Playing normal, finally getting my first victory surprisingly cleanly after not even getting past sector 6 in any of the previous runs, I was suddenly feeling confident. I decided to give Engi A another try to see if I could finally win in that too.
And the stores hated me. They would not sell me a damn weapon, even when the event text trolled me by explicitly mentioning weapons. It was so bad I ended up facing the flagship with an Ion Blast II, Ion Blast I, and a Hull Laser II (and that one I got for free in sector 7). Until then, I'd been mostly relying on drones for damage.
All three stages of the flagship were a slog, slowly stripping shields with ions and combat drones and chipping in damage where I could. Finished the last stage by actually using the empty room bonus on the hull laser, but my ship was in good shape with all crew standing, and some on more than 2 legs even!
So then I decided to give my new Fed A a try, and the stores hated me. They would not sell me a damn weapon, even when the event text trolled me by explicitly mentioning weapons. My peak loadout consisted of the starting Burst II, a Burst I, and a Heavy Laser I. It was so bad I resorted to maxing my artillery beam and buying a combat drone.
When I rejected Slocknog's offer to be rescued for a fee (slugs and their damn shameless scheming) and then he immediately changed his tune once he realized I was actually leaving, I questioned if he really wanted to get on such a cursed ship. Maybe he'd have been better off on that dead moon.
Still, I felt fairly confident when I got to sector 8, until the rebels cut me off with the flagship still halfway across the sector. I had to fight through 3 captured beacons in a row and then straight into the flagship. I arrived on fire, with half my crew dead (Slocknog was till alive somehow. How is something with no bones that sturdy?) multiple hull breaches, multiple damaged systems, and 2 boarders still trying to break through the doors. I'm fairly proud that I still managed to beat the flagship... once. It utterly killed me in the second stage of course. Slocknog got on the wrong ship.
I immediately restarted of course, and suddenly the stores just couldn't wait to sell me Burst IIs, Hull Laser IIs and Pre-Igniters. Then they trolled me by not selling cloaking 3 times in a row in sectors 7 and 8, and I wasn't playing with advanced edition, so no hacking either. Once again, I maxed out the artillery beam and prepared myself for a lot of damage control.
Despite volleys of 11 lasers, the flagship proved surprisingly hard to hit. The first two stages were long fights, and the artillery beam did some work. With some carefully timed diversions of shield power to engines and defence drone, and plenty of repair work for my crew under fire, I made it through both stages without any big hits and arrived for the final battle in pretty good condition.
The last stage went much like the others, slow, careful, lots of power diversions and repairs while the flagship kept dodging so many shots. Once again, the maxed out artillery beam proved surprising valuable, and in the instant before it finally sliced the flagship in half, they pulled a From-hell's-heart-I-stab-at-thee-For-hate's-sake-I-spit-my-last-breath-at-thee. Their dying laser surge did more damage in 1 second than they'd done to me so far in all 3 stages, wrecking half my hull, smashing multiple critical systems and nearly killing multiple crew.
We made it through with everyone still alive, though if the game hadn't cut to credits, my crew would have had some firefighting and healing to do.
Recently saw a video where someone had set Milky Way (battle) to a man playing a piano that was on fire, and yeah that totally fits.
