Game Guide: FTL - Complete Ship Guide

Welcome to my complete ship guide for FTL. In this guide I'll be showing you how to best utilize the strengths and weaknesses of each ship, not to mention how to unlock them all. In the making of this guide I also referenced the FTL Wiki and the complete ship guide by TenLetters, who deserve credit for putting critical information all in one place for me to reference while making my own guide. Perhaps you'd rather look at those, or perhaps you wonder why I bothered to make this when they already exist. In any case, here's my guide, and I hope it helps you.

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS!


The Kestrel 
============================ 

  












Starting Weapons:
• 1 x Artemis
• 1 x Burst Laser MKII 

Starting Crew:
• 3 x Human

Unique Attributes:
• None

Unlocking: 
• This ship is unlocked by default

 Ship Guide:
The starting ship is, unsurprisingly, the least exotic. It has a pretty standard design and starting loadout. The Burst Laser MKII that you begin the game with fires three shots for only two power, which is a very decent shots / power ratio, and the weak albeit fast-charging Artemis missile allows you to take out critical systems early without shields getting in the way. This will allow you to tackle almost any early-game threat without too much to worry about. However, you will find yourself outclassed before too long unless you acquire another weapon as early as possible.

For this ship, try to balance out shields with weapon power, but prioritize one based on the kind of loot you're finding. If you get any kind of multiple-shot laser early on, you want to prioritize weapons. If you find no weapons or just another missile launcher, then you might want to pump shields. Try not to spend scrap when you're doing well in battles because you might need it for the perfect upgrade when you find a store. The beauty of the starting loadout is that you can tackle most enemies for a decent amount of time. Preserve your missiles in as many encounters as possible, particularly when up against enemies with only a single shield. In general, you only want to use your missile launcher if the enemy has too many shields for your lasers to handle, or if the enemy themselves has a missile launcher or a couple of anti-ship drones and you want to take them out as a priority to prevent excess damage to yourself.

Once you get some more non-missile weapons, this ship starts to shine. Mid-to-late game, you'll probably want to get a drone system and a defense drone to help you against enemy ships armed with missiles. A cloaking system is also quite useful, although I'd probably prioritize defense drones myself unless you have scrap to burn and/or aren't finding any defense drones.


Red-Tail
============================ 

Starting Weapons:
• 4 x Basic Laser

Starting Crew:
• 2 x Human
• 1 x Mantis
• 1 x Zoltan 

Unique Attributes:
• None

Unlocking: 
• Unlock two of the three Kestrel achievements. I'd recommend going for "Full Arsenal" and "Tough Little Ship". For "Full Arsenal", just play as normal. If you have a good run with lots of scrap, you only need to buy the Drone, Cloaking, and Teleporter systems and you'll unlock the achievement. For "Tough Little Ship", the easiest way to get it is to gather a decent amount of scrap and then find a store on your map. Once you've located the store, visit the nodes linked to it to try and find an encounter against an enemy with only laser weapons and no missile weapons. Once you do, disable your shields until your health gets low, then enable however many shields you need to ensure that only one laser can penetrate at a time. Once you're down to 1 HP, reactivate your shields and wait until you can jump, then visit the store and click the full repair option.

Ship Guide:
This variation of the Kestrel is a good, strong starter ship on account of having four lasers. The beauty of having four weapons of the same type is that you can get hands-off synchronized attacks simply by setting them to auto-fire and forgetting about them while you manage your crew. This is a powerful ship early-game, particularly if you focus-fire down critical systems of your enemy, such as the weapons system if they have a missile weapon, or the shields when the enemy's weapon loadout can't touch you. You can usually completely knock out an enemy shield or weapon system in one or two volleys (at the start of the game).

As your enemies start appearing with more shields, this ship loses its bite. You'll need to find something better to replace your lasers with, and once you do, your weapons will start to fire out of sync. The best way to counter this is to turn off auto-fire and only fire your weapons when they are all charged, at the same time. This will circumvent the problem of enemy shield regeneration between shots. You may want to equip a missile weapon for these situations but I personally find with this ship that it's better to stick as many multiple-shot energy weapons as possible because you don't lose any power when up against a ship with defense drones. It's also a good tactic to focus-fire enemy shields at the beginning once they start being a real problem. You might only get one or two hits in per volley, but each hit should hopefully give them one less shield for your next volley, allowing you to overlap their defenses. Get a defense drone as soon as possible to help make focusing on shields viable. There's nothing like enemy missiles tearing holes in your hull when it comes to ruining your slow-and-steady approach.


The Nesasio
============================ 

Starting Weapons:
• 1 x Mini Beam
• 1 x Dual Lasers

Starting Crew:
• 3 x Human

Augmentations:
• Long-Ranged Scanners
(See detailed information on adjacent nodes on the sector map)
• Titanium System Casing 
(15% chance to ignore damage to your systems when hit)

Unique Attributes:
• Titanium System Casing is unique to this ship
• Begins the game with the stealth system
• Does not begin the game with shields

Unlocking: 
• You must have at least one Engi crew member on your ship. Then, go to the Engi Homeworlds and find a random event where you are presented with a blue text option to have your Engi crew member contact a fleet of Engi ships who are discussing something that is bothering them. After the conversation, you will have received two quest objectives. Both of them involve destroying enemy ships before they can jump away, so ensure you have decent weapon capability before undertaking this quest. One of the quest nodes leads to a decoy ship that has no information (not needed to finish the quest) whereas the other "real" one will give you another quest objective if you can defeat it before it jumps away. Once you find and defeat this "real" enemy, proceed to the new quest objective it gave you and defeat the Mantis ship you find there to acquire the Stealth Cruiser, the Nesasio. The best choice for attempting this unlock is generally the Torus, but any ship that begins the game with an Engi will help prevent too much need for luck along the way.

Ship Guide:
This ship plays very differently to most other ships due to not having shields at the start. As a result, you must play with the strengths and weaknesses of cloaking in mind to succeed with this ship. This ship is really fun to play and dominates most early-game enemies with its combination of stealth, powerful dual lasers (two shots for only one power), and short but sweet mini beam, which is just as well because you need to start earning big time scrap as fast as possible while taking very little damage. Since you have no shields, make good use of the long-ranged scanners augmentation to avoid encounters in asteroid fields or too close to a sun as these encounters will usually end in your death.

