Rockship runs dry, does Mad Max fuel raids

[Red Earth]

I thought I was pretty screwed but I got all the way to the boss.

The first store I found had a firebeam and a teleporter. Both good for my rockmen but I could only buy one so I got the firebeam assuming it was rarer. Turns out I could have bought it later anyway. For some reason I kept forgetting to buy fuel and saving for the things I need for successful boardings and humans to free up my rockmen to leave the ship I was often short on scrap. I had a ionblast 2 and a mantis as well. I wasted some scrap on an ionblast 1 and then saw the 2 the very next store two jumps later.

Eventually I hit a dead end near the exit but not close enough for a jump route and had to go around a long way around through the rebel fleet and escape each encounter. Next sector I saw a shop but moved away from it not having spare scrap. Then I realized I was low on fuel and backtracked towards it, but I couldn't reach it. So I was out of fuel and the rebel fleet reached me. I tried many times to shoot their shield room with a breach missile so I could use my pike beam but never got one hit. Eventually they left and I had to wait again. Next one was going no better and I was about to quit but decided to just start throwing crew at them, no retreat, as see how it went. They actually were doing well and I got a lucky hit on their med bay so I won and took there fuel. By then they'd covered the whole sector and the shop was gone so I had to fight them every jump and still needed to take fuel. I likely had more than ten jumps inside the rebel fleet, at lease five of them consecutive.

I got to the boss and my ship wasn't too bad considering how I missed entire sectors worth of scrap. My boarding parties took out the weapons very well and then a missile followed by ion with pike beam did the rest. Second round didn't go so well mostly from my own mistakes. Boarding drones kept my crew busy and the defense drone wasn't letting much through. I'm not even sure how their shields went down because I was watching my crews health while fighting drones. I got some good pike beam hits and with the assault drones done started in on the boarding the weapons rooms. Then sentimentality (and somewhat thinking of the next round) got in the way when their shields went down but I didn't fire the pike beam because I might have won but killed by mantis and rockman on board, who I wouldn't have sent if I noticed how close I was to winning. Also I lost track of things going on while repairing and boarding and didn't activate the cloak more than once and took some beam hits, the last time taking so much down that there was no time to recover, and a final explosion yadda, yadda, yadda.

So one of my more memorable games, more so than even my victories.

Side note: Does anyone know if fleeing the boss battle fully repairs their hull? I'm wondering if I could have left and tried to get to a repair station without losing all my progress in that round.