Boarding tips & tricks

[Nihy]

Some things I've learned about boarding

- Good shields and possibly 1-2 defense drones against missiles will allow you to easily take any non-AI ship without a med bay.

- To handle ships with a med bay, first teleport your guys into a 2 square room close to the med bay. When the defenders start retreating into the medbay, hit it with a bomb and immediately rush in with your guys.

- Fire bombs/beams are a great distraction and make it much easier to take larger ships. Beware of auto-fire though.

- Try to maintain a large crew to be able to deal with fires and invaders in your own ship.

- When boarding AI ships, you need teleporter level 2 to (or possibly Rock boarding crew) to bring your guys back before they asphyxiate.

- The best way to board AI ships though is through a boarding drone since they don't need oxygen and the AI ship cannot kill it.

[Maya]

There are some more tricks:

- if it happens, that you get overwhelmed, but your Teleporter isn't ready or damaged, then just run around their ship till you can get them out there. This way its pretty easy to the most damage, especially against Rocks or if you got the Mantis-Augmentation. But get in Mind, that they need to stay still when you're using the Teleporter.

- And its also a good idea to take the medbay directly out and beam in it, cause if the Bomb misses while you're fighting them already, then you need to start all over again, after you retreatet for some healing.

Against AI Ships its most time a good idea to run away or to buy/find heavy weapons, just focusing on boarding isn't the best idea, especially the boss could be very hard.

[liq3]

I'm fairly sure tele level 2 isn't fast enough for AI ships. You need level 3 to keep Mantis alive (I tried level 2 once and lost 2 mantis ).

Even when using a boarding focused strategy, you NEED a laser/anti-ship drone to deal hull damage against AI ships and the boss. Trust me, it's not fun getting to the boss and losing cause you ran out of missiles and don't have a laser >.>

[Maya]

I'm fairly sure tele level 2 isn't fast enough for AI ships. You need level 3 to keep Mantis alive (I tried level 2 once and lost 2 mantis ).

Even when using a boarding focused strategy, you NEED a laser/anti-ship drone to deal hull damage against AI ships and the boss. Trust me, it's not fun getting to the boss and losing cause you ran out of missiles and don't have a laser >.>

You can get on the enemies ship and destroy everything first except O2, so you can safe some rockets when you damage it this way. And if you get a Crystal-Member, then you can do it with one of his crew-Members on board an destroying systems and let them repair it to damage him with just using one rocket^^

[Nihy]

I'm fairly sure tele level 2 isn't fast enough for AI ships. You need level 3 to keep Mantis alive (I tried level 2 once and lost 2 mantis ). >.>

Level 2 is enough. They'll have 9 hp left though the moment the cooldown on the teleporter finishes, so there is very little room for mistakes.

[Char;y]

I tried boarding once, but I gave up after I rejected a surrender, and ended up failing to notice my Artillery Beam reactivating. Lost 2/3rds of my crew. Sad story.

May give it another try. The Fed ship is great as it comes with a rockman, and mantis. Have to watch the big gun though...

[Createx]

A short guide to boarding (might get long...)

Boarding is a very worthwhile strategy for two reasons: It gives you more scrap/ressources and it's extremely reliable. You will find a teleporter somewhere, along with crew to use it. It's also extremely effective against the final boss if you know how.

There are two ways to defeat an enemy ship while boarding: Kill all their crew or destroy enough systems to bring their hull down. The first option is preferred because it gives more scrap and chances of crew survival are higher, and I'll focus on it.

To start boarding, you'll need a few things:
- A teleporter (duh.), level 2 is highly recommended because it allows escape from suffocation.
- Enough crew to effectively use it. 5 total is ok, but leaves one system unmanned. 6 is better, leaving you with a full crew on board. Mantis are the best fighters, followed by rockmen and possibly crystal, then slugs, then humans.
- A way to defend yourself - adequate shields, good dodge and anti-missile drones.
- A way to deal with enemy medbays/drone control if required - small bombs are best, breach bombs are ok, missiles work as well if there is defense drone.
- Sensors level 2 or a slug are extremely useful for figuring the best spot to land.
- These are the bare minimals, there are lots of other awesome tools at your disposal (healing bombs, fire bombs...)

