Stealth A

Plan your jumps carefully, to avoid being forced into asteroid fields. Suns and pulsars are also bad, since they have a higher chance of enemies with drones. Look for flexible routes, so you can skip these hazards without losing beacons. Consider avoiding nebulas too, as they often contain Auto-assaults.

Time your volley precisely. It’s often best to wait a moment before firing the Dual Lasers, so that the Mini Beam damages engines to increase the chance of the second laser hitting. When possible, start firing the Dual Lasers before cloaking. The Mini Beam can hit four rooms on many ships.

Against Zoltan Shields, use precise beam placement and timing to help disable weapons.

With hacking, the starting weapons can be kept for the whole game. For example, adding a Flak 1 gives a game-winning setup for only 4 weapons power. Equally, it’s fine to replace one or both with something harder-hitting, like a Halberd.

As on Stealth B, keeping oxygen below 50% decreases the chance of weapons/cloaking being hit. With fast weapons though (and a long walk to sensors), it’s not worth using the weapons depower trick.

90% evade during cloak gives you good defences, but you can still get unlucky — especially against drones. Spending your first 25 scrap on a weapons buffer significantly improves survivability: those weapons are your strongest defence early on. After weapons-3, save up for shields and weapons. If you see a great weapon, buy it before shields. Also consider buying temporary weapons, such as an Ion Blast.

Cloaking-2 fills a similar role to weapons-3, as it often lets you fire an extra volley. I think weapons-3 is better, because (a) your weapons can still get hit through cloaking and (b) it will be useful when you get more weapons. Taking both weapons-3 and cloaking-2 makes you very safe in sectors 1 and 2, but I think that 30 scrap is better saved for offence and shields.

Once you have shields, upgrading them is not urgent (since you have cloak too). You can skip shields-3, which effectively does the same job as your weapons buffer. However, shields-4 is still a priority, and getting it early gives you more chance of training evade against the easier enemies in sector 2. Also remember you can use the Mini Beam as an Anti-bio Beam, increasing the value of shields-4.

Sector 1 distress beacons are worth visiting, but guaranteed fights are better. You only have blue options from cloaking-1 (weak) and Mini Beam (weak). However, note that Long-Ranged Scanners effectively decrease the value of unmarked beacons.