Usually, the best way to use this ship at the start is to hit your stealth button at the very start of every battle. This allows for "first strike" tactics, as your weapons will charge for your first attack while your enemy's weapons sit idle. For this reason, you probably want to upgrade to level 2 stealth as soon as you possibly can. Once both your weapons have charged, you want to aim for a system with the dual lasers (the weapons or drone system if the enemy only has one shield, whichever is more of a threat), then let loose with your mini beam the INSTANT the enemy's shields are down (even if the actual shields have just been hit and not the system itself) in a way that touches as many individual rooms as possible, prioritizing which ones need damage first. You must time everything properly and prioritize which systems to target based on each encounter in an efficient and calculating manner, otherwise you're going to take some damage and it probably won't be pretty.

Once you finally get enough scrap for shields (they cost 150), then you will start to eliminate most of the problems this ship has, namely enemy beam weapons. Stealth and first striking should still be your focus, though, and from mid-to-late game you want to crank your engines to help reach a 100% evasion rate (while cloaked). If you can find the stealth weapons augmentation and some decent weapons to replace your starters with, you're going to laugh your way to victory. Especially if you also get the weapon pre-ignitor augmentation, in which case you want to fire your first volley BEFORE you activate stealth. You'll enjoy this ship, but until you get the hang of it, you're also going to die a horrible fiery death in it against enemies you'd normally squash.


DA-SR 12
============================ 

Starting Weapons:
• 1 x Glaive Beam

Starting Crew:
• 2 x Human
• 1 x Zoltan

Augmentations:
• Long-Ranged Scanners
(See detailed information on adjacent nodes on the sector map)

Unique Attributes:
• Has built-in stealth weapons passive that works the same way as the augmentation (unrecorded, cannot be sold) 
• Begins the game with the stealth system
• Does not begin the game with shields

Unlocking: 
• Unlock 2 of the 3 Nesasio achievements. "Tactical Approach" is by far the easiest to achieve considering you begin the game with the long-ranged scanners augmentation and can see the hazards you need to avoid, whereas the other two are pretty much as difficult as each other. I personally managed "Bird of Prey" for my own unlock, if it doesn't happen early-game though you can be pretty certain that it's not going to happen later. You're going to need a high level cloaking system for either of the two harder achievements and for "Bird of Prey", you also need a decent weapon loadout (the stealth weapons augmentation really helps too). If you've decided on going for the "Phase Shift" achievement instead, you'll probably find that it's most likely to happen against the final form of the boss when he uses his overcharge ability to fire several projectiles. The downside of relying on this encounter is you have to play the entire game just to find out whether or not you'll succeed in unlocking it. I personally had no luck despite playing through as the Nesasio several times before finally unlocking this variant.

Ship Guide:
You'll need to play this in much the same way as the Nesasio, although the most immediately apparent difference is having only the single beam weapon instead of the standard loadout for the stealth cruiser. Another notable difference is that this variant only has a 2 slot medbay - something you're going to want to remember when you make decisions while being boarded. The Glaive beam is quite powerful and can pierce a single shield, but obviously once you come up against enemies with more than one shield you're going to NEED another weapon, and you probably want to get it before you reach sector 3 (or even sector 2 on a bad run). Until then, though, you can enjoy cutting ships to pieces without them being able to do much about it. Your strategy should usually revolve around having the beams pass through as many systems as possible in one rake, and you probably want the shields system to be one of the first rooms it hits so that you can enjoy extra damage to the remaining rooms. Starting with a level 2 cloaking system (but half the engine power of the Nesasio) allows you to be more effective with your cloaking early-on, particularly with the passive stealth weapon power of this ship. This is very useful considering the long charge time of the Glaive beam. The moment of dread with this ship comes when you unleash with your Glaive beam and the enemy still has a weapon online, and you're waiting for stealth to recharge. In situations like this, you're probably going to take damage. Still, if you can get through the early-game and find some nice pieces of equipment this is a solid choice. Personally though, I prefer the Nesasio.


The Gila Monster
============================ 

Starting Weapons: 
• 1 x Basic Laser
• 1 x Small Bomb  

Starting Crew:
• 3 x Mantis
• 1 x Engi

 Augmentations:
• Mantis Pheromones
(Your crew gets 25% increased movement speed)

Unique Attributes:
• Mantis Pheromones are unique to this ship and its variant
• Begins the game with a crew teleporter system
• First upgrade for the weapon system is more expensive than normal

Unlocking: 
• You must have at least a level 2 medbay and a crew teleporter. Then, go to the Mantis Homeworlds. While there, you need to find a random encounter with a pirate named KazaaakplethKilik. Either attacking or hailing him will result in a battle, in which you need to defeat the ship WITHOUT destroying it (by killing all the enemy crew members). If you take too long to defeat the crew, a dialogue box will inform you that KazaaakplethKilik died from his wounds after the battle. If done correctly, however, you will be presented with a dialogue box containing a blue option to teleport additional crew on board. You should then have another blue option to transport KazaaakplethKilik to your medbay to heal his wounds. If you do this, you will unlock the Mantis ship. If your medbay is not upgraded enough, however, he will tell you where his stash is before dying but this will not unlock the Mantis ship for play. A solid choice for attempting to unlock this ship is the Rock Cruiser, as rockmen are sturdy and suited for boarding, and buying a crew teleporter for them early is a decent choice (not to mention upgrading your medbay to prevent long waits between battles).

Ship Guide:
The Mantis ship is incredibly fun to play but also vulnerable to a lot of situations that other ships generally aren't. Since you begin with 3 Mantis, a crew teleporter, and only the most basic of weapons, you're naturally going to want to play using a boarding strategy rather than conventional weapons. Your basic laser is useless unless your enemy has no shields or unless you need to take out a Zoltan super shield before you can board. Your small bomb is not much better, although it's handy for guaranteed (apart from when it misses) damage to rooms such as the enemy medbay while trying to make the final push while boarding, or damaging a powerful weapon system when your crew aren't being left alone long enough to damage it themselves. Still, boarding is your primary means of attack, and as a result, you generally want to focus on defense with your ship so your boarders have something to come back to. I generally choose my spare mantis at the start as my pilot, and throw my Engi in the engine room. This frees up the Engi for emergency repair while maintaining your evasion rate, not to mention boosting your evade rate while the Engi isn't repairing. Keep shields as high as you can afford while still upgrading your teleporter / medbay, and you probably want defense drones as soon as possible, too. You want your ship to take little to no damage while you destroy theirs from the inside.

