Thanks for your praise, it's very satisfying indeed after the many hours spent tweaking and polishing. The only regret i have is not polishing up the descriptions and the backstory a little more. While testing the ships i became very familiar with them and i managed to forget that other players will not have this knowledge.
It's really stupid of me, and i apologize but i was in a big hurry to release the damned thing and was worried that i would delay it for too long if i kept looking for things to polish more or second-guess some decisions.
You should not feel stupid or incompetent, and i feel guilty putting you through that after your break. You were not in good form perhaps, but still no need to apologize.
Here's a few belated hints on using both ships, though Magma is the one that kinda requires a specific start to get going.
So first step, forget your engines. You need 5 power for the weapons and the ideal choice for opening up is the Impact. Go ahead and target the weapons, because whenever the Impact connects with a shield bubble it both ions it and damages the shield. Any shots that make it through will ion and damage weapons. That's what you get for 5 power. Has to be good.
Two volleys should be enough to cause enough damage to weapons, so you can power up the second set of weapons, again for a total of 5 power. By now, the enemy will have fired one volley and hopefully cloaking was enough to avoid damage. Time to start some fires. Definetly target the shield with your first shot, because they have highest repair priority. Your beam should cover the weapons and whatever else is nearbly and worth burning.
Next targets would be any nearby rooms that dont have a blaze going or weapons/shields if the crew manages to deal with those problems. For extra safety, DO burn the o2 room because they never repair it in time and they abandon all other systems once they realise they are running out of air.
Should their weapons somehow come back online, your cloak will be ready, and as long as you manage to cause enough chaos eventually the fire damage will do it's thing and the crew will be toast. Potential problem here is encountering repair drones and Engi because they repair ludicruosly fast.
So that is the ideal way to start engagements with this ship. Start with the cannon and switch to fire once you feel their weapons are weakened. Two fire weapons working together are much more effective then just one, and engines will not be needed at all.
Here's another undocumented feature. The Magma Cannon is actually a bomb weapon (shh, dont tell anyone). It doesnt require ammo though. It was supposed to be a smaller fire beam but i ran into shield piercing problems and had to change things around. Being a bomb, it skips shields entirely, and it is also immune to defense drones mkII.
The HE-Laser states that it pierces 3 shields but in truth it can only manage 2, which is what it was designed to do. If set correctly to pierce 2 shields... it pierces only one. The description is inaccurate because it reads data from the blueprint file, but if the blueprint is set to 2, it just wont work. Part of the problem is that beams have a built in ability to pierce shields based on their damage. Halberd and Glaive have shield piercing set to 0 but they manage to get through. Fire beams do no damage so getting them through shields is tricky. Sorry about the confusion here.
First 20 or 30 scrap your earn should go to either reactor or cloak. It would be very wise to keep some scrap hoarded in case you find good stuff in a store. A pre-igniter is a godsend, but stealth weapons are also incredibly good. Repair arm is also a super aug, because taking it on the hull is all you can do when things don't go your way.
Allright, now the other ship. You have 3 ion weapons, and while they're fast, they're limited to one damage per each shot. This makes the slightly less effective against shields because each shield actually uses two power so it takes 2 hits to ion one layer fully. Shields cannot operate when a layer has less than 2 power but they come back online a lot quicker. Long story short, best keep hitting the shields a lot.
My preference is to stagger two smaller cannons and have them work the shields exclusively. I do not normally use autofire but here it's a good idea. The dual cannon gets weapons and usually keeps them down without a problem. Initially there's not enough power for everything, but if you are safe you can stop the ship and borrow some power from the engines. Upgrade reactor early so that you may use all weapons.
The meat-eater is a crewkiller but it also breaches and does system damage. Worth using against silly AI ships
because they cannot autoheal a room with a breach. I like to use an ion shot on the helm before launching, just to esure a hit.
Without sensor upgrades it's tricky to kill crew BUT you can bet your life someone is in the shield room and at the helm. There's few missiles at the start but it's possible to quickly wipeout a ship or two. Coincidentally Rock people are the only race that can survive a hit. This is intentional.
For the love of all you hold dear, do not fire the damn thing when your boarders are fighting... it's just ... horrible.
If you're out of missiles, disableing the o2 is a dependable but boring way to capture ships. Most rewards include a missile and early enemies have 2-3 crew so you shouldn't have to resort to this often. Use pretty much all the Comets though because in my experience the o2 system is crazily resistant to ioning.
I'm very pleased to hear that you enjoyed the mod, especially considering the beating the game decided to give you on normal. Sheesh, that was harsh. I mean, really harsh! I mean on a scale between 1 and Fucking Very! that was superharsh. Good job surviving against that zoltan bastard.
I hoped it would be fun to play rather than miserable, but the rng has it's own ideas sometimes. If it's any consolation, for all the talking and advice, i get beaten to a pulp like everyone else. FTL does not discriminate
Now time to end the lengthy post with a video from myself. So that others can see me play like a pro, and get stupid like a pro and finally squashed like a boss. Oh yeah, i'm very elite these days...
Here's the
IceLord, swank beams and all, all thrown away.
I wish I get that more often. 
