A. get weapons that offer concentrated, focused fire on a single system. I'm editing this guide to add this point since it's really important and I did not sufficiently mention it. You do not just want to fire fast, but you want to be able to fire at a single system, knocking it out at will. This is what gives you control over fights, lets you avoid damage and win in the long run. An enemy ship might have several threatening systems like weapons, hacking, maybe mind control or drone control, but one of these will always be the most obvious threat, and usually it's the weapon room. Get weapons that enable you to take down this threat quickly and at will. This is the main reason that I do not recommend attack drones, the pike beam, slow weapons like the glaive beam, gimmicky stuff like the bio beam or fire beam or anything else that does not offer this. Good weapons are burst laser 1 and especially 2, chain laser, charge laser, flak 1 and similar weapons, small bomb and breach bombs, whatever comes your way. This is also why hacking is important: it lets you shut down a system at will or enables you to fire through shields at a single system. One thing many new players of FTL complain about is how RNG can determine the outcome of a fight, and this is why it's so important to be able to control fights by being able to fire first, focused and fast. All of this prevents attrition damage, and lets you, and not the RNG, take the initiative in fights.

B. go for a boarding strategy if you do not have weapons that enable you to do A, since boarding can also result in a quick, controlled and reliable victory.

1. keep the flagship in mind throughout your run. Your goal is to build a ship that can take down the flagship, not just get to the last sector.
   
   
2. try to fire first. Get your salvo off before they can fire on you, or board and destroy their weapons before they can harm you. Slow weapons are a problem.
   
   
3. get several defensive options for different situations. Get some shields, but also evade or cloak, or a defense drone.
   
   
4. go for crew kills, these net more scrap and will let you snowball a run, they are also fun to do. If you have good boarders, get a teleporter.
   
   
5. get hacking. Hacking is the most useful system along with teleporter, and can help you out in many situations or even achieve crew kills by hacking oxygen. You can bypass defense drones by depowering your hacking module at the moment the drone fires its shot, then immediately repowering after the shot passes.
   
   
6. try to upgrade systems that go well together. Hacking and drone control don't go very well together because they consume the same resource (you usually want hacking), but hacking has good synergy with stealth. A zoltan shield goes well with evade and stealth, mind control goes well with bombs and teleporting. Achieve synergy.
   
   
7. plan your path through the sector. Go for a snake-like winding path that lets you scout for shops. Maximize nodes and dive into the fleet on your last jump if you have strong engines, if that will net you another node. This is especially true if the last node is a nebula, which will always be an empty node that you should consider "diving" since it yields no rewards, unlike a normal final node.
   
   
8. if you see a shop, pass by as many nodes as you can before actually visiting the shop, to build up a stack of cash to spend on a good upgrade.
   
   
9. get long ranged scanners. Sell them in the last store.
   
   
10. pass through nebula nodes, these slow down the fleet and let you rake in more cash.
    
    
11. avoid natural hazards unless you're equipped to handle them (sometimes asteroid fields can make for easier fights). Avoid pulsars and ion storms.
    
    
12. train your crew if you find yourself up against a ship that cannot harm you.
    
    
13. upgrade your oxygen and med/clone bay at some point, these give you blue options and put you in a safer position and lower downtime. Use your upgraded clone bay to hurl boarders at the enemy without the need for teleporting back.
    
    
14. try to get good weapons that make sense for your run. Some weapons are generally good, others suck but some are useful in niche situations. Bombs can be a sensible choice if you have mind control and boarders.
    
    
15. know which sectors to choose. Pirate, mantis and rebel sectors are great for cash. Engi have drones which suck for stealth based ships, so avoid them. Zoltan sectors can also be tough since they slow your crucial first salvo. Rock ships have missiles so pick rock sectors if you have defense drone or stealth. Civilian sectors are a trap unless you are really in need of a store. Nebula zones are generally not a great choice, but still better than civilian.
    
    
16. go to homeworld sectors, since they offer better rewards.
    
    
17. do quests and prioritize distress signals.
    
