Anybody completed it?

What does it give? The last ship (unknown)?

Tough as nail to complete.

You must:

1) Rescue a crystal pod (done)

2) Find one of those study events that will hatch the pod into a crystal crew (done)

3) Go to the rock homeworld (not done, haven't gotten lucky there yet)

Some tips:

a) The crystal pod can be found in a "rescue" planet, so look for those when you don't have the pod.

b) Once you hit the proper rescue sector, chose the statis pod, no the weapon.

c) The rock cruiser gives you a blue dialog option that ensures you rescue the pod every time. However, the rock cruiser is hard to play, because you start with missile weapons only and need to pretty much switch to laser weaponry early on or eventually run out of ammo so you might favor other races anyways and risk not being able to retrieve the pod (getting the pod won't do you much good if you are dead).

c) Not sure if the crystal pod is found in all the factions' sectors, but if you haven't found the pod yet, favor engi or zoltan sectors, because they have those study events that will hatch the pod once you found it (you hit two birds with one stone if you can retrieve the pod and hatch it in the same sector).

d) If you get a sector's map or long range scanner, the study events are found in shipless non-rescue planets, so plan a trajectory that will maximize those once you have the pod and you are in an engi or zoltan sector

e) Your quest finishes in the rock homeworld (red sector) so plan your trajectory accordingly. Before you find/hatch the pod, that means that your trajectory should include green sectors (engi or zoltan world that will allow you to hatch the pod with study events) followed by red sectors (rock homeworld) and once you have hatched the pod, you need to maximize red sectors (rock homeworld).

Hope you find this info useful and have more luck than I had so far.

Actually, I have the ship unlocked (it's not as hard as people make it look if you're lucky with the sector order)...let me give a more detailed info in easy steps:

1 - Locate an event that gives you an option to retrieve a damaged stasis pod (Engi Homeworlds, Civilian, Rock or Pirate sectors are known to have it, as far as I can tell always on a distress beacon)
2 - You need to find a Zoltan or Engi sector
3 - In either of the above mentioned sectors, you need to find the "Crew Study" event and select the stasis pod dialog option (you'll gain a new crew member, Crystal-man-thing)
4 - After obtaining the Crystal-dude, you need to find specifically a Rock sector
5 - Inside the rock sector, you need to explore to find a Crystal Beacon (unmarked)
6 - When in the crystal sector, travel to the Quest location and you'll unlock the ship (no fights on the quest location)

I know it sounds hard but I got it on my 6th try, so as long as you find the pod early, you'll have a pretty high chance.

Thanks for the tips.

I was unlucky with the ordering so far.

Also, I am not a natural with a missile-only setup so it took some adaptation.

And finally, the game seems to crash once in a while for graphics reasons and there is no save ><.

I though that feature "no save" was fine until the game started crashing on me.

I think it`s a memory thing (my laptop has a shared memory video card) so I'll have to take a peak to see if something is eating up a lot of memory when the game crashes.

It does have 4 GBs RAM total...

I might look into a driver update as well, just in case...

Yeah, first thing I'd do is check for a graphics-driver update, shared-memory GPUs have rare issues with some games (never experienced a crash myself so far, though I've had small frame-rate lag on the final boss).

As for tips, I should give you one extra tip - use missiles on shields, then lasers on weapons...that works fine in the first 5-6 sectors, giving you time later to damage other systems (or kill off the crew) ^_^

Yeah, That works well with the missile/gun combo.

Problem is that sometimes, I don't find any half-decent gun until much later (and rarely, never).

A mitigating strategy I use with missiles only to save ammo is to target the pilot controls with the weaker missile and target the hull with the "4 damage on hull" missile to kill the target with as few missiles as possible (and just accept to take whatever damage they dish on me).

Another strategy when you are are unlucky with guns, but lucky with crew is to get a transporter ASAP and transform your ship into a boarding platform.

Then, you usually need to waste only one missile to take out the medical bay.

