FTL

[Zakilevo]

Boarding drones are epic too. If you have saved enough drones, you can just keep sending them with your crews and destroy enemy ships fairly easily. Just need one or two healing bombs to help them.

So far I only found one ship with a teleportation room big enough to teleport 4 crews and it is pretty awesome with boarding bots...

[Tom]

Finally nailed the boss (on easy), so here's my notes:

• maxed out engines, shields, teleporter and stealth really, really made a difference
• I deployed one defense drone, and during the boarding phase, one anti-personel drone
• mostly, I teleported two boarding crews into his weapon chambers in rapid succession. As they are seperate from the rest of the ship, this is the easiest way to take them down.
• fire concentrated on shields and then whatever caused me most trouble. I had an ion gun and two lasers.
• stealth to avoid his attacks, though the 51% evasion chance really, really made a difference
• take down his rockets first, so your shields matter

Beam weapons are great if (and only if) you have a reliable way to down the enemy shields, such as an ion bomb.

[Zakilevo]

One tip...

When you meet an auto-assault ship (or auto-scout), keep him alive and constantly attack his shield with weak weapons while dodging his attacks or tanking them with your shield. You can max your crews' skills fairly quickly that way.

[Revan]

Picked this game up on a whim during the Steam Summer Sale. Wasn't sure what I expected, but my, what an addictive game! I really enjoy the challenge of FTL and experimenting to get it right and go further each time my ship is destroyed. It's a style of gaming I've never enjoyed in the past so it has been a pleasant surprise.

I thought today that I would finally defeat the boss (on easy) but I had no idea that there was a third stage to the fight. Those missiles were beastly. I ended up getting too caught up in keeping my ship working when really I should have teleported into the weapon bays right at the start. It dawned on me far too late that they were separate to the rest of the ship! That'll teach me for spurning the cloaking device (and repair drones) >.<

[Tom]

I thought today that I would finally defeat the boss (on easy) but I had no idea that there was a third stage to the fight. Those missiles were beastly. I ended up getting too caught up in keeping my ship working when really I should have teleported into the weapon bays right at the start. It dawned on me far too late that they were separate to the rest of the ship! That'll teach me for spurning the cloaking device (and repair drones) >.<

Yes, those isolated bays on the boss ship are your friends. My favorite way of taking them down is usually fire or hull breaches, but boarding crews could work just as well.

[Velax]

Woo, beat the boss on Normal for the first time! Came back to the game after the new content. Had an awesome run - Hacking, Mind Control, full crew (including recruiting two max Fighting Rockmen) and fantastic weapons: the Charge and Burst Lasers gave me a maximum of seven shots to wipe out shields and the Halberd Beam sliced through for a ton of damage. No Cloaking, though, which I usually like to have, and augments weren't great either. But this set up blazed through the first two boss phases and finished the last with about half health.

[Tom]

I'm thinking I may want to play again :-)

[OFaolain]

If you have a chance to pick up the vulcan laser, do it.  Once it gets up to speed the description doesn't lie: it kills anything.  That's how I just beat it with the Mantis cruiser to unlock the type C (of course that 4-man teleportation room is nasty too).

[Tom]

Are all these things on the new edition?

[Velax]

Hacking and Mind Control are, yes, and I believe the Charge Lasers as well.

[OFaolain]

Hacking and Mind Control are, yes, and I believe the Charge Lasers as well.

Yup; they added a whole mess of stuff for the advanced addition.  They also added chain lasers (and ions), which charge slow to start but charge faster each time they're fired up to a maximum.  The vulcan laser's minimum charge time (after being fired ~5 times) is like 1 second, it's insane.  The best part of Advanced Edition is, of course, that it's free!

[Velax]

I'd forgotten just how much this game can piss me off, too. Was doing a run with the Mantis Cruiser on Easy, to unlock the next ship. Absolutely breezed through every sector. The only issue was it wasn't giving me any decent weapons. It threw tons of weapons at me, but all crap. But with four good boarders, it wasn't an issue for most of the game. Then an enemy ship right before I fought the boss killed one of my elite boarders with a well-timed Mind Control, preventing me from teleporting him back and resulting in his death.

Then when I got to the boss, he hacked my teleporter. That didn't seem too bad at first, but turned out when he activated the hacking, it not only disabled the porter, but recalled any crew currently on the enemy ship. With the crap weapons I had, it made it extremely difficult to take out the boss. I'd only get 10-15 seconds of boarding action - enough to do buggar all - before he'd activate the hacking and recall my crew back to my ship. I did beat the first round, but was left with Hull too low to beat the second. Was absolutely fuming.

[Andre]

Hey, FTL is awesome. A bit late, but i would just like to give some tips for the boss and other general things.
Max Shields, shields are just youre best friend against the drone part of the boss, and generaly any beam or laser ships.
Get engines decently high, not as important to max. That dodge is very good.
With the addition of mindcontrol lvl 2 cockpit is a must have, if they mindcontrol the pilot you will lose all evasion.
Missiles are not the best weapon, laser oriented or beam + ion is the best setup, exception is if you have like 40-50 rockets or more and its late game and you find a good rocket launcher.
Cloaking is a very good thing, try to get it if you have trouble, the augment that lets you charge weapons while cloaked with cloaking makes cloaking even better.
Upgrading Medbay and Oxygen to lvl 2 can save you. Try to get these upgraded, and theres some nice new options you have in some situations with lvl 3 of these  .
As some others have mentioned, drones are great aswell, especialy defense drones.
I would also advice to stay away from boarding if you dont have 2 or so mantis, or 1 with lvl 3 fighting, and some rockmen or good fighting skill humans to back them up. And upgraded teleporter, teleporting can be dangerous.
1 last thing: Search for Arumba on youtube, he is great at FTL, except for the mistake you will see if you watch one of his modded FTL videos, selling rocket launcher with 90 rockets, pffffff.

I could proly say something more, although i cant think of anything right now
Hope i dont bother too much here with a kinda late post, even though the last one was 4 days ago, not so long.

[Tom]

Played FTL advanced edition a bit, and I have very mixed feelings.

While the new content is interesting and nice, it's completely unbalanced. The boss with stealth + hacking is just ridiculously OP if you don't have the exact right ship setup to counter it. Basically, unless you're lucky with your first shots, your ENTIRE weapons array will be down for 90% of the fight. On the other hand, if you have hacking + mind control and a decent weapon or two, any enemy ship is just a speed bump.

They definitely need a 1.6 release.