    
18. go to abandoned sectors only if you are planning a boarding run.
    
    
19. if you are in an abandoned sector, keep 40 scrap in store at all times since you can use it to buy a Lanius from a common event.
    
    
20. buy a second Lanius from a store. You now have the best boarding team, which trivializes a lot of encounters and lets you casually board attack drones.
    
    
21. get a cosmopolitan crew makeup to take advantage of blue events and deal with situations. Humans are the worst since they offer nothing special. Rockmen are only good as pilots or doormen. Slugs are good, but you only need one. Engi, Zoltan, Mantis all make the best crewmembers but a duo of Lanius are very overpowered in a boarding setup. Crystalmen are on par with Lanius for boarding but very rare. Use their lockdown ability in every fight.
    
    
22. put two Zoltan in your shield room, prevents the enemy from ioning down your shields completely. A solo Zoltan goes in the engine room.
    
    
23. Engi should man sensors or doors so you can have them roam and fix problems if needed, same for Mantis.
    
    
24. vacuum suckers that board your ship. Game the way the AI moves around, you can easily manipulate them into running in circles in vacuum rooms, beating at doors. Boarders are generally not a serious threat.
    
    
25. upgrade piloting early on.
    
    
26. upgrade doors to level 2 depending on your crew makeup.
    
    
27. juggle power between systems as needed. Did your defense drone just shoot down their missile? Good, depower it because you won't need it until their next shot. Enemy ship has only one laser but two bombs? Depower shields down to 1 pip and boost engines.
    
    
28. pause all the time, stutterpause during their salvo to immediately repair systems hit by their weapons or open doors to extinquish fires and kill boarders.
    
    
29. play the game on easy mode to unlock ships you don't have. Some of the achievements are extremely annoying or not easy to achieve on the A ships, so just get them done on easy mode and then come back to them on hard once you filled out your roster.
    
    
30. try to get a good pilot. A good pilot should be able to reasonably defend against boarders. Boarders are generally not a serious threat, except when they board straight into piloting, at which point you'll want someone who can hold them off while you get reinforcements or to buy time to build up a vacuum. Lanius are, again, the best race to fill this role since they just keep the room at a vacuum, causing the boarders to flee if your lanius leaves the room. Rockman is another good choice.
    
    
31. have a crewman on doors if you can spare them. For example, if you have someone manning shields but nobody on doors, put your shields crew on doors for the beginning of each fight, this will help against unpleasant surprises and you can always transfer them to shields as needed.
    
    
32. use the "save crew positions" hotkeys, they're really handy, especially after damage control and other situations where your crew has to move around a lot.
    
    
33. order your weapon loadout. In the event that the weapons room gets damaged, the weapon furthest right on the weapon bar will shut down first.

1. use clever targeting when using a beam weapon, especially when using the Halberd or Glaive beam. When you use either of these, and you are penetrating through a shield bubble, start your beam from the shield room, this will likely knock a pip off the enemy shields, causing higher subsequent damage to the other rooms your beam crosses since the beam no longer has to penetrate.
   
   
2. buy the backup battery at some point during your run. It costs 35 scrap and gives 2 power temporarily, and 50 scrap to upgrade it to 4 power temporarily. A normal reactor point starts at 20 scrap, so it is always cheaper than reactor power. The battery is best used with systems that only need temporary power, like teleporting, stealth or engines, and has good synergy with an aggressive playstyle favoring short fights. Buying the battery also frees up a slot in subsequent stores.
   
   
3. read event texts. There is an event that often pops up in Slug nebulas where you need to pay attention to the number of moons mentioned in the event text, and give the correct answer or you lose some of your stuff. There are a few other events that can make you lose a crewmember even with a clonebay. Look up the event online if you want to know the outcomes, I don't think of this as cheating since you still have to weigh the risks against the benefits even with full knowledge of what might happen. Some events are not worth the risk.
   
   
4. try all of the ships. Stealth C seems intimidating but it's really quite playable on hard mode if you make clever use of the shield drone (combine it with a defense drone II and high evade!). I love this game because you can play it in many different ways and they're all viable. The only exception to this for me would be the Rock ships, which are slow and annoying.
   