My preferred scenario is still to start with all least 1 semi-decent laser weapon though.

Nice strategy, which ship are you using it with?
I personally use the Slug ship all the time for unlocks after I got it since it can take out the shields and use the bio-laser to kill-off the enemy crew, while having the lasers take out the enemy weapons (almost feels like cheating the first few sectors)

Lately, I play mostly the rock cruiser to complete the Crystal Quest, but otherwise, I like the following: Federation Cruiser, Stealth Cruiser Layout B, Manthis Cruiser Layout A, Zoltan Cruiser.

The Kestrel and the Slug Cruiser are decent too.

I've had the most problems with the Rock Cruiser, Stealth Cruiser Layout A and the Engi Cruiser (despite having completed the game at least once with each).

Re: The Rock Cruiser:

One of my favorite strategies with the Rock cruiser is to grab a transporter as soon as I am able to. Once in hand, I have 2 Rock soldiers ready to jump at the beginning of each engagement (it's nice to have acquired an extra crew member or two as well to keep the helm, sheilds, and weapons manned for the slight bonus), I will then do my quickest to hit the enemy medbay with a laser blast, or missle, what have you, to get it disabled, then send in the Rocks, while their crew is fighting my 150hp Rocks, and getting no healing benefit from their decrappified medbay, I pound away on their shields and weapons from my ship. Sometimes I have to transport them back to heal up for a spell, if so, I am sure to keep a shot on the enemy medbay, so they don't repair it, then send the Rocks back....before you know it, all the enemy crew is dead, and you reap higher rewards for scrap, missles, fuel, whatever, then if you had destroyed the ship. One time I destroyed thier Oxygen System, and suffocated the enemy crew, and made the "Victory Through Asphyxiation" Achievment :D.

When you get the Crystal Cruiser finally (it's not that hard to get...stick with it, and you'll get there), having two Crystal people, and two Humans is Pimp! The Crystal people have a special ability "lockdown", which, when activated on the enemy ship (or yours) forms a near impenetrable crystal wall around the room they are in, that the enemy has to continually keep blasting away at to wear it down, before entering. This makes them more awesome then the Rocks to send over to the enemy ship, even though they have slightly less hitpoints (125). In my current run, I am sending them over to the enemies weapon room, quickly "locking it down", and blasting away on their weapons while they frantically shoot away at the crystal wall to get in. When I see that the crystal wall is about to give way, I just activate the second crystal soldiers abilty, and before you know it, their weapons are completely destroyed. When they finally get in, I let the Crystal soldiers mop them up, while my ships weapons reek havoc on the rest of their ship...again, I can usually pull off killing off their entire crew, taking little damage myself, and get higher payoffs in scrap, missles, ect.

The trickiest part of the above strategy, is being careful not to blow their ship up by accident with my crew on board, lol. This has happened a couple times, and I screwed myself, haha. Anyway... hang in there in your quest for the Crystal Cruiser, you're gonna like playing around with it, when you get it.

The Rock cruiser sounds pretty fun...now I have to play even more to unlock it o_o
And yeah, having 2 Crystal-crew members can make suffocation really easy for people that board your ship (especially if you have improved blast doors), there's no chance for them to get in before dying lol

Presicely the same for me.

Apologies for the necro, but can someone confirm if it's indeed possible to gain the Crystal Ship just by finding the right beacon with Rock Cruiser Type C in the Rock Homeworlds? By confirm, I mean has someone got the ship themselves by just having the crystal man on their crew and skipped the whole stasis pod part? Because here it says "Alternatively, the Rock Cruiser type C in the Advanced Edition starts with a single Crystal aboard the ship, allowing you to skip the first two events" but I've been to the Rock Homeworlds twice now with the crystal man and checked every beacon I could, but didn't get Ancient Device beacon...

Edit: Well, it is possible after all. Just got the Crystal Cruiser. Didn't find the pod: I just blazed my way to the Rock Homeworlds as fast as I could with the Rock C and there it was, on one of the beacons.