You should generally start each battle with your boarding crew already standing in your teleporter room, so you can instantly teleport them aboard the enemy ship. Just remember to move them there after they heal from each battle. Generally, you should start by boarding either their shield room or their weapons / drone system (whichever is more of a threat). The exception to this is when the enemy ship is trying to jump away at the start, in which case you probably want to go for the engines or the cockpit. As a rule, you want to try and board into rooms that have the same number of room slots as your boarders can occupy, otherwise you might find yourself outnumbered and losing at your own game. Once you have a fully upgraded teleporter and four crew members suitable for boarding, you can start to enter four-square rooms with impunity. Beware rooms adjacent to an enemy medbay.

Be smart with your boarders, constantly watching them and constantly ready to return them to your ship at a moment's notice. Losing your boarders means losing the game. Be very careful of enemy AI ships, ships with stealth, and Zoltan super shields. AI ships have no oxygen on board, so you generally want the cooldown rate of at least a level 2 teleporter if you're going to send your men on board, and if you do, you want to constantly monitor their health levels so you can teleport them back before they die. In these situations, you generally want to send them straight to the AI ship weapon room so that while they recover between boarding, your ship can sit pretty and not get shot at. Just remember that the final shot to an AI ship should always be with one of your weapons... if they only have 1 HP left when your crew members destroy a room, they'll go down with the ship! Also be very careful of ships with a stealth system, especially AI ships with stealth. While enemy stealth is activated, you can't target a room to beam your crew members away. Because of this, you may want to target the cloaking system for your first boarding attempt (especially with AI ships unless you want to helplessly watch them asphyxiate to death) unless you are sure that your men can handle their current situation and won't need an emergency teleport back home. Finally, Zoltan ships (and the final boss) can be a death sentence for a Mantis ship with underpowered weaponry, as you can't board them if they have a super shield. You want to have some decent weaponry aboard by the time you start running into super shields, or you're going to struggle.


The Basilisk
============================ 

Starting Weapons: 
• None

Starting Drones:
• 1 x Boarding Drone
• 1 x Defense Drone 

Starting Crew:
• 2 x Mantis 

Augmentations: 
• Mantis Pheromones
(Your crew gets 25% increased movement speed)

Unique Attributes:
• Mantis Pheromones are unique to this ship and its variant
• Begins the game with a crew teleporter system
• One of only two ships that has a four-square teleporter room
• First upgrade for the weapon system is more expensive than normal 

Unlocking: 
• Unlock 2 of the 3 Gila Monster achievements. Both "Take No Prisoners" and "Avast, Ye Scurvy Dogs!" will probably happen naturally while you play as the Gila Monster if they're going to happen at all. Knowing this, just play the Gila Monster to the best of your ability and pay a lot of attention to your boarders. If you want to try it, though, the best way to accomplish "Battle Royale" is by killing off enemy crew until there's only one left, then put every crew member you have except one in the same room and remove all oxygen from that room until they die. Once done, re-board the enemy ship with your remaining Mantis and kill the last enemy crew member. For obvious reasons, this should be attempted early-game so you can restart after unlocking the achievement. Another way to make this achievement easier is by dismissing all of your crew members except one at the start of the game and using your small bomb to weaken the enemy crew enough to finish them off with your last surviving team member. You obviously want to keep one of your Mantis crew members for this, and not the Engi.

Ship Guide:
This needs to be played just like the Gila Monster, but you're going to be much more vulnerable at the start until you get more crew and/or some weaponry. Since you have no weapons, boarding is your ONLY option, and since you only have two starting crew members, you're probably going to have to leave your ship empty while you board. The danger with this, apart from the usual dangers with boarding, is that all the enemy has to do is destroy your teleporter room while your crew members are away, and you literally need to restart your game. This may seem harsh, but having a four-square teleporter is ridiculously powerful once you have enough crew members to take advantage of it, and you do start with two shields to help survive lesser encounters, not to mention a defense drone. You also get a boarding drone to help with finishing off AI ships and with your normal boarding, but keep in mind that you can't target rooms specifically with it so you might end up with a boarding drone stuck in a room with no system on an AI ship, or in a room with no doors on a Slug ship. However if you manage your boarders and your defense carefully, and make whatever decisions you need to make to flourish, you'll find that it's a very rewarding ship. Just be wary that you'll find more situations difficult early on than most other ships.


Torus
============================ 

Starting Weapons: 
• 1 x Ion Blast MKII

Starting Drones:
• 1 x Anti-Ship Drone MKI

Starting Crew:
• 2 x Engi
• 1 x Human

 Augmentations:
• Engi Med-bot Dispersal
(Your crew is healed by your medbay regardless of where they are on your ship, albeit at a reduced rate)

Unique Attributes:
• Three drone slots
• Begins the game with a drone system

Unlocking: 
• You must reach sector 5 with any ship.

Ship Guide:
This is likely to be the first ship you unlock, and it plays so much differently to the Kestrel you'll be used to. As a result your game variety will open up immediately and this will show you how picking a different ship in FTL can be just as varied as choosing a different class in a traditional RPG. Personally, this is one of my favourite ships, it has a really nice flavour and is pretty strong against almost all types of encounters provided you play it right. The MKII Ion Blast is a ridiculously powerful weapon to begin the game with, since it fires fast and often. You can shut down enemy shields practically forever while your anti-ship drones blast them to pieces, and once your first couple hits have put pressure on their shields you can juggle each shot back and forth between shields and another target to keep them both suppressed with a single weapon. Shields should be your priority with your Ion Blast MKII, though, as your anti-ship drones are where your damage comes from and they can't do it with shields in the way.

A must-have augmentation for this ship is the Drone Recovery Arm. Pick it up as soon as you see it, and don't be afraid to sell a decent weapon for it (make sure you keep your Ion Blast MKII and at least one anti-ship drone, though). Once you have it, you can spam drones in every single encounter without worrying about running out. This is especially true once you have more than one anti-ship drone and a defense drone, as you can pop all three out in a single encounter every single time. Not having to ration your drone parts will open you up into a lean, mean, ship-killing machine. You probably also want to upgrade your doors, as your Engi crew members are not suited for man-on-man combat and the longer it takes an enemy to bash down your doors while dying from lack of oxygen the better. The medbot dispersal augmentation really helps your Engi hold their positions, though. Just don't let them get outnumbered, and be quick with your oxygen control.