   
5. always ask yourself "what does my ship need next?" and set yourself that as a goal. For example, you may have a pair of strong boarders but no teleporter, in this case you should try to save enough scrap for a teleporter (or at least keep close to that amount saved, so you can always add in another node before jumping to a store node).
   
   
6. avoid fighting at pulsars, but if you can't avoid it, use the following tip courtesy of Great Magical Hat: charge all of your weapons and wait for the pulsar to go off. Fire just before the pulse hits your ship (so that your shots are mid-flight the moment the pulse goes off, this takes some practice). The pulse will likely knock out the enemy shields, granting you some easy hits.
   
   
7. use easy mode if you are hunting for Steam achievements. Most of the achievements require unnatural play that isn't optimal for hard mode. I kind of wish there was an achievement for beating the game on hard with each ship, just to keep a nice public record.
   
   
8. be careful with your cloud save. Mine reverted to an earlier save when I tried to play the game on a different system and didn't shut down properly, so I needed to unlock the Crystal cruiser all over again and lost my in-game record of some of my hard victories.
   
   
9. leave a comment on my guide if you think I missed something or if you disagree with anything I said here.

1. buy crap you don't need. You don't need level two doors right at the beginning of the game, you also don't need three shield pips in sector two, these are luxuries that make you feel safe but prevent you from building a good offensive capability. Scrap is a zero-sum game, if you spend it on situational utility you can't spend it on essentials.
   
   
2. upgrade your reactor except for the bare minimum needed. You don't need to power oxygen throughout your fight, you don't need to power stealth, shields and engines at the same time. You don't need to power your defense drone except to stop an incoming missile or drone. Save scrap, scrap is life.
   
   
3. buy crew from stores, especially early in your run, except in some unusual situations or if you're in the market for Lanius. Most runs will still result in maxed out crew even if you don't buy any. Engi B can be an exception to this rule.
   
   
4. be tempted by fancy slow firing weapons like the Glaive Beam, Burst III or the Vulcan. These come into their own lategame on stealth ships (or in the rare case where you luck into a preloader), but they're a liability early on. Get reliable, fast firing lasers like Burst II, Flak I, and things like that.
   
   
5. upgrade Fed C's flak artillery, it's garbage.
   
   
6. leave your crew in the medbay except when they need to heal. If the enemy hacks your medbay you just lost a crewmember.
   
   
7. forget that ships can jump away. Once you've dealt with an enemy's weapons, fire a few shots at piloting to prevent their escape.
   
   
8. perform risky boarding operations on ships that are about to jump away. You will lose your crew even with a clonebay, just accept the loss unless you're really sure what you're doing.
   
   
9. look into the great eye. You might lose a crewmember even with a clonebay.
   
   
10. accept offers of surrender, since they are nearly always worse than what you get if you kill them. Only exception is if you're really low on fuel and they are offering fuel.
    
    
11. buy missile weapons. They are almost never worth it. Bombs are better since they bypass defense drones, but only go for them if you're boarding and have mind control as well. I generally don't buy bombs, but sometimes keep them if I find them in events. Missiles are shop trash.
    
    
12. fight at pulsars. Pulsars are one of your biggest enemies. Ion storms are also really bad news.
    
    
13. be afraid of boarders. Boarders are mostly a joke and you can pull pranks on them by exposing them to space.
    
    
14. worry too much about enemy mind control. This can be annoying but you can usually juggle in some other crewmembers to keep the mind controlled one occupied so they do not destroy a system. Focus on destroying their weapons and other things that pose a more real threat instead.
    
    
15. forget to turn oxygen back on at the end of fights.
    
    
16. use ion weapons in most cases. Ion weapons don't do anything that a good laser salvo doesn't do better, although they can sometimes be a decent supplement to a beam setup.
    
    
17. rely on the pike beam as your primary damage source. The problem with the pike beam is that it can only do 1 damage per system, which will prevent you from knocking out weapon systems quickly in the later sectors. You want concentrated fire.
    
