Which of the FTL races and ships are your favorite?

Mine is kind of a toss between the Engie (with their cruiser) and the Slugs with theirs.

The Engie cruisers work pretty good with drones (which I think are pretty cool to use) and I like the nano-dispersal addon that the first Engie ship gets.

The Slugs however hold a special place for being the first ship I was able to beat the game with. Having the Bio-Beam at the start made it easy to salvage scrap to make it through the game.

For my favorite race, I'm going to have to say the Zoltans. Mainly because they look cool, and I enjoy calling them "walking batteries" (totally legit reasoning). For favorite ship, I have to go with the Kestrel, because it was the first ship I beat the game with, I like the color scheme, and it is overall pretty balanced. The BLII is strong enough to get you past the first couple of sectors, and can supplement pretty much any other weapon fairly well.

Now I have a question for you: What do you usually name your ships?

I usually think of a name that i feel fits the ship, then stick a "USS" in front of it.
Example:
Zoltan A could be the USS Jalapeno
Rock B could be USS Obsidian
Engi B could be USS Help

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I almost always name the Engie A (the one with the nano-dispersal) the Medivac. I kind of envision it as being a pretty cool medical ship if there was one (particularly if you upgrade the medbay and then run into the plague event).

Other than that, I can't think of a readily used naming scheme. But I do know that in the slug cruisers, I always name the two slugs Flim and Flam (the Slug cruiser B I name them Flim, Flam, and Trixie). I imagine those two slugs to be con men or shady salesmen flying through the stars always ready to "liberate" pirates and slavers of their valuable scrap.

Favourite race would definitely have to be Zoltan. I love their design, the lore, the music and both of the ships. It'll be interesting to see what the Type C Zoltan cruiser is when Advanced Edition comes out! Fighting without a reserve shield is a fun challenge without being on the level of sheer absurdity that comes with flying the Stealth cruisers, though Stealth A would be my second favourite ship. Oh, and you get to do crazy things like not invest in your reactor!

As for names, I tend to go with things I remember from various sci-fi books I've read. 'Windflower', 'Sayce' and 'Thrifty' (gotta love those Slugs) are ones I usually use, but I don't remember the others that occasionally pop into my head. That's usually because they explode before I get a chance to grow attached to them.