Just got my first win (on normal, haven't played easy). Kestrel A, had been aiming for a stealth system after the stealth ship showed me how awesome it was, but I still prefer shields and kestrel weapons to start. Stealth system did prove pretty useful, but the recharge time is pretty long so wasn't quite as good as I hoped, I couldn't dodge using stealth both missile shots and power surges even with targeting the missile room. Ended up with a lower
I thought I wouldn't be able to do it since my weaponry was rather improvised, I was using a burst laser mk 1 and hull laser as well as my starting mk II since that was all I'd found and had bought a small bomb in sector 7 to swap out the Artemis for in the second stage. Probably was just a bit lucky, my missiles and bombs did a good job of hitting and I dodge a lot of hits. Went much better than the last time I reached the final stage, where I had an ion and drone engi ship with few crew and no ability to kill the crew of other ships what with ion doing no crew damage and drones targeting randomly and not at injured crew or at important systems (which since crew flock to so they can repair often results in killing them). They managed to damage and teleport into vital systems and with only 4 crew there wasn't much I could do about it. They didn't even teleport anyone onboard in my successful fight.
I now want to try out the new ship I've unlocked, and want to actually try to get some kestrel achievements. They seem a lot harder than the engi or zolton ones which I have two of each, and the achievements for the stealth ship and federation cruiser seem doable even if I haven't got any yet.
Beating the boss doesn't appear to do much to your score, it is over 300 points less than a run which didn't even beat stage two, and the one other time I beat stage two isn't even in the top five. I think it should be more important in the score really.