Red Tail - Most powerful ship setup I have ever seen!

[thereaverofdarkness]

**SPOILER ALERT**
If you haven't seen the second Kestrel cruiser, you may not want to read past this. That ship has a pleasant little surprise that's best when seen in-game.

I started out with the intent of making a laser volley ship, which goes well with the Red Tail since it starts out with 4 basic lasers. I refused to replace any of my basic lasers with anything that wasn't a fast-firing laser, and by end game, I had a burst laser 2, 2 heavy laser 1s, and....still one basic laser. But I was keeping an ion bomb in storage just in case I never replaced the final basic laser, which I happily put on for sector eight. Amazingly, I had all systems installed and with full upgrades with a few hundred scrap in change, along with some 50 fuel, 30 drone parts, and 70 missiles. My augmentations were Stealth Weapons, Weapon Pre-Igniter, and Weapon Recharge Booster(name?). If you don't know what those do, they make me able to fire while cloaked, fire at the start of battle, and my weapons charge faster. With full cloak (15s), I was able to fire off three volleys before decloaking. My drones were defense mk I and defense mk II.

I had 3 humans, an engi, a mantis, two rockmen, and a zoltan. I never came across a slug crewmember that whole game despite having gone through two slug-controlled nebula sectors, so I still don't have the achievement for getting all 6 races on one ship. That achievement is hard! The only harder one seems to be killing 3 enemy crew with a single shot of the bio beam. Which, by the way, I discovered as I secured the slug cruiser in this very playthrough! Go me!

Anyway, when I fought the final boss in the first round, I used the ion bomb on the shield system to take out two shield bars, then fired the burst laser II and once all shots were in the air(space), I fired off the two heavy lasers. I scored two hits on their shields and took em down to two. I used the cloak to fend off the first missile barrage. Second volley, the ion bomb had worn off but I got a similar result, this time taking their shields out completely despite their efforts to repair. Third volley, I used the ion bomb on their navigation just to ensure I wouldn't miss (but the ion bomb missed!), and I fired the burst laser first as they had 1 shield back up, I fired it at the shield generator and fired both heavy lasers at their med bay. One of the heavy lasers hit and took it out which was perfect as the crew was already gathering around it to heal up. I was considering boarding them when I noticed they had no shields and were at 3 hull HP. I never even used any drones!

Second round, the first volley was a dismal failure as the ion bomb missed and the lasers altogether scored less than 4 hits. But once I got their shields down I quickly crippled their ship again. They had fewer crewmembers, and I got lucky killing several of them early on. They were down to just one non-isolated crewmember so I boarded the ship and started destroying systems. I was using a combination of my cloak and my two defense drones to defend against the missile volley but they scored a lucky hit on the crew teleporter. I didn't manage to get to it before it burned down, and that was when I noticed the flagship was down to just 6 HP and had no shields nor navigation. I fired the burst laser and one of the heavy lasers at its weapons, taking them out and leaving it at 1 HP. Once my crew teleporter was repaired, I took my crew out and fired the final shot!

Third round was rather pathetic for them. That ion bomb was pretty effective at taking out the energy shield, as was my impressive volley of lasers. Volley three I had them on their knees. This time, the crew put up almost no fight at all. Two of them even boarded my ship (and died very quickly), leaving the rest empty in very little time. I boarded them again and had my crew take their systems down. While my cloak was on cooldown I'd defend from the energy surge barrage by taking power off the weapons to maintain both defense drones as well as shields and engine power (for max evasion). Two of these volleys failed to bring my shields all the way down (one didn't score a single hit), but one of them got really lucky and scored about 5 hits. I was scrambling to fix my ship up while defending it, putting out the rampant fires (my door system had been hit) and fix the broken oxygen system while trying to keep hitting them at the same time. Finally, I realized both of my defense drones had been destroyed, which explains why they hit me so hard perhaps. But I recovered and was about to apply another deadly laser volley when I realized they were about to go down. I brought em to 1 HP again, then fired a final heavy laser and teleported my crew back while the final shot was in flight.

Best FTL play ever!