Some tips for new players:
1. Space bar is pause. Remember this is at heart a rogue-like, use pause liberally to plan your shots in combat and evaluate your situation as events unfold. Also useful for setting up shots with tricky timing, like firing lasers to drop shields and then sneaking in a beam shot right as they fall.
2. Crew are a precious resource. With the typical starting 3 man crew, I recommend a dedicated pilot (pretty much required anyways), a dedicated weapons operator, and a dedicated engine operator.
You need a pilot at all times to plot the next jump and provide basic evasion abilities, it better be an absolute emergency to pull your pilot during a firefight. If you do pull him, try to make sure someone stays in the cockpit for base evasion.
The weapons expert lets you fire faster, this is important as quicker kills mean less damage to you. An engine expert will give you valuable evasion. With the exception of beams, all weapons can be dodged, and beams can only hit typically when your shields are low, generally because you didn't dodge something else.
3. The enemy plays by the same rules (mostly). They can't evade/jump without a working bridge/pilot (unless it's an AI/ upgraded system), useful in later sectors as it generally takes less damage to disable the bridge than the engines.
Some enemy differences- they can't vent their own ship, so fires are extremely effective if they get out of control (<3 fire beam). The game will notify you when they're preparing to jump, though this is easy to miss in the heat of the moment. Finally they can use a multi-shot weapon to target multiple rooms at once, the player can only hit multiple rooms with
beam weaponry.
4. Shields are important but so is evasion, and evasion is much cheaper to improve.
5. You only need to power medbay when it's being used. Useful for juggling power to a new upgrade when you're light on scrap. You can also get creative with your weapons system, missiles/bombs are less useful then beams/lasers after shields have been brought down, just be mindful of arming times.
6. When you get the Engi ship learn to stagger your 2 Ion Blasts. This will allow you to take down most any ships shields. Autofire is the way to go here. Edit: Whoops, forgot they changed this to a singe mk 2 during the beta.
7. Mad hermits are dicks.
8. 20 scrap for level 2 doors. So good it's stupid. Prevents boarders from running freely over your ship. Any boarders that come on board near a vent are doomed. Watch them slowly die as they pound on the doors. If they reach a system, just reseal the doors and send in some crew to mop up the weakened remains.
9. Pick your battles. Sometimes it's best to take the bribe or just walk away.
10. Capturing ships is incredibly profitable but also risky. If you're going to use a boarding party make sure it's not your core crew members. Use room size to your advantage. Approach enemies with medical systems cautiously, and recall boarders if they try to warp away. Power down your automatic rail gun super weapon when sending boarders from the Federation Cruiser.
There are lots of viable strategies have fun experimenting and exploring!