I've only played on Normal. After I won on Normal General achievements, 3rd from the left [Federation Victory (Easy)] was activated as well as the 4th from the left, (Normal). In other words it's included.

I lost count how many times I tried to beat this game.
Randomness, instead of skillness, makes this game way worse then any skill based game.
Demon souls/dark souls was way easier then this game, at least for me.

I did make it to end boss a few times, till I learned you actually NEED specific weapons to beat it! :(

They devs would like to boast that this game has options, but it don't, not if you want to beat it,
very few end game weapon load outs can beat a ship with so much defense.
Tried going for all laser weapon build, reach boss, you'll never win.

Ps. is the wiki page for this game have the correct md5 hash for this game?
setup_ftl_2.0.0.9.exe = E7655F241511AD7EC0C5C3F69EE1AE93 seems incorrect :(

No, not really. Having a missile or bomb weapon can certainly help though.

I've won with the Red-Tail with an all laser build: Heavy Laser I, Hull Laser I, Burst Laser II ( or III) and I forget the last one. Maybe Ion Cannon or even a beam weapon. Point being it's doable.

This game does have lots of options, but the twist is, only a few of them are viable for a given playthrough. You really shouldn't plan a build beforehand. The randomness almost always constraints your opportunities, so you must adapt:

- Got lots of crew early on? Consider buying a teleporter. For teleporter builds, favor upgrading defenses instead of weapons.
- Found a defense drone and either lots of drone parts or a drone recovery arm? Buy a drone control instead and don't buy a cloak except just before the last sector.
- Found a good weapon instead? Being able to destroy enemies really quickly can help postpone defense upgrades, but if the weapon has a high energy cost, it may be wise to upgrade your weapons system a bit later.
- None of the above? Consider saving up for a cloak. Can't find one? Upgrade shields and engines earlier to reduce damage.

Avoid buying stuff that you don't have a good use for pretty much immediately. You should almost never buy stuff that depends on you getting some specific other thing later. A beefy beam weapon is nice but buying one can lose you the game if you can't afford the energy slots for it, or don't have a way to take down shields, or don't have enough defenses to wait for it to charge up. Better to keep a bank of 100-200 scrap than to buy something prematurely. And better to sell that beefy beam weapon (if you got it through a random event) than to wait 5 sectors to maybe be able to use it effectively.

You can get a >80% win rate with the default ship by being frugal and adaptive.

For the boss, almost any build that can somehow handle a 4 shield opponent works. Having at least 2 of the following is really helpful for survival: 4 shields, 50% evasion, cloak, teleporter. Though if you've got really good weapons and a bit of luck in where you get hit, you can defeat the boss even with none of the above.

I beat it my first try (Normal difficulty even). Not kidding, I have a screen shot to prove it.

However, it was MANY MANY tries before I beat it again. I just got lucky my first go and had several burst lasers.

Nope, it's more like life: make the best of what you have, and if life throws you a curveball, you dodge it. You get knocked down (in energy count), you scrape through until you can make it again.

Anyone can win if fortune favours you - but when fortune totally screws you over, that is what separates the real winners from everyone else.

In a way it's kind of like poker: Anyone can win when they have great cards, or their opponents are really, really sucky - but not everyone can win consistenly over time. There are people who think that poker is all about luck, when in reality luck is only a factor (albeit in poker luck is the largest factor, but it's not the only factor by a long shot).

Actually it's much more forgiveable than poker, since it's possible for a good player to win the game much more often than a good poker player can win a single hand, or even a single session. The luck factor in this game is smaller than the skill factor, of that you can be certain.

As others have stated, you don't NEED specific weapons to beat it - but specific items DO help a hell of a lot. I personally ensure I have at least have 3 shields, reasonably high lvl engines, a lvl 2 teleporter, a defense drone mk 1, and a bomb of some kind that can damage systems (or missile if for some reason I couldn't get a decent bomb). Ideally I'd have 4 shields, a cloak, and a maxed out pilot and engineer.

The trick is though that weapons and tactics that are brilliant for the first 7 sectors may potentially not be that great for the boss, since things change a bit. This is especially true if you love capturing ships intact as I do... ;)

I've just beat the game for the first time on my 109th run using the Shivan (Rock Cruiser Type B). The same run as I bagged warlord, which is a nice co-incidence. That run took me just under 2 hours so as most are obviously shorter I'd guess something in the region of 20-30 hours.

For reference, I beat it with a pair of bombs (fire and ion) and one burst laser II - although the latter could have been anything as it was only used to blow the ship up once the boarding party had destroyed the weapons and dropped the shields.

I guess that I just suck at this game then.

After my 101th run I've got 101 losses. I've got only 3 ships unlocked (Kestrel, Engi and Stealth). I fought with the boss 3 or 4 times, each one losing in 2nd encounter.

I've read all your advice, I think I use them properly.

Playing FTL is much fun. But I'm just not very good strategist, I guess.

Less than 10 hours. I though it is impossible when I've first met final boss on easy, but then I've managed to find his weakpoint or so. Getting there however is another thing.

Took me about 12 or 14 hours and about 20 attempts I think, and until then I felt like Nightblair; I thought the game was near impossible!

After a couple of wins I realized all the people saying luck is a fairly minimal factor to winning are right. On Easy, at least, I win almost every game with any ship I have now, even with Engi B and Stealth B. Those ships DO need a good amount of luck in the first and maybe second sectors to be able to get going properly, but asides from that it's a very tactical and skillful game. I'm about 12 wins for 15 attempts now since my first win (losses were unlucky starts with the aforementioned ships.)

My favourite run was probably my first win, with Engi A. Took down the boss just an Attack Drone I, Ion Blast II (starting weapon) and a Fire Beam. Burned that hulk hollow!
Don't know about Normal mode though. I'm going to unlock and win with all the ships on Easy before I start losing all the time again. =P

I've finally did it :) I've beaten boss in my 160th run. With Kestrel! :) I'm so proud of myself :>

I have to add that I did it on Normal, I've never played on Easy actually :)