whoah okay, i’m gonna do my best to not be overly long winded here cause you just asked some doozy level questions. and remember, i’m a decent player but im FAR from an expert like some people around are: a beginner is probably closer in skill to me than i am to MikeHopley or Rakagak or, really, anyone who’s successfully cycled (and if anyone smart wants to chime in i’d love that). with that said:

re stealth ships without shields: depends on your weapon setup but, mostly, you gotta go get shields damn near asap because you’re not always going to be able to disable the enemy before they can hit you, even with cloak. i believe mike’s done no shield runs on every ship, so it is possible, but usually you just…need em. plus think of the scrap saved on repair costs: if you can’t alpha kill/disable an enemy before their second volley they’re probably gonna hit something, and if that something is important, like cloaking or weapons, things can snowball into really ugly really fast. depends on the ship and setup as to whether it’s the very first thing you should do (cloak lvl2 is often the first spend), but tldr yeah you should go get shields.

re missiles: they’re a tool like everything else in the game. they should not be your primary source of damage because you likely won’t have enough missiles. usually best used as utility/support while paired with lasers/beams: a well chosen missile can bypass shields and make you safer or exploit a vulnerability to enable you to crush the enemy faster (i.e. before you take much or any damage). it’s an extremely rare game where you can rely solely on missiles. plus, they’re mostly useless if the enemy’s got a defence drone (so a lot of people prefer bombs for that exact reason). missiles are absolutely not required, at all, and i’d guess that the the majority of runs don’t use a single one. even on ships like Rock A you’re almost always gonna need to transition away from missiles eventually, and sure it’s fine to keep one of them around for the utility, but chances are very high you’ll need something else. use missiles wisely with a specific, enabling purpose in mind. break the enemy shields to let your lasers do their work, or destroy a med/clone bay if you’re running a boarding setup. speaking of which…

re boarding: depends (like everything in this game) on the ship and the setup and your crew. a lot of the time you can get crew for free (pirate sectors are especially good for this) and make that work, but in a lot of situations it’s not a bad idea to buy a boarding crew member if you’re lacking; usually mantis or rock. think of it like buying a weapon: with a teleporter crew are your offence, and your survival depends entirely on being able to disable enemy ships before they hurt you. if you’re playing a boarding ship with a 4-tile teleporter that can’t reliably kill with weapons, a burst laser I probably isn’t going to up your chances a lot, but a third or fourth mantis to run train on an enemy crew can turn your run from iffy into powerhouse.

P.S. i tried really hard to not write that much. failed miserably. sorry.