    
18. forget to have fun with the game. Sometimes going for a weird setup, or using a crappy ship can be more fun than building another killer gunship or mantis boarder. I've had a lot of fun with firebombs and suffocator ships, and some of these setups are good against the flagship.
    
    
19. try to get the Crystal event chain on any ship other than Rock C, which comes with a Crystalman. For Rock C, the chance of getting and completing the event is once in a blue moon. For all the other ships, it's like finding a flying horse on the same day you win the lottery.
    
    
20. try to unlock Rock B and C on hard mode using Rock A. Rock A is the worst, most tedious ship in the game and Rock B isn't really much better. Rockmen and missiles are awful. Get those achievements done on easy mode to unlock Rock C, then use easy mode to get the Crystal ships. Don't be a masochist.
    
    
21. underestimate the weapon charger augment, these stack and are very useful in getting your salvos off fast or charging up chain weapons or vulcans.
    
    
22. keep useless augments like the DNA bank, emergency respirators, rock plating, system casing, slug repair gel and other utility crap. Sell them all, they only take up augment slots. Also sell the zoltan shield at the last store since it has almost no value against the flagship, buy engine bars instead.
    
    
23. use attack drones. Attack drones are all bad.
    
    
24. use shield drones. One exception is the Stealth C special shield drone, which you might want to hang on to if you can combine it with stealth.
    
    
25. use defense drone II, defense drone I is better, requires less power and does not waste shots on lasers.
    
    
26. use any of the boarding, anti personnel or repair drones. These do not add much. The only good drones are Defense I, Hull Repair and maybe Anti-Drone if you're being generous.
    
    
27. buy drone control as your first system. It's too defensive and that 85 scrap is probably better spent on a weapon or hacking. Drone control is not horrible but it's more like a fallback option.
    
    
28. get comfortable. Even if you have a cool loadout and are cruising through your run, there is always a type of ship that can still hurt you badly, or an event that can seriously mess with you.
    
    
29. listen to people who say hard FTL is impossible. It's doable, fair and fun if you learn about the variables in the game.
    
    
30. waste your time in normal mode. Once you've unlocked stuff on easy, go straight to hard! Normal does not make for much of a difference, and hard is where the real game is.

Thank you for reading my guide. You may have noticed that none of these points really touch on the final fight with the flagship. I have added a separate section below that's just about the flagship fight, since it's a different beast from the rest of the game.

Here I will add in some tips specific to beating the flagship on hard, since this is a whole separate issue.

1. The flagship has 3 phases. Phase 1's gimmick is stealth, phase 2's is drones and phase 3's is a zoltan shield, boarding, mind control and a laser salvo. Of these, phase 2 is relatively easy while phase 1 can be a pain and phase 3 is the most dangerous. Plan for all of these phases and switch your weapon loadout (for example: ion for phase 3) accordingly.
   
   
2. Regardless of your strategy, you want to have at least the following: level 2 oxygen, some kind of defense, either in the form of 4 shield pips and 45% evade or some combination of stealth or a defense drone, some kind of strong, reliable offense, either in the form of powerful weapons, or less powerful weapons but with hacking, or very strong boarders supplemented by weapons. Fire and breach bombs work well in combination with mind control and/or hacking but you will still need to bypass the zoltan shield on phase 3 somehow, at least level 3 doors either with a crewmember on them or on its own. You probably also want an upgraded medbay or clone bay, even if you don't board, to protect it from system damage. Lastly, you will want a dedicated repair crew, preferably a skilled engi. Don't underestimate the importance of quick repairs!
   
   
3. Although multiple strategies are possible, the most powerful systems to use against the FS are firstly stealth, followed by hacking.
   
   
4. If your strategy involves boarding, remember that boarding alone is not enough to win, the flagship has a lvl3 medbay and many crewmembers that it can switch out to overwhelm even very strong boarders. Having hacking helps a lot (4 boarders in a hacked shield room works), but you will still want something to knock out the weapons with at will. Boarding will always need some kind of supplement to work.
   
