Is cloaking worth-while?

[Q]

After the big improvement of the AI with the Last patch and Modpack (congratulations to everybody involved!) the AI uses now cloaking. But is it just me or is the cloaking in SE IV rather weak? Just one tachyon detector or another scanner in the system and the cloaking is ineffective and you don't even realize it before your attacked. This is quite a difference to SE III where you could not detect a cloaked ship, but just prevent its passage through a sector with tachyon detectors.
In SE III the cloaking was perhaps to powerful, but in my opinion in SE IV it is very weak and not really worth the effort.

[Lucanos]

It's the same thing with missles - they are weak - but only if you've got a defence for it - everybody knows that!

The same thing about cloaking. If you're unable to detect you opponent you're in for some real sh*t (* = in respect for all you moralists out there).

And take fighters for example. If you've got enough AF (Anti-Fighter) support the fighters against you are more or less useless.

The thing is that you're unable to research ALL defences at once so you must figure out what techs your opponent has BEFORE he's got it.

I mean: small lightning ray (organic tech) + fighters = yummie.
But if your opponent has PDC lv5 on his armada your fighters are dead before they're in range to fire a single shot (range 3 for small lightning ray).

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I used cloaking before - but the AI opponents are so simple to devastate even on the hardest level with full bonus, that I don't need to use either sensors or cloaking.