To the question on the flagships, I reduced their cost to create a "starter incentive" for going down the most expensive starship line. It's to get you hooked, in essence.
The dreads had a number of buffs in the last official, I don't know how many people who are complaining haven't used them in that capacity. But, they certainly do pretty well at that, plus at very-long-range killing of force fields, etc, which is super useful within its niche. Yes, they're one of the more infrequently-used starships, but that's okay -- not every tool needs to be used exactly as frequently as every other tool. When you need these, you REALLY need this. I might consider some more balance changes to them, but at the moment I'm not feeling that they are too shabby.
To the question about the wisdom of having anything that costs 0 energy, bear in mind that it's still not wise to just build all the engineers for no reason, because their initial metal/crystal costs are not any cheaper. I suppose I could give them a standard cost of 50, but I haven't been real worried about it.
Lastly, about the cloaking boosters, that's a great idea.
