Subset Games Forum

A lot of thing determine the outcome of a run, but IMO the mantis A is extremely well position. Starting not only with a teleporter, but with a mantis boarding team means you will be getting more scrap on almost every jump. For the flagship the teleporter is probably the route to victory, and getting it right from the start gives you much more freedom as you go on. You don't need to just sit with scrap banked hoping for it to show up, nor do you ever end up second guessing yourself and moving into another flagship killing strategy.

Some key things to look out for -

Mind control - Will let you beam enemy crew off their ship and kill them in your own time. Helpful on the flagship because you can kill the crew without much risk to your guys as well as totally neutralizing their MC.
Cloak - So your boarders can kill people without the chance of you taking damage.
Zoltan Shield Bypass - Ensures a quick destruction of the missile launcher and mind control on the 3rd phase.
Regenerative Teleport - Not everyone's prefered aug but I love it, lets you be extremely agressive as boarders without needing to power your medbay.

I just had my highest score game ever with mantis B layout, and it's even more high risk than the A layout. I did restart a couple times cus I ran into those AI ships. Firstly the reason I kept losing at the time of my first post was not understanding all the new advanced ed features like hacking and mind controls and I didn't know how to respond. I literally let a hacking bot suffocate my crew cus they hacked my o2 and I didn't know how to disable it and assumed I could repair the system lol.

Anyway, the mantis ships need to feast in the first two sectors and find some weapons to deal with the AI drone ships. Once you do that you're usually in the clear and the ability to board grants you a lot more scrap over the duration. But I am all for straight up restarting if you don't find a weapon or run into too many AI drone ships early. My best game I got super lucky, picked up another mantis and a human early so I could have 3 mantis boarders and still pilot my ship, then found a vulcan cannon and in sector 5 or so I got a second vulcan. I had so much scrap I maxed every system (obviously not enough power but maxed in case they get damaged), got 2 defense drones plus a battery to power them, 2 vulcans, and a cloak for the boss. Easiest fight of my life.

I think the key is just stick with it, you never know what your next game will hold.

if you are playing as mantis, try to get a good weapon early on and avoid ai ships. my best run with mantis was a 4 mantis boading party and 2 humans, an engi, and a rock. And a burst mk 2 and ion bomb. The 4 man teleporter is the best system you can get with the mantis.