[Alneyan]

Greetings, and welcome aboard!

1) In the stock game, there is no difference between all the sensors: any can pierce all cloaking devices, so long as the scanner is of high enough level. Their sole purpose is to detect cloaked ships: the best sensors are powerful enough to detect the best cloak. Note that storms and nebulaes also provide automatic cloaking, and nothing can be detected inside red nebulaes. Again in the stock game, Hyper Optics are by far the cheapest to research, so you should only by using these (and perhaps the Physic or Temporal Sensors if you have the appropriate trait).

Long Range Scanners allow you to detect what is inside a ship, ie its components, the damage it has taken, its cargo, and so on. You will thus gain all information you have about your own ships. However, the Scattering Armour negates this effect, and it is unfortunately a very popular component due to the +15% defence boost it gives.

2) The Cloak button activates all the cloaking devices on board your ship, as they are not activated by default (for ships at any rate, as satellites are cloaked by default, though it does not show on the game screen). You may want to turn the Stealth Armour off under specific circumstances: for example, Minesweepers must not be cloaked in order to work. You could also lay a couple of ships in the midst of an enemy system, with a cloaked armada in the same sector: if the enemy engages, all your ships will join in the battle, regardless of their cloaking.

4) Warp Weapons (under Physics 4) give you Wormhole Beams, used to "teleport" enemy vessels during a battle. A ship hit by a Wormhole beam will be moved somewhere else in the battle, and the effect is pretty much random.

5) Phased Weapons perform as ordinary weaponry (Normal Damage) when they hit a target protected by Phased Shields. Since they are quite expensive, you might want to switch to another weapon once Phased Shields become standard, but they have no other drawback when they hit a Phased Shield.

6) All special damage types (Only XXX) bypass all sorts of shields, including Phased Shields. If you are playing SE4 Gold with one of the Last patches, Ionic Projectors are an exception to this rule, as these are stopped by shielding (normal or phased shields).

5 and 6) Phased Shields perform as Normal Shields in all matters, except that Phased Shields stop Phased Weapons.