Failing economically

[cephalo]

I've read a few beginners guides, but I'm having no luck getting past the early game on normal difficulty. I'm spending 90% of my scrap on hull repairs and the other 10% on fuel and missles. Needless to say that won't work. Should I be just avoiding every fight possible and wait for free stuff? How do you know if a battle is going to be profitable? Some of the gear at the shops costs 80 scrap, and at between 9 and 14 gained per battle, I can't imagine that I will ever save up for something like that after 20+ battles. I try to hit weapons first and then any attacking drones, but they always whittle me down just enough to make the effort unprofitable. Is battle the wrong way to proceed?

[Mataza]

The first few sectors bring not much scrap, true. If an enemy offers a surrender early on, you should probably take it. In the first 2 sectors you get 15-25 scrap for a win and 10-15 for a surrender, but surrenders usually come with high amounts of fuel, missiles and drones.

Assuming you fly the Kestrel or similar, this is what you should do:
Avoid repairing unless you have less than 10 hull. Use your first scrap to buy shields(20+30 for a new shield layer + some reactor).
Avoid shops unless you really need repair/fuel. Try to visit as many new beacons as possible.
You shouldn´t ever take damage against enemies that don´t have a rocket launcher in the first 2 sectors.
Also use missiles sparingly, to disable enemy missiles and damage shields of ships with 2 or more shield layers.
Only upgrade weapons when you actually have a new weapon you don´t have energy for yet.
Again save up your scrap after getting shields to 2 layers. When you´re about 80+ scrap, check out shops. You might want to buy Drone Control(and a Defense Drone, if you don´t get one) or Teleporter if available. If only weapons are for sale, a second Burst Laser 2 can carry you through the whole game. Other decent weapons are Halberd/Pike Beam, Burst Laser 1, Ion Bomb, Hull Laser 1, Breach Bomb 2, Hull Beam, Heavy Laser 1.
Only if you´re really desperate for more firepower buy a bigger missile launcher.

In general, invest in avoiding damage instead of repairing damage. Some events repair your hull, too, so 25 hull is usually what I aim for.
Secondly, invest in gaining more scrap. killing crew gains more scrap than destroying the ship. You can teleport on board, use bombs, antibio beam, ion weapon with lvl 2 sensors to target rooms with crew and use fire weapons. Fire weapons work very slow though. Fire Beam needs you to reduce shields(ion weapons), and Fire Bomb is very missile intensive.
If you´re good underway and in Sector 3 or earlier, you can still buy a scrap recovery arm in a shop. If you buy it later and it will probably not pay off.

Hope that helps.

[Number43]

Events in later sectors do give more scrap, but you should be able to earn well over 100 scrap in the first sector.

[jamotide]

Make your first upgrade shields. Then all you have to worry about for a while is missiles. For that get drone control soon. Then you should rarely take any damage, saves alot of scrap. Don't waste too much on energy, instead shuffle it from oxygen or between engine and shields, depending on what you get attacked with.

[UltraMantis]

Depending on the starting ship, you should probably go and fight every ship you meet even if given a peacefull option. Some ships have a very hard time with the first few fights so it's maybe better to avoid them until some scrap can be found through events.

The first 3 sectors do not reward as much scrap as the later sectors do, so initial upgrades should be relatively small. I usually prefer to hoard scrap until i have enough for a decent weapon should i find one in a store. If i'm not hoarding i like to spend on reactor upgrades because they are fairly cheap or buy cheap but usefull upgrades like autopillok (not to actually fly the ship but to harden the cockpit), O2, sensors. Engines are a great upgrade because they really help your crew develop evasion skills on top of the evasion bonus you get from engines.

For the Kestrel, buying the second shield quicky saves on repairs and getting the 3rd shield would be very wise before the enemies get rough.

The Teleporter is a steal at only 75 scrap, but i recommend the 2nd lvl upgrade (30) as well as a medbay upgrade. With lvl3 teleporter you're guaranteed to survive boarding runs into airless AI ships, so get that as well.

You have correctly recognised that repairs waste hard earned scrap and slow down progress. Pretty much everything the game throws at you can be countered somehow but it's not possible to completely avoid damage because you can't buy all the upgrades right away. The best solution is to gradually limit the damage you take. Against lasers and missiles speedy engines do the trick, but against beams you need powerfull shields. A defense drone MkI helps a lot as it can shoot down incoming missiles, asteroids, and boarding drones.

Another great defense is a good offense. Silence the enemy guns as quick as possible and you may not need many layers of defense. Stealth ships among others kinda work this way as they start without any shields and rely on a "First Strike" tactic in order to survive.

