Am I such a noob or what?

[OptiSTR]

Hey guys, So I unlocked my first ships, which is the one with the Drone.
I figured out how it suppose to work, with the gun reducing shields and the drone destroying everything,
which is all good, but it looks like by the time I reach the 4th sector or so, Im dieing because of lack of scrub metal.
I cant afford to buy new weapons as I spend all my metal on repairing myself.
Am I doing something wrong?

[5thHorseman]

You need to figure out what's causing your ship to be so damaged, and change your strategies and tactics to reduce that damage.

Any time you take a lot of damage in the game, you're committing scrap that you should be using to upgrade, on simply keeping the ship from falling apart.

It's not always possible, but you should always try to upgrade things like shields and engines. And get a defense drone (Unless you already have one) and deploy it EVERY time you see missiles on the enemy ship. That one drone will cost you 8 (or so) scrap to buy, but it could easily prevent dozens of scrap worth of damage in a bad fight.

The Engi ships aren't the easiest to play. Play the Kestrel and the Red Tail until you've got all the basics down. Those are easier because they can kill the bad guys faster. The faster the bad guys die, the less time they have to hammer your hull.

[Dralax]

@OP: If you are taking damage with Engi A then my guess is that you aim at the wrong systems. Taking out weapon controls should be your top priority.

And get a defense drone (Unless you already have one) and deploy it EVERY time you see missiles on the enemy ship.

I hate when people give advice using words like "always", "never" and "every time". FTL is all about adapting to what you get. Sometimes it's worth deploying a drone, sometimes it isn't. Same with buying the drone system in the first place.

The Engi ships aren't the easiest to play. Play the Kestrel and the Red Tail until you've got all the basics down.

Engi A is one of the easiest to play and win with. However it is a very bad ship to learn the game in as it forces a specific tactic that isn't applicable to any of the other ships in early-mid game. Sticking to Kestrel until you get the basics is a good idea.

[5thHorseman]

You are technically correct, but giving a new player a branching list of "if this then that" seemed a bad choice here, and considering you want to do it very, very frequently, deploying it every single time at the start is a perfectly viable strategy until you start to see situations where it's not necessary.

And he doesn't need to buy the drone system. He's using the Engi ship. I would not have suggested this if he was using another ship type.