Wow, just finished the run. I got 3 more weapons the next sector including pegasus missile and ion bomb (which I used with the burst laser and crystal burst), managed to buy all the systems and a weapon pre-igniter by sector 4, and it kept throwing several more free weapons at me over the course of ...

I start up a run on normal using Crystal A. First beacon I jump to, he offers a scrap recovery arm for surrender. Jump to a second beacon and it's an automated ship. I destroy it, and in the wreckage I get an ion blast (mark 1). Jump to a third beacon, and its the "do you want to search the wre...

You can beat the boss with a burst laser and a glaive beam. I've had times where I'm only able to pierce 4 layers of shields using missiles, so I can't even damage the drone phase.

Yes most races other than mantis should be able to make it, but zoltan have reduced health so I'm not sure. Still you should be able to switch out the third crew member in there mid-way if it's not fast enough.

Once on the last beacon before I went to the exit on sector 7 I lost my 4 man boarding crew to the enemy jumping away. With what I had I would have almost certainly won if that hadn't happened, but it was too discouraging for me to continue and I quit.

In the "stories and storytelling" part of this forum someone posted an image of the gameover screen from his last crewmember dying of lack of oxygen just as he finished off the last stage of the boss.

The only other weapons that pierce 1 shield like that I'm aware of are the crystal weapons. Despite the name on that one, there doesn't seem to be a Heavy Pierce Laser II. Anyway, the crystal weapons work just like that except they can be shot down by defense drone I's as if they were missiles. Ther...

That's not quite a stalemate, as if you wait long enough every once and a while an enemy missile will land before your drone can shoot it down.

There are other encounters that similarly just give you a weapon and loot without any options. Most of them say something about it being given to you by federation loyalists. They tend to be particularly common at exit beacons.

You only had to dismiss 1 crew? One run I got so many crew from events I had to dismiss 10 of them (it says in the stats screen I hired 18 crew that run). Of course that is only likely to happen if you beat most of the enemies by killing the crew, and you have an upgraded medbay. You like the medibo...