LOL- I can't stop playing. I think I logged 6 hours last night. The fact that it's difficult yet not frustrating, very random, has good controls, and has no save feature makes it a lot of fun. Once you die, that's it! Kind of makes you take choices seriously. I have three ships available but haven't been able to make it to the end in any of them yet.
The best game I had is where I got 2 weapon upgrades and two crew members in the first system. Kicked ass on that one
Drones and upgraded blast doors seem to be incredibly useful.
I have beat it twice with the original ship. I think I have 4 ships now (haven't played in a month or two) but haven't been able to beat the game with any of the other ships, some of which are supposed to be "better". It's all about trade-offs: none of the ships really has any more pure resources (energy slots) so if you have a big powerful built-in weapon in your ship (like the Federation ship that you get when you beat the game) then it means you won't be able to dedicate that much energy to other weapons, shields, etc. Non-energy-consuming upgrades such as blast doors are critical, blast doors are usually the first thing that I upgrade fully.
A lot depends on your crew members, getting a good number of good crew early and making DAMN sure that you don't kill them off (so they can keep gaining experience in Helm, Shields, Engines and Weapons) as well as a couple of Bugs and/or Rocks for fighting off intruders.... really focusing on crew early on seemed to produce the best results for me.
It's also cool to play with different strategies. For my victories I was pretty much going straightforward with strong weapons + shields, but I have had fun in a couple of runs where I switched things up. Like using a ship that had a transporter by default, and using transporter/boarding as my main strategy... maybe target the Sick Bay with my weapons, and once it's down then transport over a couple of Bugs or Rocks. If you kill all the crew then you have won the battle. Another variation of the same theme, I think the Slug ship comes with a Beam weapon that kills crew really quickly. So you've got to have standard laser weapons to bring down the shields, then aim that bastard right at the crew members... 2 or 3 good shots will usually take down the crew. (Timing your shots is critical, do NOT put your shots on automatic! Once you get a little farther into the game where ships start having 2 or 3 shield levels, you will just waste all of your shots if they are not synchronized. Assuming standard laser weapons of course; missiles can shoot right through shields, although you've got a limited number of them.)
I've never really tried for a lot of Drones, usually I end up having a Repair bot and/or an Anti-Personnel drone, but never gone for the full-on experience. I know that some of those drones can save your ass by blowing missiles out of the sky.
Anyway, I could probably go on for a while, but suffice it to say that it's a really fun game and there's a whole lot of strategy that people have written about in various places on the Webs.
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