I have had many of them. After some of them I decide to enter unexplored sectors above 15-20 with the cloaking device on. I always found a nasty ship trying to kill me (and succeding). Nevertheless last game, maybe the best I have had till now I entered sector 31 without it and found this sort of ship again. My weapons were not bad, but,..... The most painful was one in which I decided not makint the last tentaculons quest in order to explore a lot (instead of trying to acheive victory) and took another one... I continued exploring and in next sector I found death.
I am starting my second game in normal level to see haw far can I go. In my first I was making the tentacoulons quest line but decided to clean a sector of pirates and......something happened to the cloaking device, it deactivated suddenly (noidea at the moment but......
Anyway Im loving playing this game in perma-death mode. It is the first time i am playing a game this way.
The last similar games I played (Frontier: First encounters and Space Empires starfury) were not perma-death and even though it is more comfortable, in the end the perma-death makes me a bit careful and gets me to the game mechanics faster.
Having the pay it forward is also a bonus to accelerate the start of the game, unless you pilot an asteroid miner with a lot of money in sector 1 before reaching the station and you find 3 gruff ships hating you (this really sucks).
