Paperkoopa wrote:Fuel, teleporting enemies, rockets and fire.
There's nothing you can really do about fuel, other than get lucky/accept enemy surrenders if they're offering like 4 fuel or something, but the rest is just teething pains. Teleporting enemies? Buy level 2 doors. They keep enemies in one room for a while, meaning you can open a bunch of airlocks and vent the oxygen in rooms enemies are in/are going to be. By the time they actually manage to bust through the doors and fight your crew, they'll probably be half-dead anyway. If you then take the additional precaution of fighting them in the medbay (with it turned on, of course), teleporting enemies just become free combat experience.
Same thing with fires: level 2 or higher doors will prevent fires spreading from one room to the next, so you can just vent the oxygen in that room so you don't have to worry about it. Seriously: level 2 doors. One of the most valuable (and cheapest) upgrades you can get, and one of the biggest steps you can make towards longer runs.
As for rockets...yeah, depends on your ship. You'll either wanna go with defense drones if you've got the resources, or engine upgrades if you haven't. In FTL, your evade chance is as important to your defense as your shields are, and (discounting defense drones) the only way you can really defend against missiles. In the first few sectors, I usually spend all my scrap getting a base set-up of two layers of shields and 25% evade chance (which I *think* is three powered engine upgrades if you have both engines and pilot systems manned). Keeping the engines manned where possible is also a good habit to be in; not only does it give you an extra 5% evade (which is equal to a free engine upgrade) but it allows that crew member to accumulate experience in engines. Sounds obvious, but since they get a point of exp for every shot they evade, they level up after 15 (and again after another 15) and they increase the evade chance when leveled up, it quickly becomes a cascade effect. The better your evasion, the easier it is to get higher evasion and not eat missiles for breakfast. The pilot does exactly the same thing with exactly the same progression, but for most fights it's sorta mandatory to have the piloting system manned, so yeah.
Although, even if you do all that, you'll still lose against the last boss more times than not. xD