I just had a pretty sweet build. This a screenshot of the ship in sector 8. I upgraded my doors once, and my engines three more times between this pic and the boss fight.

Two Chain Vulcans with a pre-igniter augment. It tears any ship apart in seconds, including the boss.
Teleporting the Lanius crew members to destroy the ship's piloting system ensures that the guns don't miss. I let them blow up with the ship - they will be cloned in a few seconds.
I only wish I had a second Defense I drone. A couple of missiles and a boarding drone got through during the boss fights.

I had a Federation Cruiser A with four Flak I guns. Any time you get four Flak I guns the game is just incredibly easy. For 8 bars of power you get volleys of 12 shots, and they reload really fast. You can focus them on one part of the enemy ship, or spread them around for maximum chaos.

Lately I've developed a new tactic because I wanted to take ships intact without destroying them. My Rock Cruiser A has Hacking and a Breach Bomb II, in addition to some supporting gizmos to help me deal with different situations. Here's how it works:

Step 1 - Hack the enemy oxygen system. Get the probe attached, but don't activate it right away.

Step 2 - Send a Breach Bomb to the oxygen system.

Step 3 - Activate the Hack one second before the Breach Bomb detonates. You do it this way because you can't hack a destroyed system, but you can hack a system right before it gets destroyed, and you still get the full effect.

Oxygen hacking is much better than simply destroying the oxygen system, because destroying it just makes the O2 levels deplete slowly, but hacking actually pumps the air out into space really fast. Breach Bombs don't cause any Normal Damage either, so there's no danger of accidentally destroying your prey.

If you do this tactic right, you should end up with the shipwide O2 levels down around 50 (and dropping) with the system destroyed in a room with sealed doors and a vacuum breach. Often you can sit back and watch the whole enemy crew snuff it. If they have a clone farm or a med bay, you might have to take it out right before they start trying to use it, but it's usually not that hard. Another Breach Bomb will do the trick nicely, or you can use whatever else you have handy.

Cheesy, but I like it. ;)

I would argue that it's sort of like flipping the switch to PURGE and then smashing the control panel, but I can see why you might consider it cheesy.

It is extremely effective, though. The only ships that give me trouble when using it are those that have enough firepower to wear me down while I'm waiting for their O2 to run out, or ships I'm trying to fight in pulsar systems. Those pulsar bursts are nasty.

Nice! I've tend to do something similar whenever I get the weapons/systems available in whatever ship I happen to be using.

The main difference is I've always timed it so that the bomb goes over just as the hack completes - until now I didn't know that the hack actually still works on a destroyed system. Good to know!

And yes, pulsars are my greatest fear in this game. Generally I'll try to end the fight ASAP or GTFO.

Just to be clear, the hack does not work on a destroyed system. The hack continues to work on a system if that system is destroyed after the hack is activated.

I think you understood that, but I wanted to clarify for others who may be reading this thread.

BTW, I just got the Trustworthy Autopilot achievement. That's the one where you have to have your entire crew transported over to the enemy ship when you capture it. As you may have guessed, I've been experimenting with transporter builds. They're very good!

Just remember to stop firing at a damaged ship if your boarders are over there. You lose them if it blows. I found out the hard way.

Depends. The Fregatidae, Federation Cruiser Type C, for example.

However, it is easy to forget, and not an uncommon enough occurrence for me. I've been better about it more recently.

Yeah I've learnt that the hard way too - but as Gydion said, any ship with a clone bay lessons the impact.

Personally I love transporter builds. Generally I love those ships that start with 4-crew teleporters (Mantis B/C, Crystal B) - though Crystal B is possibly OP IMO (my easiest victory ever was with that ship).

The Federation Cruiser C is fun - though a bit crazy.

The Lanius B is also pretty cool because of the Lanius' abilities - puts a different spin on boarding actions. Plus you can safely board automated vessels pretty easily too.

But I have to rate the Slug Cruiser in there as well (type A) - that bio-beam can work wonders under the right conditions so you don't even need to destroy oxygen or beam over.