You want to aim for heavy shields, another weapon (another Ion weapon is an excellent choice to keep systems suppressed), and then two anti-ship drones and a defense drone (MKII anti-ship drones are a great choice too, but for the MKII defense drone you risk them taking priority over shooting down an enemy laser instead of a shield-penetrating missile). Just remember to always buy the Drone Recovery Arm as a priority over any drone or weapon if you don't already have it. If you manage all of this, you're going to find it pretty hard to die. One thing many people don't like about this ship is that you cannot specify a target for your drones, so some battles can be incredibly tense moments spent hoping that the next hit will disable the weapons that are about to fire. For me, this is half the appeal!


The Vortex
============================ 

Starting Weapons: 
• 1 x Heavy Ion
• 1 x Heavy Laser MKI

Starting Drones:
• 1 x Anti-Personnel Drone
• 2 x System Repair Drone

Starting Crew: 
• 1 x Engi

 Augmentations:
• Drone Reactor Booster
(Your on-board drones move 50% faster) 

Unique Attributes:
• Three drone slots
• Begins the game with a drone system

Unlocking: 
• Unlock 2 of the 3 Torus achievements. Personally, I found "Robotic Warfare" and "I Hardly Lifted A Finger" the easiest. "Robotic Warfare" requires that you have three drones operating at the same time, which should really be a goal while playing the Torus anyway once you get the Drone Recovery Arm. After that, "I Hardly Lifted A Finger" can be pretty easily achieved once you come up against an enemy with no shields or once you have more than one anti-ship drone.

Ship Guide:
The Vortex, in my opinion, is the hardest ship in the game to play as, and most likely the one that will be your least favourite. I love the flavour of using drones to repair and fight off intruders, but I feel that there is not enough to support this play style, despite the nice movement speed boost to on-board drones. This helps your drones reach the room they need to be in quicker, but after that they sit still while working / fighting and this means that a lot of potential use for an augmentation is wasted. I usually sell this augmentation when presented with a decent upgrade that I can't quite afford, or when I find a better augmentation / run out of augmentation slots.

Still, if you can handle the slow start and the disadvantages of only having one crew member, this can be a cool ship to use if only for the unique style. You're going to chew through drone parts at the start, particularly against missile-equipped enemies, as you are not going to want to tell your single Engi to repair anything due to the fact that while he's not piloting you will have 0% evasion and you will be unable to prevent further damage. For this reason, you may wish to upgrade your cockpit so that you still have SOME evasion if you need your Engi for emergency repairs. Despite the strengths of an anti-personnel drone, you will also find that they aren't good at dispatching more than a single enemy boarder at a time, which almost never happens. What you'll need to do is keep enemy boarders occupied with the anti-personnel drone while oxygen is removed from the room they're in. Not the most eloquent solution as you're probably going to have to use more than one drone anyway, but it will do until you get more crew members. Boarders will be more of a pain than usual due to only having a two slot medbay and the fact that with this variant you don't get the Engi Medbot Dispersal augmentation. Not a good recipe for fighting with Engi, although of course you can populate your ship with any race if you find them.

As for the starting weapons, a Heavy Ion and a Heavy Laser MKI work well together initially. You can shut down shields just like with the Torus but this time you have a weapon that you can target specific rooms with. This combination rapidly loses its bite though, and you're going to miss the fast-firing brutality of the Ion Blast MKII that comes standard with a Torus by the time you hit some harder enemies. You'll want to sell off a repair drone as soon as possible to replace with either a defense or an anti-ship drone, and you'll probably once again want to prioritize the Drone Recovery Arm over some other equipment that you'd probably prefer to have instead. All I can say is that with the Vortex, I wish you luck... you're going to need it. I've never come close to finishing the game with this ship, although of course that is not to say that it won't happen to you.


The Osprey
============================ 

Starting Weapons: 
• 1 x Burst Laser MKII

Starting Crew: 
• 1 x Human
• 1 x Mantis
• 1 x Rockman
• 1 x Engi

Unique Attributes:
• Has an artillery system - a passively activated beam weapon that pierces all shields 

Unlocking: 
• Complete the game with any other ship.

Ship Guide:
The Osprey is a powerful ship that is slow to begin with but can turn into a death-dealer like no other. Its artillery system sets it apart from other ships. Artillery does not need to be manually activated and you do not need to designate a target for it, it merely needs to be powered to function. As soon as it charges, it will unleash on your enemy and ignore any shields they have. This coupled with the fact that it does not take up any weapon slots makes it arguably the most powerful beam weapon in the game, but it is not without its downfalls. Due to the fact that it targets the enemy automatically, you will sometimes find that it only hits two rooms instead of cutting across the entire ship. You will also notice the extremely slow charge time, which can thankfully be placated by upgrading the artillery system. Unfortunately, in my opinion, only the last two upgrades of the artillery make it fire enough to be of any real use and only the final upgrade turns it into a ship killer. It will always be helpful to break stalemates, though.

Apart from that, the ship needs to be played largely like the Kestrel. It does not start with a missile launcher, which means you will be lacking the swift knockout power early-game when you need to disable a system before it becomes a problem. It does come with the same MKII Burst Laser as the Kestrel though, which is a powerful weapon for only 2 power. It also has a very diverse crew. I typically put the Engi crew member in the weapons, as this section of the ship is far from the other manned stations and you need to keep your weapons up to keep the pressure on with this ship, so the Engi's increased repair rate is invaluable. I also typically put the Rockman in my shield room, as it is central to the ship and helps reduce the impact of his slow movement when you need him somewhere else. My Mantis is usually seated in the engine room. The Human usually acts as my pilot so that in the event of being boarded, my Mantis is free to leave the engine room and support other crew members that are in trouble.

There's not much more to say about this ship. It's pretty basic apart from the artillery, but once you fully equip it with weapons and upgrade the artillery system there's no other ship that can dish out that much hurt.


Nisos
============================ 

Starting Weapons: 
• 1 x Dual Lasers
• 1 x Leto

Starting Crew: 
• 1 x Human
• 1 x Zoltan
• 1 x Slug

Unique Attributes:
• Has an artillery system - a passively activated beam weapon that pierces all shields

Unlocking: 
• Unlock 2 of the 3 Osprey achievements. "Master Of Patience" is the easiest, especially early-game. As long as you're not afraid to take damage you can pretty much pick any enemy to try it on, although you probably want to avoid choosing a missile-equipped enemy. It's a toss-up between the other two, but I found that "Artillery Mastery" was the most fun and not too painful, as long as you're prepared to restart a couple times when you get hit with a bad run. Simply pour all of your resources into your artillery and your shields and you shouldn't have too many problems. Alternatively, you could gear for pure defense and simply escape any encounters along the way. Be careful of running out of fuel (or scrap to buy it) while doing this, though.

