Crystal B

Initially pre-vent everything right of sensors, then refill to 90%. This lets you kick boarders out of weapons and cloaking before they can break the system.

Read the text for events! This event is a crew fight, and this event is an Automated ship fight. They look similar, but you want to skip the Auto-ship fight.

As the ship needs so little to win, just rush shields and then look for a weapon. It’s worth jumping to an immediate store to sell the augment and buy shields-3. Even if you are forced into Zoltan sector 2 with no weapons, you’re still okay. Crystal B can skip a whole sector of fights and still win comfortably.

Cloaking-2 is also a great upgrade, providing a lot of safety. I’d still upgrade shields first though.

If you are without weapons in a Rebel sector or Uncharted Nebula, consider buying clone bay so you can kill automated ships. Same goes for Abandoned sectors (although an upgraded teleporter will work there, with careful play).

Start fights with one Crystal in the teleporter, and have the pilot start walking there during the FTL jump. Put the other Crystal in sensors.

In particularly awful situations, sensor information can stop you sending crew on a suicide mission. Your crew are incredibly precious. Losing crew early is almost the only way this ship can actually lose.

Each lockdown lasts 12 seconds. Hitting lockdown immediately when boarding can prevent enemy crew entering the room, sometimes even when they are standing on an adjacent tile. When unopposed, two Crystals will break 3 weapons levels in ~19 seconds; three Crystals will break 8 weapons levels (!) in ~33 seconds (in a four-tile weapons room).

Typically board weapons directly; but if they have crew manning the room, it may be better to board elsewhere and sneak back into weapons once it’s empty. Crew can walk straight through lockdown, provided they were already past the halfway point on the adjacent tile.

Watch out for crew who are heading directly towards the door without needing to turn: they can walk through even if lockdown happens just after they enter the adjacent tile. If you want to see how this logic works, move crew around on your ship and look at when the doors open. That’s the same point at which they could walk through lockdown.

Consider pre-cloaking enemy weapons, if you think you can break them in time. Your cloak resets immediately after killing the enemy crew; use this to dodge last-second missiles.

Crystals can survive 39 seconds without air. Board Auto-ships with two Crystals to neutralise them while getting combat training, but calculate enemy weapon timings to ensure you can repair the teleporter in time. Beware breaches, which double repair time to 25 seconds. It takes 6 seconds to walk from piloting.

Sell Crystal Vengeance at the first store. You only have one system slot left, so get hacking.

Sector 1 distress beacons are…maybe worth visiting. You have blue options from cloaking-1 (weak) and teleporter (okay).

With perfect timing, it’s technically possible to kill Auto-ships from the start. Make one tiny slip and you lose a Crystal though, so I don’t recommend this!