The thing is that after a couple of restarts and deaths. I can't literally get past certain types of enemies with the basic ship. Mostly upgrading it with mind control which is fun, maxing out shields, energy, etc. Playing on normal and it's quite hard (which I like a lot) and rewarding. Any tips?

I would say play on easy until you get a better sense of all the subsystems and weapons and enemies. You get a little bit more scrap and enemies are easier. Might even unlock some extra ships to use too.

When you beat the last boss a few times is when you should switch to normal. I think I've beaten the last boss only once on normal.

Starting on easy is always the best option, but here's a few pointers from my own experience when playing with the first ship.

Use the missiles to take out the enemy shields at the start of the battle and rely on your energy weapon keeping the missile ready in case the enemy crew repairs the shields (also it can be handy if the enemy decides to run and you have a missile handy as you can knock out the engine right away).
If you can, you should get the long range sensors as soon as you can as you can see where the enemies are and if there's a risk jumping in to attack (being in range of a sun can risk fires on the ship when a flare hits, and hitting a plasma storm in a nebula can leave you with not that much power to power everything.
Push up your shields to level 2 as soon as you can as you'll be able to keep from getting any damage from the early ships.

Also if you get to the rebel stronghold, have a good look around as you'll be able to unlock a slightly more powerful ship with an artillery cannon that auto fires when fully charged and can punch through the shields of most ships.

I got it through sector five on normal with an amazing crew. A mantis, two engi crew members and three humans. And died. I love this.

So I bought it a while ago but gave it a go just now.

And wow. I absolutely love this game but I just can't win. Playing on easy, I did about 6 or 7 playthroughs and I can't win with that damn Engi cruiser (tried all three layouts). So I can't unlock any new ships.

The journey up until the Flagship is a cakewalk, I think I wouldn't have any trouble on Normal by now, but I usually die in the second round of the final fight. Only once I got to the third one and died very quickly.

I even watched a few Flagship guides on Youtube and I think I did everything right (I had a pair of teleporting Mantises, destroyed the rockets first, then murdered all the crew) but the second round the stupid breaching bot starts to invade me every few seconds, plus the drones, plus the weapons, it's madness.

I wonder, what is your ratio of win-losses? Is it normal to win like 1 in 10 tries? Normally I wouldn't mind but I really want to unlock some new ship types and I don't wanna play the damn Engi cruiser over and over again. Sigh.


EDIT: Also, I'm playing with the Advanced Mode on, should I turn it off for now? Is it gonna make the final fight easier?

6 or 7? It took me 53 playthroughs to finally beat the flagship!
After several hundred games, my win-loss ratio is about 1-3 or 4, but when I started out it was... well... 1-52. It gets easier. My second win took maybe 10 more games.
I would say a win in your first 10 games would be incredible.

**Some minor boss spoilers below**
Teleporting to destroy the rockets on the flagship is a very good move, but you shouldn't kill the entire crew. If you do, the ship's AI will take over and start auto-repairing systems rather quickly. You should try to leave at least one crew alive.
It may be a good idea to upgrade your doors, and maybe have someone manning the door system, so the boarding drone will have a tougher time tearing through your ship during the second round. I would suggest not destroying the boarding drone, because the flagship will just launch more, and it will create a lot of breaches.
Finally... Advanced Mode can make the boss easier or harder. It depends on what systems and equipment you have. But I think everyone would agree that the boss fights are less complicated in standard mode, so that might not be a bad option for beginners.
**End minor boss spoilers**

Also, there are other ways to unlock ships. If you have the right systems or crew during certain quests, or if you choose the correct dialogue options, you can unlock new ships. This wiki page will tell you how you can unlock every ship.

Yeah, so I switched off the Advanced content and just sailed to victory on my 8th attempt (Easy). Don't know exactly why that was, the Flagship without hacking certainly helped. But I guess some runs are simply doomed from the start while others destined to be great :)

Btw I haven't read their forums but are the guys at Subset Games planning any new content or possibly a sequel?

congratz on beaating teh flagship hope you manage to unlock all the ships eventually

a sequel would be awesome though i dunno how they'd go aboutmaking it better than the original

Nope, after AE they consider the game finished. They're working on a new game but they won't say anything about it, other than it's got nothing to do with FTL.

If you think you've gotten everything you could out of the game and want more content, you can try some mods (specially the Captain's Edition).