Ship Guide:
Personally, I don't like the Nisos as much as the Osprey. While it begins with a level 2 artillery system and a Zoltan crew member to help offset the power requirement of your artillery, it only has a 2-square medbay and begins with inferior weapons. The Dual Laser is pretty good as far as starting weapons go, especially for only 1 power, but the Leto is the worst missile weapon in the game although it does have a decent firing rate.

Plays much the same as the Osprey, just be prepared for a harder start and more strategic boarder situations!


Man Of War
============================ 

Starting Weapons: 
• 1 x Anti-Bio Beam
• 1 x Breach Bombs
• 1 x Dual Lasers

Starting Crew: 
• 2 x Slug

Augmentations:
• Slug Repair Gel
(Automatically repairs hull breaches over time)
 
Unique Attributes:
• Does not begin the game with sensors
• Slug Repair Gel is unique to this ship and its variant

 Unlocking: 
• You must have at least level 2 sensors or a Slug crew member (either one). Then, go to the Slug Home Nebula. As you encounter enemies, you will find some that beg to be spared in exchange for what's in their stores. One of them will give you a choice between an experimental weapon and some data. Choose the data, then go to the quest marker that they give you. Once you get there, you are presented with a dialogue box where you can choose to tail the enemy ship or to attack them, make sure you choose to tail them. After that you'll have a blue option for either your sensors or your Slug crew member - choose it. You will then battle a slug ship that immediately tries to jump away at the start of battle. If you kill the crew on the ship, you will unlock the Slug Cruiser. If you destroy the ship, you may still unlock it but there is a chance that you will not.

Ship Guide:
This ship is pretty cool, although I like its variant more. The most notable difference between this ship and any other is that you don't have any sensors, but you do have Slugs instead which can use their telepathic powers to show you the position of enemy crew members as well as revealing any rooms adjacent to them. You will want to keep a sharp eye on your UI for any fires that break out or they might rage unattended and get out of control. The repair gel isn't exactly a selling point but it is a nice bonus that just runs in the background. Some people like to leave breaches in their hull to make life harder for boarders, though. If you're one of them, this probably isn't the ship for you, although you could of course sell the augmentation.

As for the weapon loadout, the Anti-Bio Beam is an interesting choice. It does extreme damage to enemy crew members, although it can be finicky if they aren't positioned just right or if they move at odd angles to it. Thanks to your Slugs, you can always see where the enemy crew is, so that should help. Also keep in mind that although the Anti-Bio Beam is a beam weapon and it is listed as doing 4 damage to personnel, it is prevented entirely by a single shield despite the fact that regular beam weapons merely lose 1 point of damage for each shield they pass through. Breach bombs are useful for anti-personnel efforts too, so you might find that a crew teleporter will be the way to go. You can also use them to help lock down rooms that enemies are trying to repair or to lock down a medbay while boarding, which is probably the most effective way to use breach bombs. Finally, you have the Dual Lasers, one of my favourite weapons due to the shots / power ratio. You're probably going to want to sell off the breach bombs in favour of another weapon, but apart from that you just need to play this ship out and see what sort of equipment you're offered before you make any choices for your game direction. By the time you've unlocked it you should have a pretty decent idea of how to play with most standard ships and despite the Anti-Bio Beam, this is a pretty standard ship.


The Stormwalker
============================ 

Starting Weapons: 
• 1 x Heal Bomb
• 1 x Artemis

Starting Crew: 
• 3 x Slug

Augmentations:
• Slug Repair Gel
(Automatically repairs hull breaches over time)
 
Unique Attributes:
• Begins the game with a crew teleporter system
• Does not begin the game with a medbay

• Does not begin the game with sensors
• Slug Repair Gel is unique to this ship and its variant

Unlocking: 
• Unlock 2 of the 3 Man of War achievements. In theory you would think that "Disintegration Ray" would be easy to do but in practice I've found that it can be difficult. Not only do the crew members have to line up, but they need to all die at the same time, which can be difficult if one of the nuances of the anti-bio beam gets in your way or if the crew members have varying levels of health, ie. Zoltans and Rockmen. I'd say that "We're In Position" would be the easiest to achieve, you just need a crew teleporter and a small enemy ship without a door system so you can position them as needed, which is likely to happen in the first few sectors. "Home Sweet Home" requires a bit of luck with your map generation but is also quite easy apart from the risk of plasma storms.

Ship Guide:
I love the flavour of this ship. You have no medbay and only your Artemis as a real weapon, but you don't want to use it except in dire circumstances. You'll need those precious missiles to power your heal bombs so you can keep your troops healed while they cut down the enemy via boarding them. Slugs aren't what I would call boarder-oriented crew members but the fact is, in a ship without sensors they do suit the role quite well and while they have no positive attributes that enhance their combat effectiveness, they don't possess any negative attributes either. There is a certain tension that comes with jumping blind into an enemy ship and using telepathy to give you a limited view of what's going on around you, but it's a fun way to play and you're going to find it pretty hard to lose your boarding party with heal bombs in your arsenal, unless you leave it for the last moment to heal and the heal bomb misses its target. Just remember to keep buying a steady supply of missiles and try to get a real weapon on board for situations like Zoltan shields or AI ships.


Bulwark
============================ 

Starting Weapons: 
• 1 x Artemis
• 1 x Hull Missile

Starting Crew: 
• 3 x Rockmen

Augmentations:
• Rock Plating
(15 % chance to ignore damage to your hull when hit)
 
Unique Attributes:
• Rock Plating is unique to this ship and its variant, and can only be acquired on other ships by completing the quest to unlock the Rock Cruiser 

Unlocking:
• Find the Rock Homeworlds. Then, visit as many nodes as possible to try and find a random event where a Rock ship hails you to insult you and question your goals. Answer with "We're going to save them or die trying," and you'll be given a quest marker on your sector map. When you go there, you will find that it is close to a sun and you'll be given the task of outlasting the Rockmen while you both suffer from solar flares. You are free to attack the ship but make sure you do not destroy it or kill the crew, and make sure you don't damage it too much or the solar flares might finish it off. You must survive long enough for the Rock ship to jump away, and after they have, you need to jump away yourself and meet them at a new quest node. Once you do, you will unlock the Rock ship. If you destroy the Rock ship or kill the crew on board, you will not unlock the ship and will need to attempt another play through to find the quest.