   
5. There are a few things you don't need for the final zone and FS fight and might be better off selling at the final store you find: distraction buoys, scrap recovery, long range scanners, arguably the Zoltan shield as well. The latter will be quickly whittled down but might offer some protection to a weaker, but aggressive ship.
   
   
6. On phase 1, the first thing the FS will do is try to hack you. If you have a defense drone you can try shooting the hacking drone down, but this will probably not last forever and it will eventually land. Where it lands is random and if it hits the wrong system you may want to reset the fight. Weapons and shields are probably death sentences, so if these systems are hacked flee and come back. With some luck, and very precise stutterpausing, you may be able to choose where you "allow" the hacking drone to land, by judging its trajectory and depowering your defense drone before it can fire if the hacking drone is on its way to a relatively harmless system like doors or sensors.
   
   
7. The first thing you need to worry about after this is the missile room. This is the strongest weapon on all 3 phases, except perhaps for the salvo on phase 3. A properly defended ship will usually be able to hold out against all of the other weapons, but the missiles come in salvos of 3 and if they hit the wrong system it's game over. There are many ways to deal with this, but keep in mind that simply having a defense drone 1 will still let 2 missiles through. Stealth is obviously the best defense here, but you may not have access to it. In this case, you will probably want to prioritize destroying the missile room before anything else, preferably starting a fire or breach in it so it can't be quickly repaired.
   
   
8. Secondly, the most obvious target on the FS is the shield room. The shield room controls access to piloting, the missile room and the laser room from the rest of the ship, so it is a very obvious target for your hacking drone. Boarders should probably go in here as well. If you can start a fire in this area of this ship while the doors are hacked as well, you are in a good position to eventually win, since the FS' crew won't deal with this very well at all and the fire will rage out of control quickly. Obviously, knocking out the shields will also make it easier for you to attack the other systems. This holds true for all 3 phases.
   
   
9. After you have taken care of the missiles in some way, you will want to start destroying other systems. On phase 1, take out stealth so you will be able to attack faster. Depending on your defenses, you may want to prioritize taking out the ion room as well, since it can't be repaired once you kill the crewman and destroy the system (but most fights don't last long enough for this to matter, and keeping missiles suppressed is usually more important than destroying ions).
   
   
10. On phases 1 and 2, but especially in phase 2, you will want to try and kill the crew. For this reason, it's a good idea to knock out the medbay and send in boarders, or start a fire, or anything else that will result in dead humans. With fewer crewmembers, the flagship will be much more vulnerable and phase 3 will be much less dangerous without enemy boarders. However...
    
    
11. Always let one crewmember live. Otherwise, the AI will take over and the FS will start to repair its own systems. Be careful with knocking out the oxygen room in prolonged fights, since it will kill all crew eventually if you're not careful. I tend to kill the final crewmember at the end of phase 3 when it looks like i'm going to win anyway, just to give the flagship the middle finger, but don't kill him until the fat lady sings.
    
    
12. If the AI does take over, the ship behaves like an attack drone, repairing its own systems. You can prevent this by causing breaches and fires. Breach bomb 2 especially is a great weapon to use against the flagship, permanently knocking out systems with ease, but it needs either stealth to let it charge or mind control to secure a hit (by MC'ing the pilot).
    
    
13. On phase 2, the FS will start to use drones. It will launch a boarding drone at you. A defense drone can shoot this bastard down, but it will probably land at some point, being annoying and causing a breach in one of your systems. Doing any damage at all to the enemy drone control will shut this guy down. I usually don't go all out on the enemy drone control, since the drones aren't as threatening as the missile room, but I do always cause enough damage to it to put the boarding drone to sleep.
    
    
14. Apart from this, phase 2 will periodically perform a drone surge where it attacks with a lot of drones. Either stealth through this, use an antidrone, or just wait it out. It can sometimes cause annoying damage, but it does not tend to be the thing that kills your run. Instead of worrying too much about the drones, just kill the missile room and attack shields, just like in phase 1.
    
