Shortest Trip to Earth

On paper this game is made just for me; I love Star Trek, and like most people here I liked FTL and the things that this game adds to that game's concept really make it feel like a more fleshed out and complete game. But I'm done with this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ line that dying is fun or whatever nonsense the game developers have contrived in order to excuse the ludicrice spike in difficulty. And I'm just talking about the normal "beginners" level difficulty here, but you can bet that you'll never actually complete this game unless you're just one of those elite gamers I guess. Here's my experience every time I play (with the easiest difficulty with the highest survivability ships): things start out great of course, and by that I mean I win fights by the skin of my teeth, and sometimes they run away, but I at least always come out a little stronger or richer than before. After a few sectors and some more edge of your seat battles, where your experience and crafty ship builds and weapon synergies can mean the difference between life and death, you eventually get to the exit gate of the sector and are put up against 3 ships (where before you would face at most 2, or 3 weaker ones but it always still felt balanced) and each one of those ships is just as strong as your ship. So you just sit there and take the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pounding, because literally nothing you could have done to outfit your ship. no amount of additional crew, no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ prayer in heaven was going to get you past this point. So what was the point? What was the point of all of the time I spent evaluating one gun against the other, or exploring? Save yourself the frustration and time lost.