Curiosity Killed The Kestral

[Frigidevil]

So I'm still pretty new to the game (only about 7 hours in) but I needed to share my tale.

So after never clearing the 3rd sector I somehow find myself in sector 5, thanks in large part to a second Burst Laser II that was randomly found in sector 2 and a drone salvage arm. So here I am, reveling in joy over how seemingly untouchable I am with my upgraded doors, oxygen, med bay, sensors, autopilot and weapons that seem to automatically shut down every opponent I had. I unlocked the Engi Ship and the Slug ship, and things looked very promising. On top of all that, I now had a gold pilot, engineer, and weapons tech, as well as 3 extra crew members! It finally felt like I knew how to play this game for real.

Now that I can see the inside of the opponent's ship for the first time, I decide now is as good a time as any to get a grasp on this boarding game so I can get even more loot! I approach my first victim, a Mantis ship with 1 Mantis, 1 Engi, and 1 Human. Things are going swimmingly, this ship can be taken down pretty easily....but there's only 2 crew members left! Looks like I can sneak in there and kill them off quickly. The Mantis goes down quick enough, but then I start to hear sirens. Well since I didn't have any ion weapons, I stopped firing on the ship so I could kill the crew. Looks like during that time their weapons system got repaired juuuuust enough that it had been slowly chipping away at my hull. Before I could do anything about it, I was dead. All that hard work, gone in a second.


So just consider it a lesson to noobs and vets alike...if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And don't learn to board on your best run ever!

[orlhando]

happened to me too. Having quite a good run and I decided y could enjoy the hunting inside the enemy ship... biggest mistake ever.

[UltraMantis]

Oh i was nervous when boarding early on, and i probably threw away good results. But with a bit of practise and a lot of greed you realise that piracy is the best policy and a pair of Mantis the strongest weapon.

The thing with boarding is to never do it half-heartedly. Go for it with teleporter and medbay upgrades, and beef up your ship's defenses. Having powerfull weapons and boarders is unnecesary and risky. Only weapons you need are bombs to deal with enemy medbays, and any puny thing to finish off AI ships, if you even want to bother with those.

Now that all sounds fine, but in practise keeping an eye on BOTH ships can lead to sensory overload and it's likely that you miss something important. That's the price of greed. And why it's important to strengthen ship defense (a fast engine and defense drone will help with the worst of it, cloaking is a very sexy luxury) as you discombobulate enemy crew.

7 out of 4 veteran players agree that boarding is OP as hell. Only enemies with a medbay and repair drones will resist.

[R4V3-0N]

here are some tips with boarding and playstyles

lets look at some good races.

Races
Mantis:
they do extra damage and move faster.

Rockmen:
they have 150 health (50% extra)
immune to fire.
slow moving

??? (I censor because you are new and don't want to spoil a surprise)

less suffocation damage
125 health
slow (faster then rockmen though)

Special ability: Lockdown.

Ghost (only available by mods and/or cheating, there are in the game technically so I'll mention them)

50 health
no suffication damage.

lets see some good weapons to run aside with it.

Weapons
Ion bombs/ Ion blasts: good to disable a ship so you cannot take harm during the boarding, also can help take out the medbay or disable a room with your guys inside.

Fire Bomb/ Fire beam: if you use rockman, fire beams and/or fire bombs are very usefull, you can force the enemy out of the room by setting it ablaze (eg a room with your boarding party or the med bay) and you deal damage to the system and in the end hull with fire (not enough to kill ay ship with all systems red) and also you got your rockman to carry on attack the system, if the enemy is stubborn and doesn't run, he gets damage by fire and your rockman, Fire is how ever deadly if not used with rockman with your boarding party and can be bad.

Setting the O2 on fire is a bad idea as well as without O2, the fires will die out after using up all the Oxygen in the room.

Anti Bio beam: can be aimed at enemy crew and deals quite a bit of damage to them, no hull or system damage though, can be used to soften up the enemy before you board.



now the worst weapons and race for boarding.

Bad:
Engi, Zoltan: the Engi got half damage and the zoltan got reduce health, bad for fighting.
Artillery: can not be aimed, can hit your boarding party or destroy the ship, to turn it off reduce power bar to 0
And high damage dealing weapons


We already talked about how to use the rockman, now here are for other races.


Mantis: to be used as the not mentioned races in fighting, just you can use the speed to run away and run in circles to prevent dying while your teleporter recharges.

Ghost/ ??? : you can take out the O2 or breach the room with a breach bomb or weapon with high breach and then fight in that room as the O2 seeps away, it will still damage the ??? but less then the enemy and you also got more health then usual. With the ghost you got no worries of death by suffocation, you can play it similarly to rockman + fire. Just be careful of there health.

Btw, the first time I did boarding was with the kestrel as well (how ever I got quite a bit of experience so far in game, got some layout B's unlocked and also other ships), the first thing I did was board on a Auto Scout, Worst idea ever, I forgot it had no O2 room so it had no Oxygen, my boarding party died.

[hybridfive]

Don't feel too badly about it. Dying is part of the fun of the game. I can pretty much guarantee that in the future, you will lose some boarders to something that was entirely preventable, and not just the opposing crew / anti-personnel drone punching you in the face. There's a large variety of ways to do that. I won't ruin the surprise.

The other comment I'd make is that the opponents crew has a specific, set behavior. It's a list of things that the AI does. Once you figure it out, boarding gets much easier.

But the good news is, you got Slug A! Meaning that at some point, you'll get Slug B! Meaning that you'll have a chance to practice.

[mountinlodge]

In a recent run I did (using my newly unlocked Crystal Crusier layout B) I had the perfect boarding crew. One of my best FTL runs ever, in fact.

Fast forward to the last stage of the boss fight: I had only taken 1 hull damage during the entire Last Stand, thanks to my boarding crew. There is at this time one boss ship crew member left, the human manning the triple lazer. A fire uisraging through theit shields and they have 2 hull points left. I decide to finish the joker off. So I send my two Mantis in the room to slay him. I realize a bit late that the fire caused another point of hull damage. Then a power surge turned on the "super shield" as my Mantis killed the gunner. "Oh crap..." I thought.

Their sacrifice shall never be forgotten!