    
15. On phase 2, once missiles, shields and the boarding drone are under control, kill as much of the crew as you can before ending phase 2.
    
    
16. Phase 3 is the worst. The FS will have a Zoltan shield, so you should have something to deal with that. Conventional weapons work, but ion weapons deal double damage, so having ion at this point helps a lot. A Zoltan shield bypass augment works wonders. In any case, it's unlikely that you will be able to avoid at least 2 missile salvos and a big laser salvo before you can counterattack, so be prepared for this. The beginning of phase 3 is when you will need to rely on your repair crew the most, make the best of it, knock out that Zoltan shield somehow and survive the damage as best as you can. Stealth will also save you here.

(I really hate Steam's guide section word limit, I apologize for the messiness of this part of the guide)

1. Ignore minor breaches and damage to irrelevant systems, but immediately repair any damage to shields and weapons[b/] as well as piloting and engines. Stutterpause during the FS' salvos, and send repairmen immediately to damaged systems. Every second counts! Even your Mantis might have to pitch in here. I've seen many players panic when phase 3 knocks out a bunch of their systems, but with quick repairs these situations are quite recoverable, so just hit that pause button and keep your cool.
   
   
2. At the same time, you might have to worry about boarders and mind control. If you've followed my advice so far and killed most of the crew, this isn't anywhere near as dangerous as it would otherwise be. Boarders in themselves don't tend to be dangerous throughout the rest of the game and are easily confused, spaced or killed, but in phase 3 they tend to interfere with your repairs and can be a serious pain. One of your crew will also be mind controlled. If it's, say, the doorman, just let him let loose some of that pent up frustration about his menial job on your door system and ignore him. If it's your weapons guy who gets mind controlled though, you might want to fight and distract the mind controlled crewman by cycling other crewmen in and out of the room he's in. The mind controlled one gets a strength boost and can easily kill your other crewmen if he fights them 1 on 1, so you really want to cycle them until the mind control wears off.
   
   
3. Phase 3 will periodically fire a laser salvo, these can easily cause major damage, especially when combined with missiles. There is no real tip I can give you here except to just have a good defense, preferably stealth but anything works. The salvos keep coming even if you destroy all of the enemy systems, you will just have to deal with them.
   
   
4. At this point, you might have knocked out the Zoltan shield and started boarding the FS with your own boarders. These might also get mind controlled, but just move into a different room if this happens, or just run around until the MC wears off. You will also have to deal with the remaining crewmember, just avoid killing him for as long as possible if you can. Meanwhile, focus on destroying missiles, shields, mind control and lasers in that order, using either your weapons or a combination of weapons and boarders. If you've reached this point, and you aren't close to death yourself, you will probably beat the flagship.
   
   
5. Finally, the enemy Zoltan shield will periodically recharge. If you've done some decent damage to the flagship's missiles and other systems, this does not tend to be a serious problem. If you still have boarders on the FS when the Zoltan shield pops back up, consider destroying piloting since it will make it easier to whittle away at the shield if all your shots connect.
   
   
6. Keep up your assault, consider your boarders expendable, throw all of your remaining non-essential crew at the flagship if you have to. Do damage as quickly as you can and don't let your guard down, watch for the laser salvo's and any attempt to repair missiles until you win.
   
   
7. Lastly, just before you kill phase 3, take a screenshot of your victory!. FTL on hard is pretty tough and it's nice to have a memento!

I've added this appendix to contain questions about the game that I don't know the answer to, but would like to know. If you have any information about the following, please let me know:

1. What determines your choices in stores exactly? Having played the game very often, it seems that different ships seem to get different choices in stores. Some of these are obvious: ships that start without a crucial system like shields, sensors or doors will always see these appear in stores until you buy them. But what about the other stuff? Specifically, I have tried to play hard runs with Kestrel C many times, and a lot of these seem to strand because I get piss-poor choices for weapons with this ship, which leads to bad setups and lost runs. Kestrel C also happens to have the lowest starting store value of any ship in the game, so are these two factors perhaps somehow related? Is there a hidden set of variables that determine what will appear in stores, is Kestrel C a cursed ship, or is this just random bad luck?
   
