Engi cruiser  is the easiest ship to get, you just need to get to sector 5 and you’ll get it. Is achievement are easier than the Kestrel, so you will probably end up unlocking the type B with the Engi cruiser before the Kestrel. Finishing the game with it unlock the Federation Cruiser.

Layout A: The Torus

The Engi Cruiser 

Unlock: Reaching the fifth sector with any Kestrel layout will unlocks the Engi Cruiser.

The Torus can be hard at first to play and you will rely mostly on your anti-ship drone to do damage to enemies ship at the beginning. The Ion Blast II is one of the great weapon of the game it’s fast recharge rate make it perfect to take down most shield with constant firing. Combine with laser & beam later your ship will be a force to recon with and will minimize your drone part usage.

Another key addition to this ship are bomb-type weapons. Ion Bombs are great later in the game against enemies with more than 2 shields, including the Rebel Flagship. The Ion blast and bombs can keep the shields down while your drones and lasers work on the hull. A Small Bomb or other type of launcher can help too, you can selectively take out systems as needed. This ship is one of the ship where the Drone Recovery Arm augment work great, it will allows you to use your drones without the fear of missing drone part. If you can grab extra anti-ship drone ship, specially a mark II, you will witness how powerful multiple attack drones can be has they tear down ship with more than 2 shield. You can get even 3 anti-ship drone and watch them go through even the most powerful shield and let your weapon finish the job

Upgrade:

Doors are probably a necessary upgrade on this ship because of the Engi weakness in hand-to-hand combat unless you have the opportunity to get Rock or Mantis crew, do so. Mind control can be a nice system to add to compensate Engi weakness in combat.

Hacking could be a nice addition but it unfortunately use drone part too unless you have Drone Recovery Arm augment.

The Teleporter is not advised on this ship, unless you are getting the system for blue storyline options.

Cloaking is always a great add, since it help dodge those nasty final attack of the Rebel flagship.

Side Note from the Wiki:

The Wiki have an interesting side note about how to level up the skill of your crew on this ship. In the first few sector you will probably encounter ship that can’t do anything to your ship so you can take advantage of that and level up your weapon, shield, piloting and engine since the ion blast is a non-lethal weapon.  Having these skill max will be huge later and will make it easier for you to spend your scrap on other systems.

Layout B: The Vortex

The Engi Cruiser 

Unlock : Earning two of the three Engi Cruiser achievements will unlock Layout B.

I have to be honest with you, I really have a hard time with this ship. It’s decent enough to cover you base the first 2 sector, but it has a lot of flaw. Heavy Ion +  Heavy Laser I combo cover you base until you hit a ship with 2 shield, even before that the Heavy Ion is so slow to fill that the enemy might be able to hit your weapon before you even fire. Upgrade to a better ion weapon quickly or complement it with bomb/missile since it won’t do it for ship with heavy shield.

Starting with only one crew is one of them, it’s make you pretty vulnerable to boarding and event that might kill your only crew. Once you upgrade the doors the Anti-Personnel Drone can handle the hostile boarders on the ship while you empty the oxygen out of every room except the medbay and helm. The initial drone and augment will get useless pretty quickly since you probably want to fill this ship with anti-ship drone and defense drone instead of repair drone, and have a crew instead of just one lonely guy.

The only thing I can say that good about this ship is that the layout is somewhat good, easy to go around and system that go well together are next to each other like the teleporter and medbay which might make it a decent boarding ship if you get the right crew. There not much empty room though, so each hit will probably damage something important.

If you want a challenge that ship is for you, you can do a decent job if you get lucky but I get real hard fast if you don’t get lucky with your drops and shops.

Layout C: Tetragon

The Engi Cruiser 

Unlock: Reaching Sector 8 with the Engi Cruiser Layout B and Advanced Mode enabled unlocks layout C.

The ship layout is pretty neat but the main problem of this ship its is constant use of drone part by the hacking system and Beam Drone. If you can get your hand on the drone recovery arm you might save a lot on drone part there.

Later, this ship will mostly relies on it’s hacking and massive drone army to destroy the enemy ship. The Defense Scrambler will takes care of those nasty Anti-Combat drones and defense drone so you shouldn’t have problem deploying offensive drone and you could add missile weapon to be able to target specific systems that are causing you trouble. Drones destroy Zoltan shields pretty easily so that not an issue here. Mind Control, Teleportation can be nice addition to this ship too since your Lanius is a pretty good boarder specially if you can get another Lanius crew.