Is there ever really a reason not to board?

[GDK]

Here is your reason: Having a ship full of zoltans.

Seriously i just finished a normal run with the zoltan ship A (beat the game) but i couldn't board soince I never had any mantis or rock.
I only boarded the last boss to criple him, and killed the crew with fire bombs (once the medbay is fully on fire they won't heal anymore).
I always thought the teleporter was a must buy, but that was mainly because I played with the rock cruiser all the time (that damned crystal ship didn't want to unlock itself) but some ship might just need it only for the boss.

[Sovereighn2280]

As long as you can take care of your guys there is never a reason not to board. (Also, Auto-Ships are a reason but, that's common sense not to board them.)

[Number43]

Once near the end of sector 7 I got careless and lost 3 rockman and a mantis, all with max combat xp, to a ftl jump. On another run I lost 2 crew members when the enemy ship blew up to asteroids.

[hybridfive]

It's a good overarching strategy for any ship without a combat disadvantage. That's 11/18th of the ships. Meaning, that's not a high enough percentage to consider it a master strategy, IMO. It's a strategy that works for more than half of the ships, but not that much more.

At the onset, you wouldn't want to board with Engi A&B, Zoltan A&B, Stealth A&B, and Cruiser B.

Engi can't win 1 on 1 fights. That turns off the ability to kite opposing crew through micromanaging the shield room. You basically have to flee through the enemy ship until your teleporter recharges, so you can create a 2 on 1 fight plus a kite runner. It also negates the speed argument on your opening post. Engi A also has a better way of preventing damage, via the Ion Gun II, which requires a crew member to use effectively.

Boarding with Zoltans is stupid for multiple reasons: HP, losing the power bonus, and not supporting the superiority of the shield. The default strategy for Zoltan A&B is to find the cloaking device, not the teleporter. The right combination of luck and equipment on a Zoltan ship can basically ignore all damage from sectors 2 through 5 by using a cloak, shield, cloak tactic for the first three volleys. Early ships simply don't have enough weapons to vary their volley timing to defeat that plan. Then sectors 6 and 7 are basically adapting to end-game weapons, with the goal of getting to 28+ power. It's easy to abuse.

Cruiser B is subtly similar to Zoltan ships, because if you board with Human + Slug, you end up with the Zoltan in the cockpit, which is a waste of the power bonus as above. I also found the Cruiser B layout to be a hinderance in using a teleporter. Having an unlucky enemy teleport into your cockpit, with your best fighters AND medbay way in the back usually results in higher damage from having your pilot flee.
http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3901
WIth the Stealth ship, it's possible that my experience is atypical, but I really feel like you can't win without shields.

Really, I think the teleporting is slanted towards using Rock A&B, Mantis A&B, Slug B, and Crystal A&B because it solves problems. None of them having an opening compliment of weapons that contains an end-game weapon, barring the exceptional cases where you use a one power weapon (Artimis, Small Bomb, or Crystal Heavy) because fits into a weapon configuration which would have been 7 power otherwise. If you use any weapons besides the three I named, you're really unhappy about it. So having the teleporter prevents you from having to spend a large amount of scrap to upgrade your weapons.

Other ships, particularly all human ships, start closer to an end-game compliment. They have less distance to go to get to an acceptable weapons array. They can also make better use of Pre-Igniters. The Pre-Igniter is not something you should ever discount. So boarding with them doesn't have to be plan A.

Overall I feel like most ships should start off playing for damage, and transition into a boarding strategy if they happen to pick up crew-members of the right races. If you already have good races for combat, then boarding is plan A. But otherwise, you do what you're good at, rather than trying to force a strategy onto the wrong situation.

[Cocapelli]

It's a good overarching strategy for any ship without a combat disadvantage. That's 11/18th of the ships. Meaning, that's not a high enough percentage to consider it a master strategy, IMO. It's a strategy that works for more than half of the ships, but not that much more.

etc...

great post. i agree with everything.

even with the rock ship, sometimes you cannot afford to get that teleporter, because the scrap arm trumps all. in the first two sectors, the market decides what you should buy. burst laser II, sign me up!

[human_dictionary]

the anti-bio beam could be a reason not to board, although you dont get that odd extra reward with a boarded ship, you have no risk of losing enemy crew and still get the extra reward for not destroying the enemy ship

[hybridfive]

the anti-bio beam could be a reason not to board, although you dont get that odd extra reward with a boarded ship, you have no risk of losing enemy crew and still get the extra reward for not destroying the enemy ship

I disagree completely. You just fire the anti-bio beam at the spots at the enemies your crew isn't fighting. Just like with normal weapons. When you hit their crew, they have less health to fight off your boarders. That's practically the premise of Slug A.

[breadsmith]

I disagree completely. You just fire the anti-bio beam at the spots at the enemies your crew isn't fighting. Just like with normal weapons. When you hit their crew, they have less health to fight off your boarders. That's practically the premise of Slug A.[/quote]

This. I beat the boss with Slug A while only picking up a Burst 1 doing mostly this. I teleported to it's cockpit, fought until the pilot went to heal, knocked down the shields for a sec, then Anti-Bio'd him before he could heal. Sure, it may have been the longest fight ever, (bordering an hour on Stage 1) but I beat it.

[human_dictionary]

i beat the boss on slug a with no boarding, the bio-beam, a breach II bomb and a hull laser II, i only took any damage on the first stage

[hybridfive]

human_dictionary, the point of breadsmith's post about the boss was not to brag, it was to reinforce that the anti-bio beam is good while boarding.

In my first post, my argument against boarding as a master strategy was that certain ships give up an advantage when boarding. Generally speaking that was power for Zoltans & Cruiser B, speed for Engi, and priority purchases for Stealth. The idea was that the advantages lost by boarding outweigh the advantages gained by boarding: increased scrap, luck normalization, and speed. That was detailed in MANtisB's first post.

Judge the anti-bio beam in that context. If you have an anti-bio beam, and you add a teleporter to it, you don't give up anything. You gain all the advantages of teleporting. There's no down side. It's complementary.

Having a teleporter would not have changed how you beat the boss with your slug a ship, for better or worse. It would have changed how effective you were in the jumps leading up to the boss. It would have reduced the number of missiles/bombs you used, for one. And with that decreased reliance on bombs, it would have normalized your luck.

Lastly, the anti-bio beam was probably the least relevant weapon to beating the boss, of the three. It certainly wasn't the reason you won. A Breach II bomb and a hull laser II can be enough to beat the final boss by themselves. You just need enough bombs to last all the way through, a decent door system, and a reasonable enough crew to deal with boarders. The anti-bio beam did the same job as fighting the boss' crew in stage 3.