless you've already got a huge surplus of fuel. Also, and this can be risky, don't always repair your hull to full at a store in the early sectors. You can probably get by on half hull unless you get really unlucky, and there are quite a few encounters that let you repair hull cheaply or even for free. I tend to start repairing to full at stores starting around sector 6, because by then I've got enough time invested in the game to not want to die to bad luck. Early on, though, it's worth the gamble to me.

Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em

In the early sectors, you want to hit every node possible before the Rebel fleet catches up with you. The more scrap you get now, the higher you'll stay on the power curve, which means you'll be better prepared for later encounters. This in turn means you'll have less hull repairs and be in a better position to take tough enemy ships intact. Personally, I'd rather risk it all and die spectacularly in the first three zones then play them super cautiously and load all that risk into the later zones that I'm now ill-prepared for. If I'm going to die, I want it to happen early!

That said, though, know when sticking around in a fight isn't worth it. Assuming you maximized your encounters in the first few sectors, by the mid point you might want to start avoiding tough encounters and just warp away. Ships with high shields and strong missiles often aren't worth the cost of fighting, since by the time you destroy them you've taken a ton of hull damage. This effect is amplified in zones with asteroid fields, ion storms, or solar flares. Speaking of which...

Consider getting Long-range Scanners

I wouldn't get these until about sector 4 or 5, as I tend to have better things to do with my scrap before then, but these are pretty cheap and can be a huge benefit in saving your hull from a trashing. I find that early in the game, I can weather ion storms fairly well, but later in the game losing 50% of my power severely hampers my ability to compete with enemy ships, which don't seem to have lost 50% of their effectiveness. This can often be a quick ticket to game over for me if I run into a tough enemy ship, as it can rip me apart pretty quickly.