Side with the Engi or Mantis

[Chocolateknife]

So there's this one really annoying scenario where you find a Mantis aboard your ship.

You find out that the Mantis is wanted by the Engis.

Do you:

A. Side with the Engis and turn over the Mantis

or

B. Side with the Mantis.

This is the only scenario where there is no guaranteed way to avoid a negative and it really annoys me because I always choose the wrong one. This shouldn't be the case, every scenario has a way for you to not take a chance. This one, however, screws you over almost every time.

If you side with the Engis you could either get scrap OR realize that it was all part of a Mantis scheme, leaving you with instant hull damage, and a fight against an Engi ship

If you side with the Mantis you could get instant hull damage and some other outcome that I could never get.

90% of the time I always get hull damage on this one and it really bugs me whenever I'm already low on health. Can we add an option to just leave the mantis alone?

[Raxxman]

siding with the mantis gives you him as a crew member (or he blows you up trolololol)

happens

[cuthawolf]

I've had three different results for this mission.

*Spoilers!*

1) I turned him over to the Engi. They were happy, gave me scrap and wandered off.

2) I protected him, got him as a crew member and had to fight the Engi.

3) I tried to turn him over, he damaged my ship AND the Engi didn't give me any scrap.

[Innominate]

I always side with the mantis on the off chance I might get him as a crew member. I think he's sabotaged my ship 6 or so times for every time he's joined (sometimes more than once in a single game).

[icepick]

There are many events where you have no garuntees either way.

[ThePsuedoMonkey]

This event is the one I am least fond of (none of my mantis dudes ever do 5 damage to the enemy). After getting this event 5 times in one play and it damaging me 4 of those times (last one killed me), I decided to check it out in the data.dat file. Spoiler:

Defending him is 50/50 between joining your crew and doing 5 damage, while turning him over is 33/33/33 between just getting paid, getting 5 damage but also paid, and him becoming a boarder.