Here are some tips and tricks I learned while playing FTL: Faster Than Light. There are tips here for both beginners and veterans of the game.

• Early Crew Training - Early on, if you find an enemy that doesn't deal too much damage to you, you can use that enemy to train your crews skills. (piloting, weapons, shields, etc.)

  A good way to train is to use an ion blast on the enemy weapons system, and keep firing. This will disable their weapons preventing them from firing at you, while raising your crew weapon skill. (Increasing weapon speed.)

  In general, ion damage is good for locking down and disabling enemy systems by constantly firing at the system you want to disable.

• Good early upgrades - Some good early uses of your money is to upgrade your shields and power first. Having two shields can be really useful against most types of enemies.

  Upgrading your engines is also very useful for dodging incoming attacks.

• Unlocking New Ships - There are two ways to unlock ships. You can either do quests, or beat the flagship with your latest unlocked ships.
• Save Up Money - Try to save some scrap for the first few systems. The difficulty really ramps up after the third system, and having extra scrap can be life saving for repair or buying more fuel.
• Fighting intruders - The best area to fight intruders on your ship is the medical bay. This way your crew will heal while they fight.

• Teleporter Tips - The teleporter is very useful for taking down ships by boarding them, but you have to keep a few things in mind.

  Before teleporting, make sure the enemy ship is not teleporting their own crew so you can defend your ship.

  Make sure your soldiers can take on the crew. Highly not recommended to teleport to ships with anti-personel robots or mantis crew, as they are very powerful fighters.

  Also make sure your teleporter is at least level 2 before using it, in case you need quickly need to bring your crew back. If the enemy ship jumps with your crew on board, they are lost forever.

  Keep in mind with some smaller ships, if you fully take out the crew via boarding, you can end the fight before it even begins.

  Keep in mind you cannot teleport to a ship with a large zoltan overshield.

• Good systems to grab - Some key systems to grab at your first stores should be the clone system, which makes it so your crew can basically never die (unless the clone system is destroyed, and even then you can get a backup DNA bank to protect them.

  Another great system to grab is drone control. Drones can do many things from repairing your hull (hull repair) to protecting you from missiles and other enemy fire (defense drone).

  Cloaking is also very useful, especially in the final few zones. The cloak buys you time while your weapons charge, and can also dodge enemy missiles if timed correctly.

• Taking down enemy combat drones - A cool trick I learned is that you can take out enemy combat drones without an anti-drone system. It's a bit tricky, but if you wait until a drone is flying in front of one of your weapons, you can fire manually and destroy it!
• Good early weapon combo - You always want to grab flak, since they are some of the best weapons in the game. Other good combos are burst laser + beam, and ion blast + lasers.

  One very powerful early game combo is firing a few laser shots at the enemy shield, and then timing a halberd beam to hit multiple rooms right when the shield goes down.

  Aiming Halberd Beam - Make sure to aim the halberd beam in a way that will cover the most amount of rooms for the most damage.

  

  As for useful drones, Defense Drone II has the ability to shoot down not only enemy missiles, but lasers too!

  Hull repair is another useful drone. You can save this in your cargo until your hull gets low, then equip it to repair using drone parts. Can be used multiple times in a row.

• Focus on enemy weapons - The best system to attack in general would be the weapons. Once you can disable their weapons, go for the engines so they can't use their FTL drive and run away.
• Evasion is important - A lot of people neglect to upgrade their piloting systems early on, and then wonder why their ships get hit by enemy fire. Make sure you get piloting systems up to 2 or above, it really helps with dodging.
• Final Boss Tip - The final flagship battle can be a tough one. A good tip is to wait for phase 2 at the base, and then jump into the boss.

  This way if you need to jump away to fix yourself up with hull repair, or do anything else, you can safely jump back to your base without encountering another enemy.

  A cloak really helps with the flagship encounter. Right when the flagship alarm sound goes off prepare to use your cloak when the big attack happens.