Zoltan B

Shields-2 costs a whopping 100 scrap. Before then, your Zoltan Shield will serve well in most encounters, but you are vulnerable against asteroid fields and drones. Therefore spend your first 100 scrap on shields.

Do not buy engine upgrades before shields, even though they’re much cheaper: you don’t even need evasion for most fights, and it won’t help you much in the really dangerous fights. Getting that shield up even one jump earlier could be crucial.

Nebula beacons are worth visiting. They do have a higher chance of automated ships, which may have drones. But 75% of automated ships don’t have drones, and your Zoltan Shield is a good counter to cloaking, mind control, or hacking. Nebula beacons are also guaranteed not to be asteroid fields!

Once you have a regular shield, your Zoltan Shield and fantastic weapons make sectors 1 and 2 very safe. Consider delaying shields upgrades, to afford a weapon or hacking.

Against one shield, you can fire both ions immediately at weapons (or drones), and the Pike Beam will still do full damage before the shield comes up. Micromanage the weapon positions to sneak ions inside the shield.

When enemies have one shield and cannot harm you, try ionising O2 for a crew kill. You can also kill crew with the Pike Beam, but the timing is quite difficult.

This ship is somewhat vulnerable to boarding. Start the engines Zoltan on doors (due to event boarding). Additional crew help, and the first gives one free power by replacing the pilot. If doors get boarded, you can vent them out and then reoccupy it. You can also pre-vent the three empty rooms to the right of doors, then let oxygen refill to 85%.

Don’t forget that two Zoltans can completely ion-proof one shield layer, and can also de-ionise shields when you have multiple layers. Here’s a surprising fact about pulsars: even while you only have shields-1, a single Zoltan in the shields room will guarantee that the pulse hits the shield system (but probably it’s better to just send all three Zoltans into the weapons).

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 poorly: weapons and drones are vulnerable.

Sector 1 distress beacons are somewhat worth visiting, mostly because they are not asteroid fields! You have one blue option from the Ion Blast (good, but just one event).