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.)

• 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.
• 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).

• 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, amd ion blast + lasers.
• 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 mothership 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.