| FTL "ah hah" moment for me

When up against opponents with shields, don't set your weapons to auto-fire when ready. Let them all power up to green, hit pause. Then select the slowest traveling weapon (missiles), launch that, repause. Then select the lasers, fire those. Select the beam weapon of your choice, get the aiming reticule clicked to anchor it, stretch the firing line but don't click to set it. Unpause, wait for the lasers to reach the edge of the screen, then click on second anchor point for the beam weapon and it will all hit at the same time.

ABSOLUTE AND TOTAL DESTRUCTION.

I was wiping fighters, frigates and cruisers with three and four shields with this methodology in about 3 shots. Absolutely nasty cheese.

I was on the, eh, "second" fight with the Boss and got cocky. Didn't concentrate on bringing the shields down first and went for the... module in question too early. Unfortunately, that meant that my attack to disable the module didn't go well. Worse, I got turned into swiss cheese quite rapidly. :(

I really thought the HMS Schweaty was going to win it for me.

I think my ideal setup now would be two of the 5-shot lasers and a 1-bar quick missile for sneaking in a pre-shot on their shields. That would be 4 bars for each of the 5 shot cannons and 1 bar for the missile battery, for the max of 9.

Alternative would be 2x3-shot cannons and a Halberd Beam. Nasty. Even with some misses, the 6 shots from the cannons should be enough to overwhelm the shield and then the beam weapon would cut into the ship something fierce in that second or two before they recharge.