just me having a little waffle about some of my ships I enjoyed playing the most

1. Lanius A, I was blessed with the quadruple burst laser 2s by RNGesus. I’m gonna miss this one, it was immense fun piloting this monster rig round sectors 6 and 7 and obliterating everything I looked at. I was hoping the run with 2 Lanius would be a bit more challenging but FTL ultimately decided that Jill and Will were to live happily ever after surrounded by their burst laser 2s.

2. Zoltan A. had a pre-igniter, nuff said.

3. Zoltan B, has a pre-igniter, nuff said.

4. Engi C, this was one of my more peculiar ship loadouts in FTL. I ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS buy cloaking to avoid being torn apart by power surges but in all the stores in sectors 6 and 7 (when I was far enough ahead of the curve to afford cloaking) I did not find it. This could have been disastrous but thankfully I found a Hull Repair and since I had had a drone recovery arm since the start of the playthrough, I had over 30 drone parts going into the flagship fight.
   this meant I was able to hack shields and spam my 3 flak guns at the flagship’s shield room as it is a 4 man room (to maximise the damage the flaks do) and was the first ever time in FTL that I have completely ignored the missile launcher. In phase 1 I didn’t take much damage, but in phase 2 things really started to get interesting with a single power surge doing 17 damage to my ship. Luckily the flaks tore him apart very quickly so I didn’t see another one, and any other run would have been essentially over with this amount of damage. Instead I simply just repaired my hull and got straight back into phase 3 after fixing up the ship. Phase 3 was even more fun with less damage taken but more than half the crew in the clonebay by the end of it, in conclusion, this ship taught me that Hull Repair is well worth it if you have excess drone parts and can’t find cloaking, it really does take defensive warfare to another level.

all ships were played on Hard

What do you think happened?

Shield hack event + beam drone. Targeted drone as much as I could but the first volley missed 2/3, then weapons got beamed, second volley missed all 3, weapons got hit by a laser, and the final volley hit on all 3 but by ship was destroyed shortly after firing lol. This was the 4th beacon I visited, the others were a pretty easy pirate fight (I took 2 damage from an Artemis) and the asteroid belt distress signal event (from which I believe I took 1 damage IIRC) I did target the distress beacon because I was going for the Diplomatic Immunity achievement, which led me down a pretty bad path, but it's not like Fed A has anything to sell at a store anyways.

The only improvements I could've maybe done is run the human over to weapons to help the rock + engi repair while having the Mantis be the pilot? At the very least I almost certainly should've done that once engines got hit and I lost my manning bonus. Guess I could've also started venting to 50% o2 before my doors got hit, but didn't want to suffocate my crew.

With this (incredibly overwhelming) victory, I have now defeated the flagship on every ship, and every layout, on hard.

I am not done—I still have to complete the Slug
Cruiser Quest on hard, and you can expect me to come back here, and be even more insufferable, when I do.

Engi B- Normal.

First jump, asteroid field. Enemy ship has and small bomb plus a single laser or mini beam. Maybe Hacking, but things are blurring together from previous crappy Engi B runs. Managed to win without any hull damage even after having piloting bombed so that was good. 16 Scrap.

Second Jump. Pirate Interceptor near a sun. Has Ion Blast and Burst two. Of course before I can shoot, my engines (remember Engi B only has one engine bar) and Weapons take a hit. So now I can't get through Interceptors shields, and I am a sitting duck, plus not charging FTL. Take engi out of piloting to help with repairs, but second enemy volley takes out engines and piloting before I can do anything.

Finally get both weapons back on line, and piloting repaired --but heavy ion misses,

Their ion hits right before solar flare (just miliseconds before my dual repair drones have engines back online). Engines come back, BUT burst two takes out Engines, Med bay and start a fire in droid control room.

So I am second jump in, the FTL is less than a quarter charged, about to get a solar flair attack, Engines out, Med Room out, droid control burning, Hull is at 13 with another Ion Blast on its way when I paused to come ask this question...

Is this just RNG? I mean it was two jumps in, so not a lot of room for bad decisions. What could I have done different?

Edited-- So My weapons finally ready to fire, and I was able to take out his burst before it could strike again. After than, I was able to win that encounter with no further damage...

3rd jump, 4 boarders and an ENEMY ASB batter. I quickly force boarders into drone control so I can keep my engi in piloting, but the 4 of them take out my anti personnel drone pretty quickly then advance to piloting. ASB smashes my doors and give me 3 more damage. but the boarders come get me in piloting anyway...

I run to Med Bay while my repair drones work on the doors (but it is vented) so I am there with 3/100 health. Doors fixed, so I close them to start healing, but now piloting is destroyed. Another ASB shot, hull down to 7

If I keep the medbay door close so I heal, I can't vent piloting because of the layout. Boarders have destroyed the repair drones, so I only have one drone part left. Anti Personnel drone finally helps me kill off the boarders, another ASB hits due to piloting being offline, hull down to 4.

Well, no. At least I can't. This is my best attempt, but perhaps you can do better!

The rules are simple: No boarding parties, and all hull damage must come from the artillery. I can use any non-damaging weapons, like ion and bombs.

I'm not the most skilled at this game, and I got crap weapons all run.

I'd only ever won on normal before so this was quite the challenge! I decided when I was graduating to hard that I wanted to graduate to no-pause at the same time (part of it is that microing feels a little bit cheesy in many ways) and it sounded like a nice challenge. It's really hard to make good use out of a ship with all systems slots filled, and I definitely piloted her far worse than even a mediocre pause player could, but it worked out! (Also, getting the Zoltan shield in sector 7 was a godsend)

This was also my second hard and first no-pause run to reach sector 5 and my first to reach the flagship :) I had no idea what no-pause would be like for the flagship and it was honestly not as bad as I expected?

Anyways it's been fun.. here's to winning on hard-no-pause with the other 27 ships!

Full video if you want to see, panicking and highly sub-optimal play and all: https://youtu.be/DRTMbjyjHYg (~11min, no audio, please just scrub through it)

What's closer than 1-Hull victory? A 0-hull one!

(Friendly) one-upping of /u/UFogginWotM80

Happened on easy as I return to FTL, trying to actually learn the game.