Pickups

Pickup	Effect	Useful Situations
No Pickup	None	Never
Explosive Pickup	Damages you for 100-450 hitpoints	Can allow repairers to score off you if your fleet is doing nothing, but usually useless and irritating.
Triple Attack	Allows you to attack one enemy in your sector (including cloaked ships) for triple damage.	When you're attempting to kill a cloaker, although they're also useful against other ships.
Free Attack	Allows you to attack one enemy in your sector (including cloaked ships) without using a move.	When you're attempting to kill a cloaker, although they're also useful against other ships.
Decoy	Creates a decoy ship in your sector, which has the same apparent hitpoints and score as you.	Any time, although other pickups are more useful
Explosive Decoy	As for Decoy, but does 25 damage to any ship firing on it.	As for Decoy
Point Pickup	Adds a number of points (100-300) to your score	Any time.
Repair pickup	Adds a number of hitpoints to your total (100-450)	When you're damaged.
Half-max repair	Repairs you for half of your maximum hitpoints	Particularly useful when badly damaged.
Invulnerability	Makes your ship invulnerable to attack for the remainder of the current turn. Uncloaks you if cloaked.	Any time you're being shot at. Potentially lethal (for you) if you're cloaked in an enemy fleet.
Random Hypergate	Transports you to a random sector instantly if activated	Only if you're in danger of dying, because it could potentially land you in an enemy fleet.