Ship Guide:
The Bulwark is a solid ship that is extremely strong at the start of the game and comes equipped with one of the best augmentations in the game that retains its usefulness all the way through to the end. With a pretty good supply of missiles and two weapons that use them, shields aren't going to be an issue for you, which means you can pretty much ignore them and go straight for enemy weapon or drone systems. You're going to want a laser weapon as soon as possible though, because not only will you run out of missiles but you'll be extremely lacking against ships with defense drones or Zoltan shields if you have nothing else.

You'll want to preserve as many missiles as possible in each encounter so you can keep your strength for as long as possible. Generally you'll be doing this by targeting rooms with no system in them with your hull missile for 4 points of damage each compared to the 2 damage shots of your Artemis (or 2 damage if your hull missile hits a room with a system in it instead of an empty one). Many ships at the start have 6 HP, which means you can go for a system with your Artemis, then finish them off with a system-less hull missile shot. If the enemy's weapons aren't too much of a threat, I usually go for the engine with my Artemis so I can knock out their evasion chance and help guarantee that the slow-charging hull missile connects.

My personal favourite build for this ship is to go for a crew teleporter as soon as possible. Not only does this immediately allow you to preserve more missiles in encounters where boarding will suffice, but Rockmen make good, strong boarders and if you manage to max out their combat stat, they are a force to be reckoned with. You'll also avoid runs where you are totally useless in combat if you run out of missiles this way. You're going to want a level 2 medbay at least because Rockmen have a high health pool and you'll be waiting a while between battles. It's also worth the scrap to upgrade the teleporter so you can keep as much pressure as possible on your enemy in between healing. As with any boarding build, you will want to keep your defense up with good shields and a defense drone if you can.

I usually try to upgrade to a non-missile weapon build by mid-game, selling my hull missile as soon as I find any multiple-shot laser weapon. Eventually I replace all missile weapons with as many multiple shot lasers as I can find, but I do recommend holding on to the Artemis until you need the slot, as it can be useful to knock out shields early on in battle so that your new laser weapons can wreak more havoc.


Shivan
============================ 

Starting Weapons: 
• 1 x Heavy Pierce Laser MKI
• 1 x Fire Bomb

Starting Crew: 
• 4 x Rockmen

Augmentations:
• Rock Plating
(15 % chance to ignore damage to your hull when hit)
 
Unique Attributes:
• This ship does not have airlocks, so you cannot asphyxiate boarders
• Rock Plating is unique to this ship and its variant, and can only be acquired on other ships by completing the quest to unlock the Rock Cruiser
• The Heavy Pierce Laser MKI is unique to this ship. Note that the MKI is misleading, as there is no MKII.

Unlocking: 
• Unlock 2 of the 3 Bulwark achievements. "Ancestry" is by far the hardest to achieve, but you'll probably eventually get it anyway when you attempt to unlock the Unidentified Cruiser, assuming you follow my advice on using the Bulwark to get it. If you can't wait for that, though, then the other two are both pretty do-able. For "Is It Warm In Here", you would think it would be easier than it is. Enemies simply don't stay still in a room that's on fire which means you're probably going to have to set the whole ship alight and then board it to guarantee the unlock. For this reason, the fire beam is probably the best weapon to try this with. Fire bombs will also work, but you'll need to be quick with them and time it so you get the enemy burning just before they die in melee combat, or they'll walk out of the flames. "Defense Drones Don't Do D'anything" is the easiest of the Bulwark achievements, despite how hard it might seem. All you need is three missile weapons, especially if one of them is a Pegasus. Then simply turn off auto-fire and time each volley so that they all fire simultaneously against an enemy with a defense drone, generally targeting their drone system so you can lay on more hurt once you do get through. Even if only one slips through each time, you will eventually get the achievement as long as you don't get impatient and use other weapons. Just bear in mind that going for a three-missile build and chewing them up on a defense drone will probably mean that the run will end in you running out of juice, so I recommend only going for this achievement when you specifically want to unlock it and don't care about your current run.

Ship Guide:
Not as strong as the Bulwark initially, but once you get a crew teleporter you can board ships with impunity while burning them up with your fire bombs. Your fire-immune Rockmen are perfect for this build. It plays pretty much the same as any other boarder-based ship otherwise, just remember that you don't actually begin the game with a crew teleporter so it should be one of the first things you invest in with this ship. The ship is pretty bare bones though so you can really build however you want. The layout, where every room is only at most 2 rooms away from a mannable station, is suited to the slow-moving Rockmen and certainly more efficient than the layout of the Bulwark. The only real annoyance with this ship is that without airlocks, you won't be able to repel boarders as effectively as with most ships, although your Rockmen are pretty strong and you can also target your own ship with your fire bombs to help them get the edge in combat as their fire immunity means they can hold ground quite well.

The Heavy Pierce Laser MKI is a very good weapon that you may find you'll keep until the end. It does 2 damage like any other heavy laser, but it can ignore one shield and only takes up 2 power bar compared to 3 power bars for a Heavy Laser MKII (I make this particular comparison because out of all the heavy laser variants, only the double-shot Heavy Laser MKII can "ignore" one shield, by hitting the shield with the first shot and having the second slip through). At the start, it will dominate. After that, you're going to need more energy weapons to support it and lower their shields first. Still, I find that a boarding build is the most powerful for this ship, particularly since fire bombs can't be prevented by shields (except Zoltan shields) and can't be shot down by defense drones, and you start with four Rockmen.


The Adjudicator
============================ 

Starting Weapons: 
• 1 x Halberd Beam
• 1 x Leto

Starting Crew: 
• 3 x Zoltan

Augmentations:
• Zoltan Shield
(Absorbs up to 5 points of damage per battle, and stops all weapon types. Also prevents boarders while active, but not if you encounter a random event that specifically mentions being boarded. Recharges after every FTL jump. Takes double damage from ion weapons)
 
Unique Attributes:
• Zoltan Shield is unique to this ship and its variant.