   
2. Similarly, what is the exact inventory for each sector type for stores? For example: abandoned sectors are the only ones that contain Lanius crewmen, and Crystalmen can only be found in the secret sector's stores. Is there a particular sector that has a higher chance of spawning a useful weapon like Burst Laser II, or are these items equally distributed? Knowing exactly which stores carry what would be very useful for optimizing playstyles.
   
   
3. What happens if you destroy phase 3 of the flagship with all of your crew on board? Do you get a mutual kill? Do you still win? The game has a special event for if your crew is on board an enemy ship and your teleporter is knocked out (they take a shuttle back), is there anything like this for the FS?

To round out this guide, I'd like to add a depiction of what some typical hard mode victories look like

Exhibit A:


This is with Lanius B (unfortunately, I took the screenshot slightly too late to show what was going on on the ship). This is what I would say is a very typical run: the ship has an extremely pragmatic setup with fast-firing, basic weapons that combine to form a salvo. Hacking is the main offensive system, but the ship is also capable of sending boarders, which I used especially in phase 3 to shut down systems after I'd killed the crew. On this run, I actually had terrible RNG with a lot of annoying situations, but because Lanius B is one of the best ships in the game, and because of the pragmatic setup, I managed to squeeze out a win.


Exhibit B:


The fact that this is Fed C already makes it an atypical hard victory because, basically, Fed C sucks. Still, I like this shot because it shows how a weird ship can still win with a bit of luck. To me, this win shows how strong suffocation and fire weapons can be, since the enemy crew is completely inept at dealing with breaches and especially fire, and even worse with both of them at the same time. You might notice I actually upgraded the artillery weapon (something I say in my guide you should not do), the reason for this is that I started out this run starved for weapons and upgraded flak out of desperation for any kind of firepower (towards the end of the run, I used it as a shield-puncher to make way for my fire beam). At some point, I lucked into a breach II, bought another one and a missile duplication augment. I believe that quite a bit of luck was involved in this win, but breach II is actually a very strong weapon, especially if it can be combined with fire and boarders. Breach II is one of the most effective weapons at shutting down a system completely, reliably and for a long time. Stealth is also important here: it buys time to let me charge my breach bombs and fire beam, to get around the long charge times for these weapons.

But the real stars of this run cannot be seen in the screenshot: 2 stacked weapons charge augments and a shield weapons augment. As I say in the guide, the weapons charge augment should not be underestimated, especially when combined with stealth weapons that let you fire while staying cloaked.

Other things to note about this screenshot: 2 Zoltan in the shield room to prevent being ion'ed, a third Zoltan in engineering. Charge Ion for suppressing shields, combined with (not pictured) a weapons charge augment.

Exhibit C:


This was a bit of a lucky run, but this shot still shows off the power of boarding. Of course, this is Mantis C, which comes with powerful boarders from the start, but I was able to expand my boarding crew to 4 mantis total (1 of whom died on the first phase of the flagship, RIP). Paired with a fully upgraded teleporter and trained crew, this meant that I could just throw 4 Mantis in 2 waves at every enemy ship, quickly overwhelming most enemy crews before the enemy could really get more than a single shot off.

The weapons here are again extremely practical, but barely saw any use outside of the flagship fight and the occasional drone, since the Mantis would just do nearly all of the work. Hacking was useful as always, mostly for shutting down medbays or missile weapons, lategame I used the money accumulated from crewkills to buy stealth, which meant that I didn't even have to worry about enemy weapons.

Although the run went very smoothly, I was still very aware all the time that I had to rely on the medbay instead of cloning. Without the clonebay, I had to occasionally teleport my boarders back to rescue them, and it made the flagship more difficult because boarders easily get killed during the FS's stealth, problems which the clonebay doesn't have. To make sure I wouldn't lose boarders to escaping enemies, I invested in an FTL jammer augment as well.

Overall this was another run that was all about control: I boarded and killed enemies very quickly while remaining untouchable throughout most fights.