Tried out a boarding build on hard mode, went Rock B because fire boarding fuck yeah. Also cause its not as crazy specialized as Mantis or Crystal B.
This was one of the most satisfying runs I've ever lost. I ran a ridiculously tight ship; I reached last stand with 0 fuel, 5 missiles, and 6 drones. That's WITH a drone recovery arm I purchased halfway through the game because I needed to split my drones between a combat drone, a defense drone, and a hack. Seven sectors in I had only my 2 starting weapons. Also, I counted partway through the game and I was running at ONE QUARTER of my max power. And that's with no wasted upgrades, minus some early engine upgrades I bought to survive the rebel fleet at low health and the one extra O2 I started with. The game was sort of defined by an early pre-ignitor purchase, sadly I couldn't get a build that took advantage of it so I had to settle for instantaneous fireboarding and some heavy pierce sniping.
At the end I found myself about to fight the 3rd form of the flagship with 4 health left and 6 power total between my weapon and drone systems. I decided to face death with honor instead of hoping for the negligible chance of a repair event in Last Stand. Main lesson learned: if you are going to board the flagship on hard, you NEED a cloak. Its mandatory. A defense drone isn't enough.
On a happier note, I learned two new tactics: if you disable a system before a pulsar burst, it only gets drained by 1 (I think), also if you're fast you can intentionally de-activate your defense drone to let a hack through and thus choose which system the flagship hacks. Sadly I didn't learn the pulsar trick in time to save myself from being devastated; fucking hard mode pulsars. I did waste the flagship's hack on my sensors.