That's hilarious. Even though you were probably asking a rhetorical question, I was bored. Here's what happened: The fire would have to have started immediately to do that much damage. The enemy ship must have run out of missiles at one point and been unable to penetrate his shields giving the fire ...

Manpower is easy. All you have to do is rush to the exit as fast as possible, running from combat whenever you can. Upgrade your engines and rely on zoltan shields for defense. I managed it on my first try like this. If you get unlucky, it might take a bit longer, but it's not that hard.

You actually can dodge shots that are already fired. Hits are determined just as the shots reach your ship. It's usually best to save cloak for dodging.

You should always cloak when the enemy fires their weapons. With 4 engines PLUS the 60 percent evade bonus from cloak, they always waste their first shot. If you time it right, you can take down shields with the dual laser and fire the mini-beam to demolish ships. Even if you can't damage them with ...

Actually, I think this can be done without mods. I'm pretty sure advanced gaming mouses can run macros that simulate a series of key presses. If you pause the game right away,and set up one that simulates pushing space to unpause, waiting however long you want the turn to be, and then pushing space ...

I heard that starting the game with no crew gives you the same bonuses that the auto ships have.

One of the rock surrender options says "we were told aliens were a threat to our ways." I think the heresy and lies that rockmen talk about have to do with the rock government feeding them information about how evil aliens are.

my favorite is the Torus. If you find a second Ion MK2 you already have good enough weapons to beat the boss. The ions can keep any number of shields down no matter how good the enemy ship's evade is and take out weapons. The attack drone will have plenty of time to destroy enemy ships.

An augmentation could work but only if augmentations were changed to add visual effects to your ship.

If you mod a ship with no crew to start it actually becomes an AI ship. I do think that having a damagable system that is required to run your ship is a bad idea. The layout has WAY too many airlocks. It would make sense if you started with 1-2 engies to repair things faster.