was it over 10 hours or less?

Over. Then I started cheating and still took me a good deal of time to beat it.

Still haven't, but I got to the final battle once on easy.

Far less, I beat it on my 7th or 8th run.

The engi ship is amazing once you get three offensive drones and a drone recovery arm, and a hull repair drone. You eat through everything, then repair your ship for basically free after the battle.

Probably around 15 hours. It gets easier when you know what to expect from the last fight and prepare accordingly beforehand, altough luck will kill you many times on your way there, specially if you take the "greed" option every time .

I just beat it after around 15 or so hours using the type b Zoltan Cruiser. Incidentally, I also discovered an extremely cheap way to do it. It was fun, I must say.

It took 32 hours for me to finally beat the game on easy. I beat it with the Torus ship (the one which unlocks after getting to sector 5). The furthest I got with the Kestrel is to Sector 5 in Normal. I have gotten to sector 8 with the Kestrel ship on Easy, but lost the game each time. I have yet to try Normal with the Torus ship. That will be my next game. Will take a little break from FTL. Will play some Bunny Must Die from the current Indie Royale Bundle.

Not sure how much time it took, but I beat it on my 20th game. That was on easy, I mostly played on normal but wanted to complete it on easy to unlock the big cruiser.

Naturally, it was a big epic battle where I had 1 health left on the last phase, and suddenly realized I could escape, repair (and buy exactly two missiles after selling unused drones) and jump back. The mothership also got repaired, but it didn't seem to get the lost crew back and I TOTALLY BLEW IT OUT OF THE SKY. Yeah.

This was with The Kestrel. I think a key to my victory was that I spent a lot of resources upgrading the engine to get better at dodging.

It was probably a lot more. It took 18 tries. We can chalk up one quarter to early quit game, another quarter to rage quit, and another quarter to something silly happened like the ship warped off while trying to get the Trusty Autopilot Achievement.

Four times I actually faced the boss, so if we allow four hours for each of these runs plus another four hours for the other runs, that should be about 20 hours.

It also took some reading up on how the boss fight worked to win.

The successful run was with the Kestrel on Easy.

Was probably over 10 hours for me. It was sometime in the range of my 7th-10th try. I did it first with the kestrel and then my next game with the osprey (both on easy). Several of the prior runs made it to the 8th sector. Since then I've had another 8-10 runs that we're much less unsuccessful. I attribute this as mostly due to trying different play styles using the vortex and stealth ship, which are less forgiving to errors I feel. I've taken the red-tail to sector 8 a couple times in this stretch as well. Once without enough fire power and once with a small crew (bad luck first trip, crew mismanagement second trip).

3hrs. On my second try on easy with Kestrel A. Guess I just got lucky mostly.

Took several tries and maybe 5 more hours to get it done on Normal with the federation cruiser.

Now I'm entertaining the idea of using the Engi ship, but it needs a different approach.

I exceed 10 hours and I still have not managed to kill that goddamn flagship. I manage quite well until the last 2 sectors, where I usually get so heavily damaged or outgunned that I cannot take on the flagship.

I play on normal, hopefully I can unlock some new ships. I might have a better chance with some other equipement or layout.

Well over 30+ tries on easy and still no luck... This is just ultimately frustrating!
Edit: WOHOO FU*KING A!!!! I finally beat the motherf*cker!!! well after 35+ tries but anyway!
There doesn't seem to be a way to continue your game after you defeat the boss....?

Took me about 5 days of playing, maybe 20 attempts before I succeeded. I have only ever played on normal. I didn't succeed until I realized how imbalanced the engi A cruiser starting weapon is.

I had no trouble with the boss, I've beaten him a few times now, without much effort, it is getting to him without doing something stupid like suffocating all my crew that I have a problem with.

5. th time i tried. First time i tried with an engi ship. I guess the defensive strategy suits me best. Although i did not like the ships layout, mainly, because it kinda hinders the flushing of fire and intruders.
All this was on easy, but i did not receive a lot of damage, maybe repaired once and kept more than half my hull on the final run.
I love ion guns! :) Drones are also pretty useful. But i rarely used them.