Finally! I beat the boss ship!

[Mottikhan]

Well, it was on easy mode, but it still felt good. Learning to use the pause button and weapons hotkeys were major players. It was with the default Kestral A.

Unlike others, I didn't use missiles. I had the luck of being able to buy 2 extra pulse lasers, so I had 3 of them going at once. Not enough system power for a 4th weapon, but didn't need it.

I had an Anti-ship drone too. I don't remember my augments.

On to Normal mode next.

Finishing the game evidently unlocked an incredibly weak ship called the Opsrey or something like that. So far, I have plenty of experience dying early in that one.

[Zaffre]

Good job! For future playthroughs, though, I recommend using ion weapons or missiles/bombs, as even three Burst Laser II units sometimes can't get through the Rebel Flagship's shields; I learned it the hard way.

[draeath]

I got to the second stage (easy)

Shaved off 1/4 of the HP there before I popped.

I had: Engi ship A, drone bay, 4 shields, about 45% dodge from engines and pilot. Drone bay, with anti-personel, boarder, and defense MKII drones. Stock ion blaster, and fire beam.

Needless to say the first stage took a LONG TIME. But I managed. Repeatedly killed the drone controller with fire, until it popped.

This was my second try My first try was (obviously) Kestrel A, in easy as well. Made it to the final sector, but didn't realize how the timing worked and the boss made it to base before I engaged.

[headhunter99]

the opresy isnt weak its a good ship

[TrashMan]

Esoecially if you fully upgrade the arty beam....

[jonathino001]

the major flaw of the federation cruiser is that it cannot get cloaking (from my experiences) the ship menu doesn't have enough slots for that many systems. they sacrifice cloaking for the artillery beam, so in order to play this ship properly you really need to focus on defense in every way possible. I would think defense drones to be a necessity (although versus the boss and its triple launcher, I find they just spaz out and can't make up their mind which missile to shoot) taking out their missile launcher is not easy either when you tend to rely on a randomly firing weapon and need all other available scrap for defense. I guess if you get lucky enough to find a bomb weapon that wont be such a problem. And don't even think about crew teleporting, you can't trust the artillery beam not to kill you or the ship before you can pull out.

[Tarmon11]

For me, it took AGES to beat the final boss with the kestral A, because I would never get anything I could use to beat the stupid second phase. Eventually, I got two mark 2 burst lasers and a mark 3 burst laser, and just owned the shields. About the federation cruiser, its ridiculously powerfull. All you need is good shields and engines as well as a beam weapon and a lazer to beat the final boss, because you just wait for the artilery to damage the shields and then bombard them with all your other weapons. As well, you kill it quickly because the artilery beam hits 4-8 rooms every time you use it, which is 20 seconds at max level.