Just had a Man of War victory run, because I randomly just felt like using a slug ship. Kept the bio-beam throughout the whole game, and most of the midgame was spent with me blasting huge amounts of ion damage into the enemy shields before either lighting them on fire (this run was
dripping with fire beams, they were all over the place!) or nuking them with the beam. Endgame I beat the boss by overwhelming the shields thanks to a heavy ion and two burst Mk.IIs, before again picking off the crew with the biobeam.
I specifically refrained from buying a teleporter, because I've had too many boarding runs/wins lately and I wanted to keep things on a different slant... Plus, this meant more use out of the bio beam, which is just so weirdly satisfying (I do still love fire though).
Which scenarios are no-win no-retreat, again?
Non-battles.
Though specifically battles where your warp engine is disabled and you have no ability to survive.
I can't recall a single instance where my FTL was outright denied via an event. Sure, random pissy luck thanks to bombs, boarders or stray shots, but never an event that cancelled it. The engine hacking event can only bring it down to one bar, so it
will be slow as hell to get the jump ready but it won't prevent you from using it.
Speaking of power bars, ion weaponry apparently can't remove/block the special power bar granted by a Zoltan. I had a fight with a Zoltan manning the engines, and he got ion-bombed three times in a row. The engines never went completely offline, the FTL jump never stopped charging, and I never fully lost evasion.