I was using the Kestral, got to sector 6, doing pretty well and prompty died to a Slug Assault ship that had a cloak, 3 layers of shields, a very good laser and a missle weapon that did 4 damage per hit lol. I love this game. :)

My best death tale so far would be using the Kestral as well. Got to sector 6.
Got into a fight and lost one of my crew to a missile as he was working frantically to restore life support, but I survived.
At the next jump I got into a fight near a star. Sadly I lost my gunner who'd been working the shields trying to put out a fire in the door control systems so I could vent the fire out into space. Managed to win the fight with only my captain left, determined to get the message through he flew on. Got to a store and repaired the ship (from 1 hull left, got the tough little ship achievement), headed on into a nebula as the next hop, wherein a boarding party came aboard,destroyed most of my ship and then ganged up on my captain who'd taken refuge in the med bay. In the end he survived, ran for the life support systems to restore oxygen, and got shot in the back on the way there.

I made it to sector eight with the kestrel. Sadly, I had no new weapons aside from a Pike Beam, no teleporter and within my first two battles I ran out of missiles, meaning I was physically unable to damage anything with four shield layers.

It was quite a shame, I'd built that Kestrel up into a fortress. Four layers of shielding and improved blast doors.

I suppose that's the danger of blowing all of your scrap on defence.

Managed to win on easy. Luckily stocked up on missiles. Kestrel, taking down missiles with the missilelauncher, disabling shields with basic blaster+ion blaster. Got a cool crew member Rock who's immune to fire. At the end added a antimissile drone. Investmenst with low returns in my opinion: improved pilot, improved blast doors. Improved shields/power quite early.

Improved blast doors are actually incredibly useful. It's one of the first upgrades I go for. Lets you deal with both fires and invaders by just venting the atmosphere.

They're pretty much a requirement for certain ships. If you have a Zoltan or Slug crew, suffocation is the only way you'll stand a chance against any boarding parties, particularly if you're dealing with Rock Men or Mantii.

At my best run I got to level 8, but first ship there destroyed my ship (The Kestral) easly.

On the other hand my funniest run was, when I tried to get pacifist achievment. I did it with pleasure and full of nerves. My ship (with fires, only one crew member who ran around and repair everything) flew to level 7. Pacifist run is exciting and it was the funniest thing in this game, so far (but i bought it yesterday and play like 4 hours - not much i know :) ).

On easy, I beat the game with the Kestral, the Zoltan Ship and the Federation Cruiser.

I almost beat it with the stealth ship and the Engi ship (got to the third incarnation of the final boss for each), but for both, I ran out of missiles on the last incarnation and didn't have enough firepower to penetrate level 4 shields otherwise (kinda relied on the missiles to weaken the shields for my energy weapons to punch through).

I lost a game with a kickass ship, because I ran out of fuel and got unlucky with the ressupply events so the rebel fleet caught up to me less than halfway into a sector.

Besides dying at the final boss, that's the most epic death I've had.

Also there was also a game where I had a Kestral armed to the teeth and punched through the first incarnation with almost no damage, but got owned by the second incarnation, because I hadn't yet figured out it's best to take your energy weapons out of auto and micromanage them to get the biggest bang for you buck so I relied too much on luck for the timing of the energy weapons.

I have only been playing on normal, but my best run with the Kestral Type-A was me getting all the way to the boss ship and dying rather quickly to it. It was a good run though, because I managed to get all 6 alien races as crew mates, which caused me to unlock Type-B of the ship. The problem was that I had the same weapons I started with, and I ran out of missles. I was unable to beat anything with 3+ shields, so I had to keep jumping away from battles in sectors 6-8. Somehow, in sector 8, I managed to secure 6 missles and defeat one rebel ship, but then I had no missles for the boss.

Things I learned after playing the game many times... Missles are life. Conserve them, hoard them, and buy them whenever possible. Drones are powerful as hell! Having a racially diverse crew can be sweet.

So, has anyone beaten the game with a Kestrel Type-A on normal difficulty? I wish the game offered more weapons to deal with those 3 and 4 shielded ships.

I had never beat the game, but saw the boss only with Kestrel A. I have Kestrel A and Engi A and B. An I'm wondering, if someone won (or be close to that) this game wirh Engi B type ship? I was trying to play with Engi B (its awesome idea, i love robots!), but it's so hard to manage this ship :) I had so many problems:
- only one crew member and one defence drone - but defence drone is nothing against 4 people
- two repair drones doing work randomly (?), and I can't decide which system will be ready
- only drones to attack enemy ship - and drones fire randomly
If anyone had good run with Engi B, I will be glad so hear about that :)

My best run with Engi B is around 3 jumps.