[Endarire]

I've discovered after many deaths that to survive early on, you should do these:

1: Get to Sector 5 to unlock the Engi Torus.
2: In Sector 1, use the Ion Beam to stunlock enemy weapons and max out your gunner's weapon skills. With this done, move the gunner to the engine (if you have too few people to man everything) and keep someone on shields. Read a good book while you train, and check on your ship every minute or few to ensure you're doing fine. Max out your weapons, shields, and engines for your crew, and go from there. This helps tremendously early on, and becomes necessary in the late game!

But how to get here?

In general, OFFENSE > Defense. (This applies to most games and real life situations!) I'd rather destroy or incapacitate an enemy before they can launch their attack. It's why real life guns and nukes are so devastating: Lots of power with a quick delivery system and little ability to counter.

Go on shopping sprees. Buy upgrades only when you expect to need them. Focus on saving for weapons, Cloaking, and a Crew Teleporter (and L2 or L3 Medbay for quick healing) to survive and win against enemy ships. Reactor upgrades will help in the long term, but avoid paying for more power than you need right now. (Remember, you can safely divert power from the Medbay if you aren't using it right now and put this power toward your engines, shields, weapons, or anything else!)

[Neoviper]

The early game is all about minimizing expenditure, primarily through avoiding damage as others have said. This is why I really like the kestrel, both type A and B. It is extremely good at disabling systems in a hurry, usually the weapons but sometimes a drone system is the greater threat and should be disabled first. Putting your first upgrades into level two shields is a powerful money saving tactic, you will have to spend substantially less on repairs and thus more efficiently clear the first few sectors. Missiles will be troublesome for most of the game, but in most cases the enemy will only be able to fire one before you can shut down their weapons. Just hope it doesn't hit your weapons, or you're in for a truck of pain.

When you're learning the game I'd advise picking less upgrade dependent ships, the kestrel A is an ideal ship for this purpose as it has two powerful weapons to start out with. The burst laser alone can win fights in the first two or three sectors, although sometimes using a missile to avoid more significant damage can be prudent. If a missile would avoid at least 2-3 points of damage, depending on repair costs of the current sector it can be more effective to just pay the cost of another missile to avoid the repair fee.

The last thing is to avoid spending all this scrap you've worked so hard to get better at earning as soon as you get it. Stores are very fickle, and will sometimes stock incredible weapons or augments that make the rest of the game a breeze; it is highly demoralizing to have just spent the scrap you needed for it on something non-essential like engine upgrades. Weapons in particular are what I find most important to the success of a run, so I usually plan my expenditures around being able to buy a decent weapon if one shows up in a store. Alternately, it can work to simply board the enemy and forgo attempting to destroy them entirely; a good defense will be necessary however else you will take a prohibitive amount of damage in the process.

[tswaters]

How do you know if a battle is going to be profitable?

Look at their weapons -- Do they have a missile? ( Artemis is, IMO, way worse than Hermes/Hull just because it fires so quickly and only takes 1 energy) Do they have a burst laser that fires more than you have shields to handle? You might get lucky with a miss here and there, but an enemy burst II or III , hull or heavy II -- anything with more than one blast will mean a few damage with every shot if you only have 1 shield. Finally, do they have an offensive drone? Each antiship will negate one of your shields and a beam will cut you up really quick if you lose shields. If you answered yes to any of these, the battle likely isn't going to be 'profitable' in the first round. Oh, and zolton shields. They are the worst in sector 1.

But not every battle is going to be like this -- these are the tough ones where you need to either quickly disable the enemy ship or get out of dodge. After playing Mantis B for a bit I really didn't like to flee automated drones in the first few nodes, but eventually I realized it was a must. You shouldn't be afraid of jumping away if you are outmatched -- it's not ideal, but if you're going to lose most your hull to take down a single ship it's really not worth it. Then again, if you don't have enough firepower to blast through lvl2/3 shields and you are running from every enemy -- running away may not be ideal -- in these cases, it's time for a teleporter

Also, as others have said -- upgrading shields to two and a defence drone will increase your surviveability immensely -- but don't neglect the engines -- if you can keep them around the same level as your shields, you will miss quite a few shots that would normally take repair costs. Usually I won't buy anything until around sector 2 unless I absolutely need the repairs or find a sick weapon (halbred, burst II), or something I may need for final boss (breach bomb II). Once I have around 150-200 I'll upgrade both engine & shields by two, with the reactor upgrade as well -- if I make it that far, after this upgrade, things get considerably easier.