I feel like I am wasting my time

[UltraMantis]

It's only a waste of time if it gives back nothing but frustration. Simple but true.

[entropius]

As the Kestrel:

I find the best way to assign your starting three crewmen is one to helm, one to engine, and one to weapons. Early in the game there aren't many situations where the extra shield recharge will help more than the extra evasion. Evasion is *huge* in FTL.

Missiles are limited, but you're wasting the launcher if you don't use them. It costs 3 scrap to repair 1 hull and 6 scrap to buy a missile, so a missile that saves you 2 hull paid for itself even if you have to buy more missiles. I find it's useful to put a missile into the shields of 2-shield ships along with a burst laser salvo, then switch fire to their weapons.

The Kestrel is a pretty easy ship to repel boarders on because of the layout; you can usually force a fight in the medbay by venting whatever they're going after. If they show up in the back of the ship, vent it right away and evacuate the crew; you especially want to preserve the O2 system for once you kill them. You can also fight and rotate your injured guys in and out of medbay.

Early on, try to get extra crew, especially of non-Human races; they're all useful, and let you kill boarders easier as a plus. It's sometimes even worth buying them from stores. Note that Engis put out fires twice as fast too; don't vent if you can just send an Engi to put out a small fire if it'll require taking crew off of engines, weapons, or helm.

[Smauler]

I feel lime I am wasting my time with this game. I haven't really been able to get anywhere. This game could be fun, if I could actually progress. I am currently playing on easy

The farthest I got was sector 5, and that was once in 30 tries.

I won my 5th game on easy, my 4th I got to the end. If you're losing earlier, I think you're doing something fundamentally wrong

My problem is that everything goes great, until I get to a system where I just get in a no-win scenario.

The last game I was in, I lost in sector 2 when 3 rock people came in. I only had 3 humans, so I vented everything but doors and engineering. Well they took out doors and when straight for engineering. I took them out, but now I had no doors, and a crew with almost no health.

As has been said before, if possible only fight in the medbay.

Other times I lose when I jump near a star or an asteroid field (I don't always get the option to take the long range scanner upgrade), I lose my shields, get a fire in engineering, and just have no way to put out fires fast enough before I take more damage then I can repair.

I honestly don't know what I am doing wrong.

The first upgrades I take are medical 2, doors 2 shields 3 and 4, engines 3 and 4, oxygen 2, and possibly some weapons at that point.

Here's some of what you're doing wrong. The things I prioritise first are shields, crew teleporter, weapons (depending on the ship), drone control, and cloaking. I try to save up before hitting a store. Oxygen 2 and doors 2 are complete luxuries IMO, medical 2 can be good with some blue events, but again is something I usually get later, engines are always ok, but I generally get them later.

When I fight a ship, I don't use autofire, I make liberal use of the pause key, I vent space when I am boarded. I hit their shields with a missile, and then I hit their weapons. Once those are down, I usually just use lasers on other parts until they are destroyed.

This sounds a pretty good strategy... I'm not sure what is going wrong. Keep in mind you have to know what they're going to throw at you - there are plenty of fights in which if you've spent on shields, that they cannot hit you whatever, so you don't have to use missiles, drones, or whatever. The most dangerous weapons to fight against early, IMO are 3 or more shot lasers especially when combined with something else that hits shields or is a beam, and missiles.

Also, note the placement of enemy weapons. 1 is front left, 2 is front right, 3 is rear left, 4 is rear right. If you want to take weapon 1, you've got to take out all the others first. If weapon 1 is a big ass missile, you'll probably be ok with just a defence 2 drone, decent shields, and hitting their shields, and your shields won't be as taxed. If weapon 1 is a burst laser III, your only defence is shields and cloaking.

If one of the lower weapons is a heavy weapon, you've got a chance of taking it out before it fires. This is especially useful when their 1 weapon is pretty ineffective against you.

[MalcB]

A trick I sometimes do when upgrading shields and engines is to upgrade each of them 2 levels each, but only upgrade the ship power by 2. Then, depending on the enemy, I either max out shields and reduce engine power if the enemy has no missiles, or max out engines and reduce shields, for evasion if the enemy has missiles. Turning off the oxygen during a fight can also give you an extra unit of power for something, maybe to get a second weapon or drone online. But remember to put the oxygen back on after the fight's over!

[spongebobsaget]

It's interesting to me to see so many people high on engine power. IMO, that extra 10-15% dodge isn't worth the 2-3 extra bars. Same for that 4th layer of shields. I'd rather use the power and scrap towards upgraded weapons, drones, cloaking.

Typically, my "final" ship consists of 3 shield layers, 3 engines, and then, depending on what I've picked up along the way, 7-8 bars of weapons, 3 bars of cloak, 4-6 bars of drones.. once in a great while, 8 bars of drones if I get two MkII units.

