Boarding the Flagship

[IllPayInEurope]

Before today, I had been having so much trouble with the flagship. It seems each stage was designed to counter one playstyle. Well after reading up that killing the crew granted more scrap, I started researching boarding strategies and ended up with a breach bomb and a boarding party combo.

This method worked well to overpower small to medium ships as the breach bomb disabled their medbay and my boarders ripped systems apart.

I decided to test this out with the rebel flagship. The main problem with the flagship is that god damn triple missile launcher. It seems fitting that the weapons are isolated, so that beaming my boarders in made it a nice mop up job. I through my use of my boarding party, 5 shot laser cannon and roughly 26 breach bombs, I finally wiped out the entire crew. A message then popped out stating that an advanced AI had taken over. This made defeating the flagship so much easier. Now that the ship couldn't heal anything, once a subsystem went down, they stayed down. Once I took out its main weapons, I was free to have my way with that god damn ship.

Finally I defeated the flagship and quickly beamed my Rock out at the last second for an awesome finish.

Time to try Normal.

Have you guys ever beaten the flagship with the boarding party approach?

[ThePsuedoMonkey]

I like boarding the boss, since it makes taking out the shields and those damn drones so much easier (goodbye, boarding drone!) The systems will repair themselves though, just like on the other AI ships. Biggest problems are killing off so many crew when the ship has lv3 medbay, and making sure your guys aren't low on health when it cloaks.

[TheAzryte]

First time I beat the flagship was boarding, mantis type B, 4 pad teleporter maxed out and a maxed out medbay allowed for rapid redeployment of my boarding team, and I was able to slowly, one by one, kill the ships crew (if you hit a system, they'll pull a guy out of the medbay and into my four maxed combat mantis warriors, allowed me to sabotage the shields, and let loose the hull smasher mk II. Also, yeah, AI ships auto-reapir, all systems count as manned (I think) and it becomes tougher as a result, that's why the startagy is to kill all but the one in the heavy laser battery, as that won't penetrate three shields.

[UltraMantis]

When you decide to kill the crew, do it withouit destroying the o2 room. The AI will kick in and repair all weapons and shields, but it has lowest priority for the o2 if it even repairs it at all. Unless you enjoy beaming into airless rooms, leave the o2 intact.

That way you can beam 1 crewmember into the weapon room and keep it down untill you're ready to kill the ship. Target the Medbay AND Cloak then wipeout the crew during the first encounter, there may be very little time later.