ftl-faster-than-light
In FTL, the key to reaching and defeating the final boss is to have a well-equipped ship, both in terms of purchased modules and upgrades to your systems. This all depends on having plenty of scrap to spend on both.
What are your tips/techniques for increasing the amount of scrap you bring in?
I have beaten him 5 or 6 times now, all on easy. General strategy is:
4 points in shields, duh.
a dodge around 40%. This takes 4 power to engines and having both the engine crew and pilot crew be maxed out in their skills (actually, that's about 37-39% I think?).
Some good, old fashioned luck.
Plenty of spare crew. You'll need the usual party of Rogers and Hammerstien men to run around and punch intruders and also provide back up repairing. Don't underestimate that last part. Racing to get systems back to health ASAP can really help.
There's nothing fancy about how you attack. You throw every single thing you have at him, try to overwhelm the shields, and then do damage. My preferred strategy is beam heavy, but I will use launchers depending on what I find along the way. Since he's got excellent dodge and 4 shields, you've got to alpha strike every time you hit him (that is, fire everything or nearly everything). Once you damage his shields enough that you can get to critical systems easily, you still need to periodically attack the shields because they'll get repaired.
Another good trick I learned is do not fire your weapons as soon as it comes up. Wait till you can fire all your weapons at once for the first barrage. This will help overwhelm the shields helping you bring them down and damage them. Once the shields are down feel free to fire at will.
Now, ideally I would have something like Blaster mark III (5 shots, 1 damage each, 4 power), blaster mark 2 (3x1, 2 power) and maybe a heavy laser (2x2, 2 power). Or a small bomb launcher (underrated, it does 2 system damage). But really any number of things can work. I think I just beat him with the Kestrel using a Blaster Mk II, Heavy Laser, Halberd Beam, and Small Bomb Launcher. Obviously a crew member with maxed weapons skill is really important. Barring an accident, you should have that no problem. If you have less than 6 points of active weapons, you are probably going to have a rougher time of it. I prefer to have 7 or 8.
I will say this, I believe I have observed that e.g. the Heavy Laster (shoots twice, 2 damage each) will only eat 2 shield points up if it hits both times. I always like to have a blaster in my arsenal, but fate won't always help there.
There are two augments that, other things equal, really help in this fight:
The "decrease weapon recharge time" augment. Nuff said. This is always the augment I hope to get first unless I'm going early cloaking.
The "when you warp in all weapons are charged". You might think this one won't matter as much but do not under-estimate it. It's a free volley to open the fight!
With the first augment and a great gunner you'll be attacking every 13-14s at most I think. From there, it's back to luck. If he rolls exceptionally well on dodges (and you don't), it can go south and there's nothing you can do about it. I've lost to him with a number of promising ships for this reason. Tip your cap and go have a drink.
Cloaking is really powerful for ships who can get it, e.g. the kestrel. My poor federation cruiser is no longer cloaking eligible, but I have beaten the last guy several times with cloaking + cloak weapons. For form 1, the weapon on the inner-right side of the boss ship (actually, this one is always there but see below) is a freaking Gatling missile launcher. It shoots 3 missiles and it's super scary. I prefer to cloak when this is fired (and hopefully he'll be shooting other stuff too). Ditto for form 2. Form 3 will be something you have to discover on your own. Obviously if you run cloaking stealth weapons is a huge priority. But the 100% dodge you get from cloaking is really useful in the fight, so not having stealth weapons is not the end of the world. If I have cloaking I always try to get it to 3 points, but I consider 2 the minimum. That can buy you a lot of time to repair systems or deal with borders.
Doors 3 is really useful starting on form 2 of this fight (and really useful in the last few sectors!). I usually save that upgrade for late though.
Andrzej Doyle is absolutely right that boarders can be really useful in this fight. It's important to keep in mind that there is no one path to victory. After the beta update that took away cloaking Fed cruisers, I managed a few more wins. Mostly beam-heavy stuff but I made great use of bombs in two cases (I love small bombs because they only eat up 1 power but do 2 damage). I had a mixed-arms game (using some boarders) go really well until I ran out of places to repair and then lost in the second form.
Targeting priorities: Shields are first priority, obviously.
