Overview
Are you struggling to take out those enemy ships with boarding, especially when they slip into the medbay? Well, this guide is for you!
Overview
Boarding enemy ships isn’t always easy. Especially when those two guys just keep chickening-off to the medbay as soon as they get on low health. But, believe it or not, there are ways to counter this.
Ship & crew
I reccomend the Mantis ship, type B as it has a 4 man teleporter and two starting Mantis.
If you havn’t unlocked it, I reccomend doing so as it is by far the best ship for boarding.
Focus on your defensive systems. You start with two shield layers, which is good. Upgrade your engines as well, and make sure that defense drone is powered if the enemy has missile weapons. Make sure you have level 2 sensors. Try to get stealth reasonably early.
An upgraded teleporter is nice, but genrally there are better things to spend your scrap on. Also note that you should only upgrade your engines if you actually have someone to drive the ship while you’re boarding; try to recruit a non-Mantis crew member for this job. If not, just don’t bother with engines and try to rely on your shields. Again, you start with two shield layers, so not much should be able to get past in the first couple of sectors, and by then you should have acquired a pilot.
You could also upgrade autopilot, but the problem with this is that it becomes almost completely useless once you do manage to find a pilot.
For your crew, have as many Mantis as possible (up to 4). Rockmen are also good, but try to get Mantis. For the rest of the crew, you should have Engies; The only disadvantage is that they are worse at fighting, and with 4 Mantis, this shouldn’t be an issue.
This is an example of a well-equipped boarding vessel; it has 4 shields, very good engines, a defense drone mark 2, and level 3 stealth. I am also using the suggested crew compliment of 4 Mantis, and 4 Engies. It also has good weapons, but the main thing is the defenses, as the main weapons will always be the Mantis boarding the enemy.
Versus two-man medbay
Teleport your Mantis into a 4-space room anywhere on the ship. Fight the enemy crew until two of them have retreated back the the medbay. Now you can start killing them off; it will take a while for the two injured crew to heal up, and by then you should have killed all the other crew.
But how do you kill off those two? They will just return to the medbay and heal up when they get on low health! Well, you have to get one of them in the medbay, and the other one fighting elsewhere; that way, you can send two Mantis into the medbay, and kill the guy while he’s healing, because two Mantis, when attacking one enemy in the medbay, can kill him.
So, how do you do that? Well, it’s simple: one they’re healed up, send one Mantis (the one who has the most health remaining) to the shields, and three to any 4-space room. One of the enemy will attack the guy on shields, and the other will go to the three Mantis in the 4-space room. Of couse, the one who’s fighting in the 4-space room will get on low health a lot quicker, as it has 3 Mantis attacking it, compared to one. So he will go to the medbay, and the other guy will keep fighting. Then, you can send two Mantis to the medbay, and kill the guy who’s healing. This means that there is only one crew member alive, so you can go kill him, and just send two Mantis to the medbay if he retreats.
If one of your Mantis gets on low health during this, send him to a room where there are no enemies. If he gets attacked, just move him. You can still pull it off as there will still be 2v1 and 1v1.
If two or more of your Mantis get severely injured, teleport all four back, heal up, and try again. Remember, it’s much better to retreat and maybe take some damage to your ship while you’re healing up, than it is to lose a Mantis. You can repair at any shop cheaply; getting more Mantis is hard.
Versus 4-man medbay
Occasionally, the enemy ship will have a 4-man medbay. This is considerably more diffucult, as they will have as many crew fighting as you. Your best shot is to blow up or ion the medbay before boarding, then teleport your Mantis into it. This will force them to fight you instead of fixing it, and they will not recieve healing while fighting. If that’s not possible, it’ll take some good micro skills to kill an enemy crew member, and probably several attempts. There’s no specific way to do it as it depends on the layout of the enemy ship, what crew members they have, etc.
Against the final boss
Boarding the final boss is not easy; they have loads of crew members, level 3 four-man medbay and level 3 doors. But it’s certainly possible.
First, take out the weapons. Send two Mantis to the missiles (the weapon second from right). They will kill the operator and destroy it, and this means their best weapon is down. As soon as the teleporter is ready again, send the other two to the ion cannon (left). Then take the two that have destroyed the missiles back, get them healed up, and send them to the beam (right). Then take the Mantis back that have destroyed the ions, and get them healed up. DO NOT destroy the lasers, we will keep that guy alive, because once all the crew are dead, the ships starts auto-repairing stuff, which we don’t want. So keep that one guy alive.
Once the 3 weapons are destroyed, take your Mantis back and get them healed up. Destroy their medbay. This is easy with a S. bomb or missile, but you can also do this with lasers if you have enough. Take your time; the enemy ship can’t hurt you now that 3/4 of it’s weapons are down (as long as you have at least 3 shields, which you definetly should have by now). One it’s down, teleport all four of your Mantis to the medbay. They should kill all of the enemy crew inside the main part of the ship, with no losses. The only enemy crew member left will be the one on the lasers, who is isolated from the main part of the ship.
So feel free to go around breaking stuff! As long as it’s not the oxygen, and the ship has more than one bar of hull left, you can break whatever you want. I reccomend the shields first, then cockpit and stealth. Then, teleport back to your ship, get them healed up, and destroy the flagship.
Now, when you get to stage two, do the same thing again about destroying the weapons (you’ll notice the ion canon has gone, which will speed things up). You’ll notice that the enemy crew is already dead, because crew don’t replenish between stages, although all their systems will be online. Note that the enemy will send boarding drones during this stage; it may be worth destroying their drone system ASAP (or deploying a defense drone to shoot down the boarding drones). Deploy stealth when the enemy power surges.
Once you’ve taken out the weapons, do the same thing again about destroying the shields, cockpit, etc, teleport back, blow them up, and move on to stage 3. The easiest stage, by far. You only need to break their missiles, and their weapons will be down, apart from the power surge thingy that fires loads of lasers at you. Simply stealth for that, or just put your shields and engines on full power, that should do it.
After that, just detroy their shields and cockpit (they no longer have stealth, yay!) and take them out. You don’t even need to bother returning your Mantis this time, as it’s the end of the game, although I like to anyway, because when it says “and the successful crew, …” I like it to show my Mantis as well. Anyway, you did it! Despite those pesky medbays, you’ve saved the federation! Now try doing it on “normal” difficulty 😉