Rock B

Your offence is good initially, but terrible against two-shield enemies. You also have a weapons buffer for the Heavy Pierce. Delay shield upgrades enough to afford a weapon. Selling Rock Plating and Fire Bomb gets you 65 scrap, so you only need to float 15.

If you don’t find a shield-breaking weapon, buy a system instead. Hacking, teleporter, or mind control makes the Fire Bomb much better. With level 2 hacking and trained weapons crew, Heavy Pierce can hit twice in one shields hack. Even drone control with a combat drone can work.

Floating 40 scrap would let you buy hacking or mind control without selling the Fire Bomb, or 50 scrap for a teleporter instead. This delays shield upgrades considerably, and those systems do not help much in Zoltan fights. I think it’s safer to float 15, which still gives the option to trade Fire Bomb for hacking.

Zoltan enemies are dangerous for this ship. It takes four Heavy Pierce shots to hurt them, so 36 seconds assuming no misses or weapons damage! If a Zoltan fight goes badly, prioritise keeping your FTL charging over repairing weapons. In an early Zoltan sector, the Border Police could be deadly; consider moving crew towards the middle of the ship in advance.

It’s tempting to upgrade weapons early, so you can use them together and get more crew kills; but you need that scrap for shields and offence. Beware taking significant damage pursuing crew kills. Your odds for a usable weapon drop are not good enough to justify taking chunks out your hull. Also be careful with your missile stocks. It makes sense to use them more freely while you have lots, but running low narrows your strategic options for sector 3.

Crew kills are nuanced with this ship. You can soften crew up with the Heavy Pierce to save bombs, or maybe try for a breach in O2; but that depletes the enemy hull. The Fire Bomb explosion does 30 crew damage, but that’s a lot of bombs to kill crew directly. Fires pull a second crew, as do breaches once repaired; you can then drop another Fire Bomb or Heavy Pierce on both crew. Engi crew are a problem, and you may want to target them directly first.

Do consider the weapons upgrade after saving for critical purchases: it’s good for crew kills, and gives safety through more offence and an Artemis-proof double weapons buffer.

Doors are generally not worth buying, unless you are desperate to reduce the system pool in stores. Note you don’t get airlocks; hull breaches can be used but are impractically slow. You can fire-bomb boarders, but it’s rarely useful. Mind control helps, especially against the Flagship. Phase 3 boarders can be rough without venting, so you’ve extra incentive to kill the crew in phase 1; you can do this by fire-bombing shields, together with mind control or hacking.

Rock crew are good at putting out fires (67% bonus), but it’s important to stay on top of them. Turning off O2 can help fires burn themselves out faster.

You have level 2 oxygen, but without doors it can’t counteract a breach. The Flagship’s Boarding Drone may be annoying, so consider oxygen-3 if you already have everything else you need.

You have three empty system slots to fill, so try to buy your first system a little earlier than usual. Defence drones cover this ship well, as all rooms are outside the blind spot.

Sector 1 distress beacons are worth visiting. You have blue options from Rock crew (good) and Rock Plating (okay).