Rock C

You have a 2-point buffer for the Heavy Crystal. Consider delaying shield upgrades, in the hope of finding a good weapon. Floating 8 scrap lets you buy any good weapon if you sell Swarm Missiles. Floating 40 lets you keep them; or compromise and float 25, which lets you buy most weapons and still keep them.

Weapons are good early on, but a little awkward to upgrade. In particular, Heavy Crystal doesn’t play well with beams. Although inaccurate against small rooms, Swarm Missiles can fire before almost any enemy weapon. Use them to reduce damage and risk, especially early on.

If you’re struggling for weapons, seriously consider a teleporter. Your Crystal crew guarantees one point of damage to enemy weapons, except on some late-game ships with large crews. You’ll often need to bait enemy crew out the weapons room first. Sometimes you can get two points of damage into weapons, especially against slow-moving Rocks.

One point of damage isn’t amazing, but it happens before most weapons fire. That also means you’ll often take the more dangerous weapon offline, especially in early sectors. It’s improved by hacking, which gives you at least two points of damage and sometimes three.

With Rock and Crystal boarders and a clone bay, you can also board into automated ships quite well. Caution is still needed in case the enemy can disable both your teleporter and clone bay.

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 well worth visiting. You have a clone bay, plus blue options from Rock crew (good) and Rock Plating (okay).