Also, I can't remember ever venting the entire ship as some have suggested. Interesting tactic but it does seem to leave you vulnerable to the unrecoverable hit to doors. I usually just rotate crew to/from the fight to the med bay. I might vent exterior doors in the early stages of a boarding event if it is practical but otherwise, I keep the ship sealed up and only vent as needed.

[The Captain]

3 - as in three - engines??? That's low. I shoot for at least 5. Evasion of at least 40% means 100% with cloak - I think that's worth it. Plus your FTL charges faster, in case you need to run away. I also tend to max weapons, cloak and shields, if possible. An extra bar for damage buffer, if not.

I will say in Captain's Edition I've been finding it harder to max as much stuff as I used to.

[itg]

It's interesting to me to see so many people high on engine power. IMO, that extra 10-15% dodge isn't worth the 2-3 extra bars. Same for that 4th layer of shields. I'd rather use the power and scrap towards upgraded weapons, drones, cloaking.

Typically, my "final" ship consists of 3 shield layers, 3 engines, and then, depending on what I've picked up along the way, 7-8 bars of weapons, 3 bars of cloak, 4-6 bars of drones.. once in a great while, 8 bars of drones if I get two MkII units.

Also, I can't remember ever venting the entire ship as some have suggested. Interesting tactic but it does seem to leave you vulnerable to the unrecoverable hit to doors. I usually just rotate crew to/from the fight to the med bay. I might vent exterior doors in the early stages of a boarding event if it is practical but otherwise, I keep the ship sealed up and only vent as needed.

The first few engine upgrades are really cheap, and you only have to power them right after a volley is fired, so they're actually even cheaper than they appear. It's really no trouble to upgrade them to at least level 5 by the endgame.

My "final" ship at a roughly comparable scrap cost would have 4 shield layers, 6 weapon bars, 5-6 engines, 4 bars of drones, and 3 bars cloaking.

[MightyThor2000]

Just keep at it, you need a bit of luck. I got to the last stand on my second play through but died there 3 or 4 times before finally winning.

Play on easy first. The main thing is in the first couple sectors save your scrap. Once you have over 100 ish you can upgrade. The reason is you don't want to miss out on crucial weapons or systems like a burst laser or a weapon pre ignitor because you just upgraded a shield bar. To get to the last stand you really don't need more than 2 shield bars and engines half upgraded if you have the right weapons. So save your scrap and upgrade all that other stuff near the end. If you have two burst lasers target enemy weapons, you will almost always get 1-3 shots save for those really nasty riggers that come with 3 shield bars. Your shots will generally stop their weapons from firing that way. I generally put my lasers on auto fire targeting weapons first, then leave one on weapons and one on shields.

My first win on the kestral I got lucky and had 2 burst lasers mark II and a ion bomb for the boss plus a cloak, and a defense droid. Cloaking essentially negates the boss super powers, while the ion bomb took down shields and dodge so my lasers could go to work on weapon systems. I had full shields and dodge that time. You do not want more than one point in cloak if you have a cloak or it'll cloak too long and you'll miss the second boss power surge.

My second win was in the osprey. I went all out offensive with 2 burst lasers mark II, a breech launcher and a weapon pre ignitor. With the pre ignitor I could breech their shields before they did anything, the laser the weapons or droids. It was a really easy win, I was kind of surprised. I was worried I'd die without a cloak but my weapons were simply too strong.

So again I got lucky, but you need to save your resources to take advantage of that luck. Also look up in the ftl wikis (I found two good ones) every encounter you come across to get the best result. It might be cheating a bit and maybe not as fun as doing it yourself but after 30 tries you're probably done with trying it all alone anyway. I got my first win after about 6 tries and my second about 2 tries after that.

Also I would stick to the kestrel or osprey for now. The burst laser they come with is simply too good to pass up, a 2 powered weapon that does three dmg or can get through level 2 shields is quite amazing.

[MightyThor2000]

Quick example of super randomness, I was trying the rock cruiser. Wasn't able to find any non missile weapons but by the end of sector 2 I had hired 2 mantis and rescued an engi, another rock and a human and bought a teleporter so going into sector 3 I had awesome boarding setup but still relying on the base missile launchers. Well first ship I encounter in 3 is a slaver zoltan cruiser with zoltan shields, a missle, laser and a beam drone. I only had 1 level in shields cus I was saving money for non missile weapons. Slaver ship takes out my shields before I can board and the beam drone just destroyed me. I felt like an idiot for not having more shields but what can you do? You roll the dice and often it doesn't work in this game, any other ship I would've boarded and been fine and rolled my way through bonus scrap to the boss.

[Iranon]

Sounds like player error to me.

Most victories should be through boarding, and Rocks can damage drone ships even with a lvl 1 teleporter, so the the worst ammo worries should be over. I'd upgrade for general survivability/lower repair costs instead of sitting on my scrap.
Hull Missiles sell for a pretty penny, if there's something truly nice we can sell the starting augment and the Artemis - almost 100 scrap in total.

Moreover, hiring 2 Mantises when you already have capable boarders seems wasteful... a second shield layer and associated power costs less.