Eternal Death

[winterpwner]

How to win:

M0AR DAKKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Basically, Blast Laser Mark III and Mark IV with Artemis Missiles and Ion Bomb + Weapon Pre - Trolligniter

Only dropped below 75 during the boss battle when my cloak failed to activate. :/

[Blackout]

What's the best strategy for boarding? I have tried it with mixed results. Have had my boarders die before I can pull them back out too many times.

[nafuid]

What's the best strategy for boarding? I have tried it with mixed results. Have had my boarders die before I can pull them back out too many times.

Your boarders begin outnumbered and outmatched, so they need some help. Anything that causes chaos on the enemy ship will help them. Primarily fires, hull breaches and system damage. Most missiles and bombs will support your boarders well, and are often necessary at least to destroy the med bay.

A standard boarding for me starts something like this:
- Wait a few seconds for a bomb or missile to partially charge (just a little bit)
- Teleport to a two person room with one person in it. I pick either the lowest priority (for the enemy) room or the one farthest from the nearest other crew member. This allows me to fight two on one for at least a few hits.
- Wait until first enemy runs for the med bay and is almost there, then fire a missile or bomb into the med bay. The goal is to hit the med bay just as he gets in the room, killing him and destroying the med bay.

From here it is situational. Sometimes your boarders are hurt and you have to get them out, other times you can send another team in. Try to prevent them from repairing the med bay keep the pressure on if you can.

Here are a few more general tips:
1) Level 2 sensors will help lots by letting you know the enemies location and number before you jump in and as the fight progresses.
2) Level 2 teleporter is the solution to the specific problem you mentioned. Very few things can kill your boarders before a level 2 teleporter recharges.
3) If your boarders are low on health but you can't get them out yet, have them run away to the other end of the ship and back until the teleporter charges. Always look what kind of doors the enemy has before boarding to know if this will be an option.
4) Exploit AI priorities. If your boarders are in a low priority room the AI may only send one crew to fight them. Highest priority is the shield room, so if you damage it or start a fire then your boarders are likely to fight only one crew at a time until it is repaired.
5) Late in the fight you may have a numbers advantage but some of your boarders are low on health. Try to arrange your crew in the room such that the highest health boarders fight melee and the injured crew fight ranged. Crew can be rearranged by pausing, ordering them out of the room, and then ordering them back into the room in a specific order. When you unpause, your crew will simply swap places. Note this only works if the enemy does not have upgraded doors.
6) Boarding can take a while. The better your defence the fewer bombs/missiles you will waste crippling the enemies weapons while your boarders do their job.

[bobtheaverage]

Another super helpful thing is to have your boarders leveled up. One really good way to do this (almost an exploit really), is to have them smash up a ship while there is just one enemy crew on board.

Teleport onto the enemy ship, kill all of their crew but one. Spread your crew out and have them start smashing systems for xp. When the remaining enemy comes to engage one of your guys run your man to a nearby empty room and start smashing something else. The remaining enemy will chase him. Your man runs back to where he started and starts smashing again. The two of them dance until the other crew have smashed everything but the O2 or whittled the hull down to 2 or 3 hp. I generally don't go down to 1 enemy hull hp because then I too easy to accidentally kill my crew when their ship explodes. The goal is for your man to neither damage the enemy nor take damage himself but simply buy time for everyone else to train their smashing skills.

I can use this to get 2 unleveled boarders up to level 3 in one or two late sector battles.

[Ranarius Webfoot]

On the weapons front, I won last night on Easy with the Kestrel B using:
Hull Laser 3 (I never found a Burst 2, oh well)
Heavy Laser 2
Burst Laser 1
Ion Bomb
Weapons Level 8

For most enemies, I just turned on all the lasers, cloaked at the beginning of battle, then unleashed all of my (only 7) lazorz, heavy lazorz last, at something I wanted dead (weapons, or if they were a tough ship, shields.) Against the tough 4-shield-high-evade late-game enemies, I turned off the burst 1 and turned on the ion bomb. The strategy was then: Ion bomb into the cockpit. If it hits, they have ZERO avoid for a while. Incidentally, the amount of time it takes to shake off 4 ion damage is LESS than the time it takes to recharge an ion bomb with an expert gunner. Then, pew-pew-pew-pew-pew at the shield generator, hitting with a heavy lazor. Next weapon cycle, it gets hit with 2 heavy lazors. By this time there's a good chance the shield room is on fire which is awesome, now it will kill repairmen (esp. with continued bombardment) and you can just blast their weapons and medbay and teleport boarders, or if it's the final ship just blow the thing up I guess.