What is your favourite ship - and why?

[AlphaStormX]

Am I the only person that really likes the rock ship? Its starting missiles are really good against shields, it is more resistant to missiles/fires and it looks nice! So there.

[Svankensen]

Mantis B for the sheer fun.

Torus A for being a great ship and low on micro (important for no pause runs)

Krestel B for its reliability (prolly one of the best to ensure a win), with bonus points because its late game is kind of complicated (your starting weapons rock, but dont age well).

Fed cruiser A. More reliability, good for "living off the land", you can win it with the initial weapons.

Stealth: Challenge

[Madhax]

Zoltan B. I find shields boring and annoying to pay for, and with the Zoltan B I can put off investing anything in shields until sector 5 or 6. The weapons combo extremely well with each other, and starting with lots of zoltans is fun. The only thing I don't like about the zoltan cruisers is that random events still allow boarders, despite having an anti-boarder shield.

[spacecadet13]

The Shivan, well, rocks! Firebomb plus 2 Rockmen beats 4 Mantis for boarding IMHO. Get a fire started in their shield room, Teleport your rocks in and its over. The crew on the boarded ship can't put out the fire because they're fighting the Rocks, and they can't beat the Rocks 'cause they're, well, Rocks, and they're taking damage from them AND the fire, which spreads to fill the room damn quick - certainly way before you need to consider porting the rocks back for healing. Shields go down fast, you can pick off other systems - weapons, medbay - at your leisure even with very modest firepower. All this, and you only need to commit two crew to boarding.

That said, the Basilisk with four ninja'd up Mantis's is kinda unstoppable. No weapons to start, but way more than compensated for by excellent starting defense - two shields and a D Drone 1 - plus the Mantis's.

Noether is a very good starting ship - borders can be awkward till you get your doors fully upgraded and/or a Mantis or Rock on board, but the starting weapons and Zoltan shield take you a long way through, and if you can keep the Zoltan crew alive till the end (and add one or two more on the way through) you have all kinds of options with regards to shield levels, drones and cloaking for the boss battle.

Torus is great - any decent second weapon to go with the Ion Blast and some extra drones and you are most of the the way home - and the Kestral and Red Tail are very solid.

[UglyMug]

Stealth - B! Relying on the cloak for an active defense,timing it just right, sawing-ships in half. Love it.

GLLLLAAAAAAIIIIIVVVVVEEEE BEEEEEAAAAAAMMMMMMM!

[Cactuschef]

Zoltan B because fuck yeah zoltans. in any successful run I almost always find myself ultimately power-starved and starting with 3 of the bastards is just terrific.

2nd favorite would have to be Engi A just because of the medibot dispersal, I'm usually so OCD with other ships that anytime anyone stubs a toe i send them to the medbay at the first opportunity and the all-over healing saves me so much time (i was really disappointed to find that medbay upgrades don't affect it. I really wanted to vent my entire ship with a lv3 medbay and have my crew live in vacuum). my best run ever was an Engi A, although this was mostly just providence. cloaking, repair arm, drone recovery arm, stealth weapons, anti ship drones mk 1 and 2, 3x ion weapons, zoltan crewmembers everywhere. final boss didn't know what hit em

[Svankensen]

Yep, Engi A with a bit of luck (drone recovery counts as a lot of luck) is pure win.

[zJack7331]

I'd say the Red-Tail, because it starts with four crew members, which are good no matter what situation - a Mantis to repel boarders (and the Human, too).
A Zoltan to power up your systems, which is really good, giving you an extra point in the engines straight off the bat, as well as a weapon array that can do 3 damage in the starting sectors.

[hybridfive]

Federation B has a lot of things going for it.

Dual Laser is an end-game quality weapon. You're not sad about using it against the final boss. That puts it on par with Burst Mark II. The fact that it only takes one power means that it's extremely versatile in creating end-game weapon sets. It pairs well in combinations of [4, 3, 1] or [3,2,2,1]. That makes it nice for situations where you have a set of good weapons, situations where you might have been crying if you were forced to choose between weapons. For example, Burst Mark III + Halberd + Dual is superior to Burst Mark II + Burst Mark III + Halberd. Same goes for Glaive + 3 cost missle.

Having a Slug is really fun, and unlike Slug ships, you actually have good weapons to back up your telepathy. The combo of Slug + Zoltan should change the way you approach sector selection. If you're playing Fed B like Kestrel A, you missed the point. You should actively be seeking out nebula sections because you want ion storms. When you find them, you should rip up anything you find. You have three advantages: power, senses, and the artillery beam. If the opposing ship powers up the wrong weapons, you can conceivably win solely by duplicating Master of Patience. Power no weapons, shields / defense drone, O2, and the beam. Switch after the first artillery beam to finish if they change after the hit.

As a further point on the artillery beam, both cruisers support the defense-first strategy. If you mentally assign your first 70 scrap to shields, you end up saving money on repairs in the long run. Both cruiser's weapons are good enough to tide you through that build up, because of the artillery beam. The reason I prefer B is that you start with missles, which saves you money if you happen to upgrade to a better launcher later.

As a final note, the Slug-specific option on space horses is outstanding. Having an early, automatic, free Engi makes that ship run really smooth.

[Fangz]

Definitely Rock B (Shivan). Fire bomb + Crew TP + Rockmen = sheer fun.