Lastly, it takes more luck. Sometimes you'll prepare to do this series of fights and have repair nodes/stores near by that you can use to stay fresh. Sometimes you won't. I have lost promising ships that way too - a node got swallowed while fighting the first or second form and I was too beat up to finish him. Them's the breaks.
It took me a number of tries to beat him, and it can get frustrating. Stick with it. You'll break through eventually.
The combat effectiveness of your crew varies, and additionally they level up as they fight.
For instance, Engi and Zoltan crew members have lower health than Humans, Slugs, Mantis, or Rock crew members. Mantis crew also have a bonus to combat damage. Engi and Zoltan especially are worthless in a fight - be ready to move them quickly, and plan on any combat taking a while if you can't get the enemies into the medbay quickly.
I tend to assign at least one, but ideally two of my crew members to "security detail" - they're the ones that get pulled into rooms to fight if there are enemy boarders. They're also typically my away team if I have a teleporter. I will tend to pick Mantis first for this, then Rock, and finally Human. If I've got to double up and have my subsystem crew work security detail, I tend to leave the weapon officer and pilot alone - other crewmates will pull security detail before I'll move them.
Some other tips:
Best Answer
Take ships intact when possible
Acquire a Crew Teleporter so that you can send boarding parties over to capture ships intact. Intact ships tend to yield more scrap, plus sometimes other benefits such as free crew members (such as when you take over a slave ship). Starving them of O2 is also a possibility, but I personally have trouble making that one work very often. Don't worry about damaging the ship, the only thing that matters is that you don't destroy it.
Don't be afraid to accept surrender from enemies that are near death, particularly in early systems. Not only are the rewards often as good or better than what you'd get if you destroy them, but it means the fight ends sooner and you end up taking less hull damage compared to finishing the fight out (assuming you didn't completely outclass them). Later in the game this seems to change a bit and destroying them is often worth more than having them surrender (unless, again, they'll beat up your hull a lot while you finish them off).
See Also:
Scrap Recovery Arm
This one is pretty obvious. Get the Scrap Recovery Arm in the early sectors. The earlier you get it the earlier that +10% scrap bonus will pay back the 50 credits you had to spend on it. Probably not worth picking up in, say, Sector 7.
Make use of the "special" traders
You'll often run into special encounters where you can trade fuel for missiles, drone parts for scrap, etc. Decide early on what your end-game strategy is and sell the stuff you don't need whenever possible. If you're not going to use drones, unload those drone parts every chance you get, since you won't have any other use for them. Keep an eye out for good deals. Even if you plan on using missiles, trading 2 missiles for 10 fuel is a good deal unless you've already got a huge surplus of fuel. Also, and this can be risky, don't always repair your hull to full at a store in the early sectors. You can probably get by on half hull unless you get really unlucky, and there are quite a few encounters that let you repair hull cheaply or even for free. I tend to start repairing to full at stores starting around sector 6, because by then I've got enough time invested in the game to not want to die to bad luck. Early on, though, it's worth the gamble to me.
Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em
In the early sectors, you want to hit every node possible before the Rebel fleet catches up with you. The more scrap you get now, the higher you'll stay on the power curve, which means you'll be better prepared for later encounters. This in turn means you'll have less hull repairs and be in a better position to take tough enemy ships intact. Personally, I'd rather risk it all and die spectacularly in the first three zones then play them super cautiously and load all that risk into the later zones that I'm now ill-prepared for. If I'm going to die, I want it to happen early!
That said, though, know when sticking around in a fight isn't worth it. Assuming you maximized your encounters in the first few sectors, by the mid point you might want to start avoiding tough encounters and just warp away. Ships with high shields and strong missiles often aren't worth the cost of fighting, since by the time you destroy them you've taken a ton of hull damage. This effect is amplified in zones with asteroid fields, ion storms, or solar flares. Speaking of which...
Consider getting Long-range Scanners
I wouldn't get these until about sector 4 or 5, as I tend to have better things to do with my scrap before then, but these are pretty cheap and can be a huge benefit in saving your hull from a trashing. I find that early in the game, I can weather ion storms fairly well, but later in the game losing 50% of my power severely hampers my ability to compete with enemy ships, which don't seem to have lost 50% of their effectiveness. This can often be a quick ticket to game over for me if I run into a tough enemy ship, as it can rip me apart pretty quickly.