[Master Belisarius]

Alpha:
I have noted, that the Cloak device is a lot more weak than the Cloak in SE3, then, in my opinion the Cloak device itself is not very important, because is only good to attack systems without Recon Satellites.

BUT... in my opinion, the Stealth Armor is much better: is fast to research, gives protection to the ship, some defensive bonus, save 1 component space, and gives to you the first level of Cloak.

Also, if the other empire have Recon Satellites with sensors, usually is very easy to research the 3 levels of sensors, then, the stealth armor will be like the Cloak Device 3, in cloak terms...

Then, in the tech tree of the AI race that I'm doing, I put the Cloak Devices at the bottom, and the Cloak armor more early.

Sadly in games with all the tech tree from the start, it not work... because the AI always use the high level, and at this case, is the Cloak Device 3.