I've finished up all the achievements in the game. So, I thought I'd start putting some self imposed restrictions on myself. I decided to see if I could win the game only using the artillery beam. No other weapons, no offensive/boarding drones, no teleporting. So, I looked over the two federation cruisers and decided starting with level 2 artillery beam made the federation B the one to go with. Well the early going was quite rough. I was taking a beating from a lot of ships. Missiles were a real killer, but I survived. One nice bonus of this strategy is getting to sell any weapons I come across. So, I was able to upgrade my artillery beam early. I also had the excess energy to power it since I wasn't using any on standard weapons. Around sector 5 I was getting really annoyed that I couldn't find a shop with cloaking available. I finally decided to look up the ship info on a wiki when it reminded me that cloaking is not available on the federation crusiers. So, this made me pretty worried about the final battle, but at that point I figured there was no point in just giving up. I maxed out my shields and engines and I had a defense drone along with a hull repair drone ready to go. Then in the last sector it dawned on me that a defense drone mark II would help to shoot down some incoming lasers as well as missiles. I picked one up and upgraded my drone control to be able to power a defense drone mark I and a defense drone mark II simultaneously. Only hmmmm something was wrong the power bars weren't there when I went to power them up. Noooooooooo! I spent my scrap on the weapons system not the drone system!!! Argh!!!! I didn't have enough scrap to invest in the drone system now. I had to face the flagship with just my defense drone and hull repair drone instead.
Well I made it through the first phase with minimal damage and repaired it all up with my hull repair drone. The second phase however did me in. I was actually getting pretty close, but when a missile barrage took down a layer of shields and a power surge was able to get through the shields and start ripping stuff up. I had to vent some rooms to put out fires but then my door system got taken offline. I ended up with a half vented ship and then the O2 got taken out and I was stuck huddled in the medbay with my last two crew. The flagship had 4 hull left and my artillery beam was damaged down to 1 power bar left. I got to sit there and watch as hit after hit pummeled my ship until they finally took down the last bar of power on the artillery beam and I was doomed. Such a sad end. I really think if I had the defense drone mark II that I would have had a shot. Maybe I'll try again someday.