Unlocking: 
• Go to the Zoltan Homeworlds. Then, visit as many nodes as possible to try and find a random event where a non-hostile Zoltan ship hails you. Select the option to hear them out, then go to the quest node they give you. There, you will be presented with a Rebel ship and the option of either attacking it or hailing it. Choose hail, then select the following peaceful options: "Perhaps there could be a reconciliation of our ideals without a war?" and then "True progress can only be achieved without bloodshed." If done correctly, you will unlock the Zoltan ship.

Ship Guide:
The first thing you'll notice is that having an all-Zoltan crew is not the easiest way to do things. For starters, you will be quite weak against boarders as they have less health than other races. The main thing that will impact you, though, is that as soon as you move one of your Zoltans to repair a system or to try and repel invaders you will accidentally depower whatever system they were manning, which can really screw you over. The other thing is that having a Zoltan pilot wastes his potential, as the cockpit does not require power and his ability to power any station he's in will not be taken advantage of. Once you get some more crew members and/or power bars, you'll be able to do more with this ship. I recommend swapping out the pilot with whatever crew member you find first, unless it's another Zoltan. Hopefully along the way you'll also pick up an Engi for repair work so your Zoltans can sit tight.

The Zoltan shield is not exactly a deal breaker, but it is still powerful enough to be quite useful. You can hold off being boarded for as long as it's active (except events that start the battle with boarders), and you can prevent any early missile shots that would otherwise cripple you early on in battle. Enemy drone-based ships or ships with ion weapons will eat your Zoltan shield, though, as will any combination of multiple-shot lasers, so don't forget to upgrade your regular shields too.

The Halberd Beam is a powerful starting weapon that will eat most early ships alive. You'll probably get through the first sector without a scratch unless you happen to encounter a ship that is specifically equipped to beat Zoltan shields. The Leto, however, is one of my least favourite weapons in the game, and you should probably replace it with the first weapon you find. It does have limited usefulness when it comes to emergency "interrupt" tactics when you really need to take out an enemy system due to its fast charge time, and it can support your Halberd Beam against enemies with more than one shield by taking out a shield first. Just remember to aim your Halberd Beam so that it passes through as many rooms as possible, and so that the enemy shield room is one of the first rooms it hits so you can do more damage to the remaining rooms once the shields are taken down by the beam.

Once everything is running smoothly with more crew members and some better weaponry, this is a pretty solid ship choice. It's not particularly versatile, but it's interesting and quite powerful once you get going.


Noether
============================ 

Starting Weapons: 
• 2 x Ion Blast
• 1 x Pike Beam

Starting Crew: 
• 3 x Zoltan

Augmentations:
• Zoltan Shield
(Absorbs up to 5 points of damage per battle, and stops all weapon types. Also prevents boarders while active, but not if you encounter a random event that specifically mentions being boarded. Recharges after every FTL jump. Takes double damage from ion weapons)
 
Unique Attributes:
• Zoltan Shield is unique to this ship and its variant.
• First upgrade for the shield is way more expensive than normal

Unlocking: 
• Unlock 2 of the 3 Adjudicator achievements. "Givin' Her All She's Got Captain!" requires that you have at least 4 Zoltans as well as a fully upgraded reactor, but on a good run where you find the extra Zoltan you can almost guarantee the unlock as long as you play smart and safe. Just remember to move each Zoltan to a room that requires power, if they are standing in a subsystem such as the cockpit then you won't get the power bars needed for the achievement. "Shields Holding" will probably happen on a good run eventually, as long as you focus on weaponry, so I think that's probably the other easy one. "Manpower" is quite difficult unless you dodge a lot of battles or you get the exact right equipment to survive on the power you have. Probably the easiest way to achieve the "Manpower" unlock is to go for a purely defensive build and avoid as many combat scenarios as possible unless their weapons can't touch you, but you're going to have a hard time late-game if you go about it this way. As with all unlocks, though, I'm usually trying specifically to get them and don't mind what happens to my run after.

Ship Guide:
Pretty much the same as the Adjudicator. This time around you've got better weapons at the start, but you only have one bar of shields to begin with which isn't enough to actually get a shield (you'll still get your Zoltan shield, though). Also, the second bar of shields costs 100 scrap, which is a pretty huge amount for an early game purchase. Still, this ship is probably better than the Adjudicator all round. The Ion Blasts will shut down enemy shields before your Pike Beam is ready, allowing you to rake it across their entire unprotected ship. You can also start locking down systems once shields are down to keep the edge in combat. Combined with your Zoltan shield, you can usually get through combat without taking any damage as long as your ion blasts keep hitting critical systems.


Bravais
============================ 

Starting Weapons: 
• 1 x Crystal Burst MKI
• 1 x Heavy Crystal Burst MKI

Starting Crew: 
• 2 x Human
• 2 x Crystal

Augmentations:
• Crystal Vengeance
(10 percent chance when hit by enemy attacks to launch a crystal shard at the enemy)
 
Unique Attributes:
• Crystal Vengeance is unique to this ship and its variant
• Crystal weaponry is unique to this ship and its variant

Unlocking: 
• This is by far the hardest ship in the entire game to unlock, and there is a lot of luck and frustration involved. To unlock it, you're probably going to want to play each attempt specifically to try and unlock the ship, because it's the best way to make everything line up in a way where the unlock is likely. Pursuing regular game objectives or ship builds will only lower your chances and make the unlock take longer. To begin with, you probably want to use either variant of the Rock cruiser, as the Rock Plating augmentation provides a 100% chance for a specific event to end the way you want it to for the unlock, not to mention that the Rock ship has an achievement for finding the secret sector where this ship unlock is located and you're probably not going to want to try it again after you finally get it. I usually begin with a boarding build to preserve missiles and acquire more scrap early on, which is discussed in the Rock ship's individual ship guide section if you need reference. 

Your first objective is to visit as many nodes marked by a distress beacon as you can until you find a random event described in the flavour text as a distress call coming from a ship in a dense asteroid field. Note that there's no actual asteroid field visual as with typical asteroid encounters, it is purely in the flavour text for that event. Once you've found the correct event, you should have the following options: "Search for the ship," "Avoid the area," and if you chose the Rock cruiser, the blue option "(Rock Plating) Make a thorough search for the ship without fear of stray asteroids". You want to choose the blue option to instantly be given a Damaged Stasis Pod augmentation. This stasis pod has no actual function but is needed for the unlock. If you didn't choose the Rock ship, you can also acquire the Damaged Stasis Pod in this event by searching for the ship but there is only a chance it will occur rather than being guaranteed. I personally tried to acquire the Damaged Stasis Pod in the first few sectors and restarted if I didn't, because you need yet more luck with map generation and random events after this first step.

