FTL styles and strategies (Sorry...No giveaway)

Kestrel is most balanced ship for me. It's the only ship I managed to finish game on hard. Best strategy: get lasers with 2-3 projectiles, max shield an you are golden. Also remember to fire them at once, because then you have burst that can penetrate every shield.

No money - no honey

I spend as much time in each sector as I can to get stuff for upgrading my ship. For the boss fight, it's incredibly helpful to have the first level of cloaking so you can hide from its periodic super attacks. I also like to teleport crew into the boss's weapons to kill those off quicker.

Upgrading your crew and your engine could raise your evasion upto 55% which is very essential when encounter the last boss.
There're at least 2 strategies, for example, using ion gun mk2 or boarding crew, but you MUST destroy the third gun battery of the boss ship immediately.

A teleporter is essential. The times I have won, I have had that and lasers that each fire two or three shots each. Great game, just keep playing and you'll figure some stuff out.

Tip 0: Get level 2 blast doors as your first upgrade.
Tip 1: There's no tip, since it's different for each ship.
Tip 2: Use the teleporter on the damn 3-missile launcher for the boss.
Tip 3: I don't know, I mostly go for the weapons. If you can reach there with a missile or bomb, you won half the battle.

there must be a hidden link there... hmm...

Get the teleporter and extra crew ASAP, and kill the enemy crew instead of their ship. Focus your weapons on disabling enemy guns and medical bay, then port into the med bay to prevent them from repairing it. Some weapons do bonus damage vs crew or start fires, which can be extremely helpful for this strategy.

It can be risky, but you receive tons of extra resources. Do this early and often, and you'll be swimming in resources before you know it. You can also attempt to suffocate enemy crew by locking down their oxygen system with an ion weapon (better suited for the Engi ship). Some early encounters feature ships with an isolated oxygen system, so once it's damaged just wait for them to suffocate and you'll get a nice bonus for very little effort.

So, from what I can understand so far, lots of lasers and a teleporter are essential. I'll give these tips a go next time. :) Keep the advice coming guys, hopefully it will be useful for people other than me.

Always travel through the Red (dangerous) sectors, more risk = more reward. Stay as long as you can in each sector. I never jump out until the rebel fleet is right on my ass. Also, things other people have already said like teleporter, max engines and burst lasers. Unlock the Kestrel type B if you can; it's pretty awesome.

Always get second shield by the end of sector 1. Always get blast doors by sector 3. Engines are your defense against missiles and solar flares. A 50% evade can tank the super weapon of the flagship, mind you it is still FTL. Get the third shield by sector 5. You can get by with just a pilot and engineer, the other systems take a long time to train and crew tends to die.
Consider people to be the real power source of the teleporter; the more, the better. Always aim for level three teleporters. Always rotate your crew to get kills. 8 gold people will defeat any crew. Always upgrade med bays to level 2. Only blue option giant death spider events. Level 1 cloak is all you need to dodge missiles and save scrap. If you want a better chance to beat the game, time it so your node visits force you into one battle with rebels and warp away. Get like 100+ extra scrap that way for every sector. Maybe do that after the first sector.

Any Ninja grabbed the hidden Galactic Arms Race key from here yet...?

I like the engi ship. Activate the drone, set ion on autofire, and the first few sectors basically play themselves.

No matter the ship, I like to have a Rock + Mantis Bording team, at least 1 Engi for repairs and as many Zoltans for system energy as possible. As for the weapons, Breach bombs and Halberd beam are great. Breach for system destruction (2 on the shields) then the halberd.

For the last boss, I TP my team in the missile slot while I kill the shields, then destroy the other weapons with the beam. Call back the boarders and send them back to another weapon. Usually with that method I kill the ship after the 2nd weapon is down.
For the 2nd pass, I resend the boarders to missile slot, and kill the drone bay with the bombos. Then I alternate with drone and shield (sometimes med bay to stop the healing and from time to time kill the ennemy crew). Then finish the ship with the beam.
With this method, the last run is quite easy as there is just a little crew left, if any, on the flaagship. I just kill missile again while killing the shield and beam the pilot seat along the shields.

Very useful thing to have is a cloacking bay for those power surges the flagship has. It also stops his boarders to go back to his ship, so when you feel they will leave, activate it and finish them off.

