Zoltan Cruiser OP?

[Wisman]

The first game I played as it I won with it. The starting weapons are pretty good. Zoltan shield is nice too. It is just such a good ship.

[New Moon On Monday]

For just about any ship, if you have one of those games where everything seems to go your way in the first few sectors, the ship feels really powerful.

For the Zoltan Cruiser, by the time you get to Sector 3, it start getting more challenging dealing with the slow Halberd Beam when enemies chew up the Zoltan Shield faster, so you still have to be able to upgrade to contend with that. Stores and Events many times don't have the equipment you need when you need it. And then there are some enemies that are just really good at blowing away that Zoltan Shield quickly, and usually your regular Shields underneath are weak because you don't upgrade them at a high priority and your crew don't get skill with them.

That said, of all the ship-specific augmentations, Zoltan Shield is probably the best one.

You also have a chance of getting a Zoltan Shield for any ship, from a Quest in the Zoltan Homeworlds. I recently was trying to get the no-upgrades achievement using the Red-Tail (which means, among other things, I couldn't upgrade Shields until Sector 5.) I was able to go to the Zoltan Homeworlds in Sector 3. The first beacon I jumped to gave me the Quest. The Quest marker was just one jump away. I had a 50-50 chance of getting the Zoltan Shield as a reward, and got it. That made the achievement, and the rest of the game, pretty easy.

[Brosef Iosif]

Zoltan A is often considered one of the best ship in the game, something like 4th best maybe, depends on the player of course but it's certainly up there.
FTL is a very unbalanced game by design, some ships are much easier than others. The point is the gimmick, some gimmicks are strong (Stealth A), some are weak (Engi B), some are fun (Lanius B) and sometimes, a little bit of everything (Stealth B, go ahead, fite me).

Zoltan A was my go-to "I want to win" early on, won first normal then first hard with it.

[Skinny Pete]

Actually all the Zoltan Cruisers are semi-OP. The only one that arguably isn't is the Zoltan C. It's also incredibly powerful but it has such severe quirks that it takes a lot of getting used to.

[Brosef Iosif]

All Zoltans are indeed very potent, simply because the special shield is such an immense advantage in combat, plus zoltans ends up being pretty good in late game and are overall fairly good at all stages, though frail and this can be a big downside in many cases.

B and C still have some pretty nasty drawbacks, B's door system is one of the awfulest of the entire game, venting it is horrendous and the fact that zoltans are weak make it even worse. Good luck if you happen to jump in an asteroid field as well. Offensively it's good and eh, 3 zoltans but it can turn sour quickly. C ends up being super strong usually, if you get to the end that is, clone bay make the low life more manageable but the early game can be painful as hell. It's superb timing and energy resource training though.

A gets all his system eggs in the same basket, but having upgraded doors and the halberd (compared to the pike I mean) is such a nice boon and then you even have the leto as a backup if you can't find anything else. It really doesn't have the glaring issues of the two others and it does feel way stronger even though I'd agree that all zoltans are somehow above average.