Once you have the pod, you need to get to any sector that contains Zoltans. This can be either the Zoltan Homeworlds, Zoltan controlled sectors, Engi Homeworlds, or Engi controlled sectors. You can also find it in the very first sector if you're lucky, but you need to do so AFTER acquiring the Damaged Stasis Pod because the node will be empty if you revisit it. Once you're in one of these sectors, you need to visit as many nodes as possible to try and find a random event where a Zoltan research facility asks if they can run some tests on you. Select the blue option to have them repair the Damaged Stasis Pod. Once completed, the Damaged Stasis Pod will disappear from your ship and you will be given a new Crystal crew member. Keep him alive at all costs! If you lose him, you cannot unlock the ship without restarting and finding him all over again. For this reason, you probably want to avoid any risky options for events you find from now on, such as entering the space station overrun by giant spiders.

Once you have the Crystal crew member, you need to go to the Rock Homeworlds. The Rock Homeworlds are the final step of this unlock that relies on luck with your world map generation, so the best way to determine whether or not the unlock is possible in your current run is to ensure that your world map shows several choices for red beacons near the end of the map after a decent amount of green beacons (so you have ample opportunity to find the damaged pod, and then the Zoltan research facility first). I usually consider the chances after the very first sector and restart if there's no way that particular order can be achieved or if it's just extremely unlikely. You also need to restart if you see the Rock Homeworlds before you've completed the other two steps. Once you finally get everything you need in the right order and finally get to the Rock Homeworlds, you need to visit as many nodes as possible and try to find another random event where you will be presented with a blue dialogue option to warp to another sector.

Finally, once you've warped to this sector, you will have a quest node that you must reach. Along the way you may encounter battles with a new type of ship made from crystal, be wary of their crystal weaponry as each shot can pierce a single shield. Once you get to the quest node, you will unlock the Unidentified Cruiser, a crystal ship, for your own use. Now your pain can finally stop.

Ship Guide:
The Bravais is full of unique stuff that makes it worth all the trouble of unlocking it. For starters, both of your crystal weapons have the ability to pierce one shield, meaning one less hit before an enemy is vulnerable. They also have a chance to cause hull breaches, which is a pretty nice bonus considering how powerful they are already. You also have a chance to launch a crystal shard when damaged by an enemy, the only augmentation that can actively damage an enemy ship.

Then there's the crew. Crystal crew members, as you may have discovered while examining the one you received as part of the quest to unlock this ship, have a special ability that can be manually activated which instantly sets them apart from every other race in the game. Activating Lockdown will instantly surround the perimeter of the room occupied by the Crystal crew member with a wall of crystals that needs to be bashed down like a door before anyone can enter or exit that room. This is a powerful tool both defensively and offensively. While repelling boarders, you can suck the oxygen out of your ship and use the Lockdown ability to keep your enemy in the danger zone even longer. While boarding the enemy with a crystal crew member, you can also use Lockdown to prevent them from entering a room while you destroy the system inside. Send two crystal men at once and you can activate Lockdown one at a time to almost guarantee system damage before the enemy can get to you.

Finally, it's the only ship that can get to the Crystal sector without having to go through the lengthy and luck-based process that you needed to do to get this ship, since it starts with a Crystal crew member. The reason this is significant is that the shops in the Crystal sector can often sell MK II variants of the Crystal weapons you begin with. Unfortunately, these weapons do not appear anywhere else in the game, so make use of them if you find them!


Carnelian
============================ 

Starting Weapons:
• None 

Starting Crew: 
• 3 x Crystal

Augmentations:
• Crystal Vengeance
(10 percent chance when hit by enemy attacks to launch a crystal shard at the enemy)
 
Unique Attributes:
• Crystal Vengeance is unique to this ship and its variant
• Crystal weaponry is unique to this ship and its variant
• One of only two ships that has a four-square teleporter room

Unlocking: 
• Unlock 2 of the 3 Bravais achievements. Your best bet is to go for "Sweet Revenge" and "No Escape". The other achievement, "Clash Of The Titans" is not too hard but can't be guaranteed in a run without some luck with world map generation, whereas with the other two achievements, you have more control over making them happen. For the "Sweet Revenge" achievement, your crystal shard doesn't actually have to destroy the enemy ship. It will also work if the shard was the last thing that hit them before they surrender, as long as you accept their surrender. The best and easiest way to do this is with an early encounter (generally one of your first), by using your main weapons to get their hull down low by targeting their shields, then shutting down your shields and waiting for the enemy's weapons to hit you and trigger the effect to finish them off. You'll take some damage but it should work before you die, and if you do this early game as I suggest then it won't matter because restarting isn't so painful. "No Escape" is pretty easy, but can usually only be done around mid-game or later because early enemies will not have enough crew to qualify for the achievement. Just be aware that locking four enemies in a room with your valuable Crystal crew member is likely to end the game for you if you rely on a Crystal boarding party for your build. You can do this either on the enemy ship or on your own - preferably your own. There are a few events that create four enemy boarders, which makes it easy if you use oxygen venting to funnel them all into the same four-square room as your waiting Crystal men and other crew then trigger Lockdown.

Ship Guide:
This ship starts with no weapons but is the only ship apart from the Basilisk that has a four-square teleporter, and this time, you have Crystal men to board with. Naturally, boarding is the style you're going to want to play with as this ship. Use your Crystal men to instantly board critical system rooms of your enemy right at the start of battle, and use their Lockdown ability one after the other to prevent the enemy from getting inside that room until the system is destroyed or seriously crippled. This is particularly effective on an enemy ship's medbay as the opposing crew will have nowhere to run after you take it out and start to fight them, but I usually start with weapons or the drone system depending on which one is more of a threat to me. Once you've crippled the system that poses a threat to you, you can teleport back and forth at your leisure, dismantling them.

This ship runs into big trouble at the start against Zoltans and AI ships, on account of having NO weapons. You probably want to avoid or jump away from these encounters until you find a weapon to wear down Zoltan shields or finish off an AI ship. Until then you will probably want to build defensively by stacking shields and engines as much as you can afford while still maintaining enough scrap to purchase a decent weapon (and to upgrade the weapon system) should the opportunity arise. Also be wary of encounters in asteroid fields or too close to a sun, as you may find that your teleporter gets destroyed while aboard the enemy ship and you have no way back, assuming you board with your entire crew.