[PvK]

The other thing that makes cloaking more useless than necessary in the unmodded game is that once researched, high-level detection equipment doesn't even cost any more than low-level equipment, and has no maintenance costs. So making the higher-level detectors cost a lot more and not be placable on no-maintenance units would make it more likely that there would be some places for cloaking devices to be better than stealth armor.

PvK