Not to mention the Rock B (once you get a teleporter in there). Fire + Rockmen = victory!

I tried that. Actually, I cheated and made my whole crew Lanius. It's probably possible to do it without cheating, but Lanius crew are so hard to find I was impatient.

Anyway, I turned the oxygen system off completely and left the whole ship airless. It's pretty fun, because it makes you immune to fires and boarding parties. Hull breaches don't matter either.

I think I've gotten one from a defeated slaver before, but I'm not sure. They're definitely extremely rare. Most games I don't even get one.

FWIW, I guess I like crystals the best for boarders. You can drop a couple of them into a room with one enemy, then freeze the room so he can't escape to the med bay and nobody can get in to help him before it's too late. Crystals are also kind of hard to get unless you get to their sector, in which case they're easy to get.

Bumping for the sake of adding people to the friendlist (great job on that).

I just did a run with, I think, my best ship yet. It was a type A stealth cruiser with
lvl 6 shields; lvl 3 cloaking; lvl 3 mind control ; lvl 3 drone control (hull repair)
and
dual lasers ; mark III burst laser; fire bomb
and
stealth weapons ; automated reloader ; long range scanner

At the start of each fight I would cloak, and then all 3 weapons would finish charging right before the cloak ran out. I would then target the shields/weapons with the firebomb and as soon as the first crew member came to fight the fire, I would mind control him. He would then fight all the other crewmembers that came to fight the fire, delaying them enough for it to spread. It was insanely effective and I could easily wipe out the entire crew of any ship, and then repair any damage with the hull repair drones.
The 1st two stages of the rebel flagship was easy to beat using this technique, and the final stage would've been really easy as well, easiest in fact, had I not run out of firebombs. I had one left, but the damn thing missed. If I had scored a hit the fight would've been over real quick, but instead it turned into a prolonged back and forth. Three of my little guys perished in the process :(

Ha! Good one.

I love all the little tricks you can use in this game.

I'm pretty new to the game, I haven't unlocked all the ships yet but I'm working on it. And I'm playing on easy with the advanced mode turned off to get used to the basics of the gameplay first so take this with a grain of salt - not sure if it's a good build on harder difficulties or with the extra systems and weaponry the advanced mode gives you and the enemies ...

The first time I beat it was in the stealth cruiser. I got shields right away, but no other systems (in fact, I still haven't really used drones, the teleporter, or even missiles yet). And in the other ships I've won with, it's always this same strategy:

I max everything and keep my crew alive as much as possible so I get the bonuses from them, whenever I have a choice between blowing up a ship or getting a free crew member I always take the crew member. That event with the Engi virus ship, if I have an Engi crew member, I ALWAYS take the blue option because you lose him and have to fight the ship, but after he comes back as "virus" and has incredible stats - 30% faster in either shield or weapons.

Augments:
Long-Range sensors
Weapon Pre-Ignitor
Scrap Recovery Arm

Weapons:
Ion Blaster Mk II
Pike Beam
Pike Beam

This was awesome, I took out the Motherships pretty quickly, and everything on the way to it. The Ion Burst Mk II only takes 1 point off shields, but it recharges in 4 seconds - even faster with my experienced weapons officer. So it doesn't take too long to disable their shields, then once down I just keep hitting the shield system with it. The double Pike Beams took out the Mothership in just a few attacks - especially when you target them just right, you can hit 5 or 6 rooms each for a total of 10-12 damage with each attack. The only hectic parts are the 2nd and third iterations of it when you have to deal with boarders - I use all crew to fight them except engines and pilot so my evasion stays really high, and swap them back and forth from the medbay - a lot of micro management with crew so no one dies.

I also got all 3 achievements on the Stealth Cruiser here to get the B version. Destroying a ship from full health while cloaked is really easy if you pick up a Pike Beam early. The only hard one is evading 9 points of damage while cloaked - all you need to do is wait for the 3rd version of the Mothership and don't cloak until you hear the power surge warning and wait for that spiral beam attack, then cloak.

I love this game. I'm going to try some of the weapon layouts in this thread ...