On another not, I have over 30 hours of gameplay and found only 2 times the Rock homeworld, and still have no Rock cruiser. Only missing the Rock and Crsytal cruisers.

Definitely go to Red-Tail (Kestrel Type B). It comes with four crew and four basic lasers. It's one hell of a ship for new players.

If you start to get the hang of the game and you have the Zoltan cruiser, try to get Noether. Noether starts with no shields (but you get the zoltan shield), but you get 3 zoltan crew, 2 ion cannons and a pike beam. Ion the shields to do damage with the pike, and then ion the weapons to prevent damage to your ship while your pike finishes them off. I've only won twice and both times were with Noether. It's an incredibly underrated cruiser for basic ship-to-ship combat.

NEVER USE AUTOFIRE

I've won about 2 - 3 times only.

• First round I went crazy with like 3 lasers, one that shot 4, rest that shot 2 each I think. Then I had max shields and just let my lasers tear them a new vagina.
• 2nd round I played more defensively with drones blocking missles and lasers breaching the shield. Then I'd use missles to hit their shields/weapons to lower their defenses/offense. If it's a cloaker I'd cry.
• 3rd round I pretty much just did what I did in #1.

I haven't tried cloak myself but it really doesn't seem that great...

I usually try to get a bunch of ion weapons early on and try to take out their oxygen that way you get higher levels of scrap

Just had a really good run - died on the last boss but unlocked the Red-Tail, ended up tearing through things until sector 7 with the Burst Laser, Hull Beam and Pike Beam - was tearing up ships in one attack! :D Sadly that got a little more difficult once three-stage shields came into it, and I never found a store with another weapon! Got slain by the Rebel Flagship at the end, but that's my best run so far! (by only 1 point...but still, far more achievements!)

can someone explain what to do in the last sector :d

Little tip for anyone who doesn't know...Asteroid fields are really easily exploited if you have good shields (level 2-3, preferably 3) Can get some good pilots and shielders from all your crew if you just switch them around and wait. Helps in case you lose anyone.

Edit: Forgot to add, you have to get lucky with who you come up against, because you only gain experience while 'in combat' so have to have an enemy ship present. If they've got weapons that can breach your defences, destroy them and get the hell out of there!

Okay. I hit that flagship for all it's worth and...Well, second time around there was some kind of zerg-rush of anti-ship drones! HOW DO I DEAL WITH THAT!? There must have been 6-8 of the damn things! Even with full piloting skill, and full shields they OWNED me! I teleported my guys in to deal with the problematic weapons, managed to get them to the drone control but they couldn't take it down in time...Do I just need better weapons (Was running 3x Basic laser and a beam; can't remember which...Tried to find some burst lasers but the damn stores from Sec.3-7 were selling drones!) or is there some strategy I'm missing?

YAY! Finished it on easy mode and on a sub-par run too. No drones, skeleton crew (pilot, weapons and shields) so couldn't use the teleporter. Used two burst lasers and switched between breach missiles and a fortuitous glaive beam I picked up at the end of sector 6 (this thing is AWESOME!)

Stage 1 - Started off spamming the flagship's shields with burst lasers and missiles on the 3-missile weapon. Once the missiles were taken out I kept spamming the shields/cloak with burst lasers and glaive beamed the hell out of it.

Stage 2 - Same start, got lucky on the breach missile to the 3-missile weapon as it set the room on fire and killed the crew member. Then just glaive beamed around the drone control before too much damage was done.

Stage 3 - More of the same...Took out the shields, breached the 3-missile weapon and then switched to glaive beam and just maximised the amount of damage with it by ensuring I used it when shields were down...Thing went down in no time!

So happy because I was not in a good position, had a decent crew and then they all started thinning out between sectors 5 and 7. Getting that glaive beam saved the playthrough! Even got the 'Astronomically Low Odds' achievement at the start of the flagship battle...Had to do stages 2 and 3 with only about half hull! Seriously, FTL is punishing in its difficulty, with even easy being near impossible, but it's so much fun! Can't recommend it enough!

Okay, so the Red-Tail is great and everything, but not if you don't get good weapon upgrades by about sector 5 or 6. Then it starts to get difficult to get past shields and do sufficient damage to disable systems...What's more I've tried and tried and tried to use teleporters to take out enemy ships but my crew ALWAYS end up dead. Should I just use the old Russian tactic of keep throwing men at them until they die or is there some way I can weaken them first?