What you want to do is to kill the enemy crew as fast as possible while taking the least damage possible. How?
If there is no medbay, teleport your crew into a 2-man room and start killing. If you can see where enemy crew is, try pointing them at a room with one person in it. That hopefully gives you enough advantage to kill at least two in one go. To distract other enemies, point your weapons at their weapon system - less damage for you, and another source of trouble for them. At least one enemy will try to keep it repaired, removing him from the fight.
Watch your health closely - once one of your guys drops below 25% health, you'll hear a beep and his health bar starts blinking. Hopefully your teleporter has charged by now... Once someone dips below 10 HP, beam them home.
Heal and repeat until they're dead.
With a med bay, things are marginally more difficult. Take the medbay out with your missiles/bombs, usually 1 point of damage is enough, rarely you need 2. Then beam your guys into the medbay - that way it can't be repaired because their dudes have to fight you. Careful though, those rooms may have room for 3 - you can be overwhelmed quickly that way unless you have a badass boarding crew.
When you beam out, take care that the medbay is still down before you teleport in again - you have bombs
Rinse and repeat.

Things to watch out for:
Cloaking
It can really, really mess you up. As long as they're cloaked, you can't teleport out. This means if you're running low on health, this might kill you. If they have cloaking, either take it out or tread very, very carefully.
Cloaking + Blast doors (grey doors) = very, very bad.

Blast doors
Grey doors means blast doors. That means you can't move around their ship, meaning you can't run away until you can teleport and you can't change the positions of your fighters. Tread carefully.

Drone Bay
...and no defense or combat drones active. That can mean two things: System repair drones, which you'll take out easily, and anti-boarding drones. I've not faced them yet, but they might screw you over. Try taking out the drone bay.

Useful stuff
- A Mantis kills a rockman, but dies to anything but an Engi afterwards (if he's at least a master). If a Mantis is at least level 2 in fighting, he can kill two humans/slugs and survive. Oh, and 4 Engi Superior movement speed also means they can run away easily.
- Running away. If you're running low on health, you can order your crew to run around the enemy ship till your teleporter recharges. Doesn't work as well with Rockmen... And only if the enemy has no blast doors.
- The Crew Shuffle. Not invented by me, and darthcaboose describes it a lot better Basically, it's a way to switch positions with your fighters. Might not work with blast doors. Very useful to know, that way you can hopefully last longer in combat.
- If you have healing bombs, then you'll have an easy life. You usually don't have to teleport back and forth, instead you can just heal your crew back to full easily. Remember it has a cooldown though, and it requires a missile! I'm not sure if they can miss, for me they have always hit their mark so far.
- Fire can be an useful ally, but be careful - it can easily backfire if you are using anything but rockmen. It's one hell of a distraction though, and if you have Rockmen it's almost overpowered.
- If you're not sure how many dorks they have or if there are Mantis or Rockmen, think about softening them up a bit. Bomb the rooms they're in, set fire to the ship...
- Watch out for blast doors and cloaking. If you can, take them down. Blast controls have priority.

Oh yeah, this did get long. Hope I could help some at least

[SchlauFuchs]

Hello,

Somehow I don't have luck with boarding. I get my troops onto the vessel, but I can't get them back when required. I'm not talking about the cooldown, but after that when I click the beam back button I get a red target arrow, but I can't place it anywhere on my ship. How is this supposed to work?

Cheers,
SF

[Maupin]

Target the room on the enemy ship you're beaming from to retrieve crew members in that room.

[SushaBrancaleone]

stop making thousand of threads about the same topic....


u can find everything u need to know about boarding in the 2 following threads:


Were in your base, MESSIN IT UP (a Boarding Guide) [spoiler]
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2376


Repel and Sieze (A Boarding Guide)
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2448/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2448&start=10