Lanius B

Rush shields, then look for a weapon. Remember you only start with engines-1. Despite its strength, this ship has nothing special defensively at the start, so it’s still possible to have rough encounters.

Move the Engi to weapons during the FTL jump. Start both Lanius in the teleporter, and use distraction tactics to make enemies fight in shields while your Lanius punch down another system (such as weapons or medbay). When completely safe, destroy systems for surrender offers (as low as 1 hull).

Distraction tactics will occupy up to 4 crew in a big shields room. When ships have more crew, they will follow your Lanius around.

Your Lanius can’t use the medical airlock, so try to limit damage to them. When enemy weapons are no longer a threat, you can take your time and avoid fighting crew directly. Instead of actually fighting in an airless room, dance your Lanius in the doorway to keep enemies repositioning. Then trick low-health enemies into walking through the airless room, by attacking a system on the opposite side.

You can use your teleporter to abduct mind-controlled crew, but in most cases this is just too slow to be useful. Sometimes this could help save your Lanius’s health.

If your Lanius get low on health, try to kill them off. You can blow them up on automated ships. On crewed ships, they can "dance" while nearly-dead enemy crew kill them. Later on, consider upgrading the clone bay to level 2.

Consider buying sensors eventually, for using mind control more flexibly. Sensors are not worth buying if you have a Slug or Lifeform Scanner.

Emergency Respirators have little use, but do help you vent more aggressively. Venting below 50% oxygen is easy on this ship, and increases the chance enemies will target O2 instead of something that matters. With two Lanius and a clone bay, you’re pretty safe doing this.

Defence drones cover this ship well, as all rooms are well outside the blind spot. But you only have one system slot, so buy hacking or cloaking instead. Typically I’d take hacking, as it’s easier to get early and is ideal boarding support. However, cloaking is also great if you have good weapons — and Advanced Flak gives you a huge head-start on that.

With cloaking, boarding, and mind control, it’s easy to neutralise phase 1 and slowly kill off the crew. A single point of damage is enough to make the missiles harmless, and once damaged you can disrupt repairs with boarding and mind control. Consider upgrading mind control; level 3 is incredibly disruptive. Also consider upgrading sensors, in case they get hacked (making mind control harder to use).

Mind control’s cooldown is reset when you jump (but teleporter’s is not).

Sector 1 distress beacons are worth visiting. You have a clone bay, plus blue options from the Engi (good) and teleporter (okay).