FTL - Faster Than Light

[Gustaran]

Oh yeah. FTL Hard is the tightest balanced game I've ever seen. You will make it through if you play perfectly, and nothing short of perfectly.

One thing I noticed is how important weapon drops suddenly become. Especially if you are behind the curve and that one useful weapon puts you ahead again.
The other thing I understand now is how good Long Range Scanners really are. On lower diffulties they are nice to have, but on hard they are a major benefit.

Are the C ships inferior? They're more polarized into extremes, but that's not all bad. Stealth C actually works pretty well with the shield overcharger. Slug C gets a ton of tricks in both hacking and mind control. Federation C with the artillery flak does seem more reliable than the others with the artillery beam.

Did you beat the game with all of those? With Stealth C, I only had a ton of restarts, because one early beam drone can cost you 1/3 of our hull.

Also, all the C ships get a cloning bay, which I have come to prefer over the med bay, especially given all the events where it saves you.

I agree, the major benefit is the possibility of getting extra scrap through events without losing a crew members (I am looking at you, giant alien spider! ). I would estimate a Clone Bay might be worth ~100 extra scrap throughout a run compared to a Med Bay. The only problem is when you are being boarded and take an arrow to the knee take a missile hit to your Clone Bay. Some promising runs of mine were cut short this way.

I've never heard about events being worse based on difficulty. Maybe it's perception bias in that a bad outcome on Normal is usually survivable while the same on Hard can wipe you.

Yes, you are probably right, if you take 5 hull damage instead of receiving 25 scrap, it is a big problem on hard mode. And if it happens 3 times in a row you become convinced the odds are stacked agains you.
That being said, I wonder if there are differences between hard difficulty besides scrap and enemy generation? Someone on Reddit claimed that Level 3 doors go down faster on hard difficulty:

Doors do not last as long on Hard mode. If you watch my video, level 3 doors take 10 shots to break through. With two draining points, two boarders barely take any oxygen damage before the doors open and they move on.

Sullla also mentioned the possibility of the boss firing faster on hard than on easy in his "Federation Beam only" video, though he wasn't sure IIRC.