Subset Games Forum

Sending your crewmembers into the belly of the beast can be both rewarding and immensely frustrating, and oftentimes lethal. What are some of the worst ways your boarders died?

I've lost several crewmembers to my own Artillery Beam... I always forget to turn it off...

I was also fighting a Rock cruiser with my Kestral B, and had killed all of it's crew except for one with the basic lasers. Half the ship was on fire, and it only had one hull. I decided to send in my Mantis who was Mk2 in Combat and Weapons to finish off the last Rockman. I forgot that fire-damaged systems cause hull damage, however, so I lost my Mantis seconds before my teleporter could pull him out. RIP Mantis, your sacrifice was not forgotten (until Flagship part 2).

I did this on a Let's Play, but sadly I don't have any clue which one.

With autofire on, I accidentally fired a shot at the one-hull enemy. Pretty typical, really, but what makes it memorable is that I realized the mistake while the shots were still on my side of the board. I paused the game and in panic said "Oh my God oh my God oh my God" (literally) and frantically tried to figure out a way to save them with no teleporter (it was recharging) and nobody in their cockpit. There was none. I hit space, and let them die a hero's death.

During post production of the video, I added three quick "Oh my God" text boxes to the video, and found it heightened the comedy of the tragedy quite a bit. One of my favorite moments in all of my videos.

The first and only time I tried boarding an AI ship, I thought that there was just barely enough air to breathe in because the rooms didn't have the yellow borders around them. I never made that mistake a second time.

This happened to me with Mantis B and a 3 Mantis 1 Crystal boarding party. Some fire I forgot about destroyed a system and I was left with a boarding ship and 4 engis.

I had my first "autofire" mistake today. I was playing my eyeball cruiser, The Watcher (it's sort of like a mixture of Engi-A and Slug-A), and things were going quite well. I got a Crystal dude, went to the secret sector and got a second Crystal to complete my boarding party. I didn't have autofire on for much of the run, but near the end, I found myself changing my ion targets quite often and forgetting to manually autofire each one, so I decided to turn it on. Multiple times I had caught myself from firing my beam again (Anti-Bio Beam until Last Stand, when I switched for a Halberd Beam), but this one fateful time...

During phase one of the flagship fight, I had my two Crystals fighting in the cloaking room with the last three enemies. The ship still had four hull and their medbay in perfect health, so I turned my Ion Blast II from the shields (still had Ion Blast I on them) onto the medbay and used my beam to damage the third guy in the cloak room. One guy ran to the medbay before it was completely useless from the ions, and my Crystals weren't quite going to make it alone. Rather than teleport them back and let the enemy fix the cloak, I sent my Slug pilot to the teleporter to go tank for my Crystals. I finished off the two guys in the cloak room, and as I'm telling my guys what order to enter the medbay to finish off the last guy, I hear a Crystal shatter... I don't know why I heard a Crystal shatter, since my beam wasn't targeting either of them. One went missing from the crew list before the event text, and the other two disappeared after the text.

My crew was left with four Zoltans and an Engi for the last two phases. My Engi was on the weapons, so I had to waste a power and throw a spare Zoltan into the pilot seat. Things turned out okay for my survivors, and I got my 3rd highest score. This "horrendous boarding death" happened so late in the game that it didn't really matter.

Always a classic: go fireboarding and have the ship a'splode from fire damage.

When I first got my hands on a Crew Teleporter with the FNC Supernova (a Federation Cruiser), I had two disasters occur.

The first time, I sent in a Mantis and a Rock. Onto a simple Rebel ship with only humans. Stupidly, I made the Rock split off from the Mantis, and he was overwhelmed and butchered.

The second time, on a Pirate ship, I sent in two Rocks and made them knock out the O2. They ended up asphyxiating while fighting the crew

I don't think I'll be using Teleporters again, thanks; I'll just stick to Boarding Drones and Bombs.

Don't give up too quickly. Boarding is really useful once you get the hang of it.

This useful guide should give you some ideas

As a general rule, you need to watch your guys carefully, especially if you don't have a clone bay. There are lots of dangers that can mess up your boarding party:

- Are your weapons firing? Is the Artillery Beam charging?
- Is the enemy ship on fire and low on health?
- Are you in an asteroid field and the enemie's shields are low?
- Do they have an upgraded door system?
- Could they potentially cloak when you have to teleport your crew back for healing?
- Do they have a medbay, clonebay and/or anti personnel drone?

As with everything in FTL, the key is lots and lots of pausing, to make sure you don't miss that vital detail that's going to cost you your four elite mantis guys.

Not an actually boarding accident, but it involves my boarding crew , enemies boarding and me crying, so it's close enough.

I was playing with mantis b, and I had 3 mantis boarding team. On one beacon near a sun, there came the event where your ship gets boarded by four enemies. I took them out with no problem and sent my boarding crew to med bay while I jumped out to avoid any fires in my ship. On next beacon there was an automated enemy ship that I was forced to fight. The first thing it did waw to fire hacking machine to my med bay, which had all of my mantisses inside, and killing them all with just hacking it. That was the most painful thing I have encountered in this game.

So once I was using the lanius b. I was in slug homeworlds and i came upon the event that disables your medical room -- in my case a clone bay. My hacking system put up a blue event that reactivated the clone bay but I didn't use it. I was thinking, well they don't look strong, let's save a drone part. When the battle started I was HORRIFIED. They had a medbay. I had two lanius so I sent the metal and hanlanius into the slugs o2, which was my second mistake (the first being not using the drone part). The slugs went and sprinkled some permadamage powder all over my lanius. I couldn't heal or clone them so I sent them to the medbay to deprive it of o2, which was another stupid move. If I had sent them to shields they could have taken down the shields and my advanced flak would have killed the slugs. Instead, I stuck my lanius into the medbay. I put all sorts of lotions and potions in the mix but mind-control did NOT work, which was the 4th problem with my plan. The slugs killed the metal then hanlanius. Since hanlaius died a split second before I tried to jump it said "warning your crew is stiil on board the slug ship." 5th issue with my plan: the REMAINS of hanlanius COUNTED AS A CREW MEMBER!!! I had to choose between hanlanius and the metal. Who to save? I tried to save both but I couldn't. So, then, the reason that the metal died was a bug! You know what happens if your crew dies when you're teleporting him back? The death animation replays. That's due to the crewmembers still being alive for a split second after they "die" but they can't deal damage during that time. The same glitch killed the metal. Since it took hanlanius a split second to become truly dead, the games AI thought hanlanius was still an alive crew member. After all, what's the difference? The metal just wasted away in the clone bay. I did jump away and..........................TOOK REVENGEANCE!!!!!!!!!!!!! Since another bug made it so that the no medbay effect was gone when I came back, the slithering turds did not stand a chance. TWISTED TWISTED. In the end, I won against the rebel flagship but the metal did not survive.