Rock or Mantis?

[The_Destroyer]

So I'm thinking of beating the boss via boarding. I have a few questions.
1: What's the best thing to invest in?
2: Mantis or Rock? Rock have 150 HP, but mantis have double damage.
3: General tips on boarding?

[mrguy888]

Don't count on anything going into the game. You can't force a win by boarding if you don't get the right tools so stay flexible.

To beat the boss via boarding you need something to take out his medbay. Missiles or bombs are a good choice. If you can take it out with lasers you might as well beat the boss with those. You only need level 1 teleporters so don't waste on upgrades unless you have extra scrap at the end. The boss only has human crew so anything but an engi or a zoltan should do the trick. Mantis are better than rocks but rocks with fire support beat mantis.

Don't neglect to bring a weapon to finish the boss off after you take down the shields because you can't win by killing off the crew. Leave the triple laser guy alive to prevent the ship from going into AI mode.

[SDEngineer]

So I'm thinking of beating the boss via boarding. I have a few questions.
1: What's the best thing to invest in?
2: Mantis or Rock? Rock have 150 HP, but mantis have double damage.
3: General tips on boarding?

I prefer Rocks for boarding the enemy flagship. Two reasons:

1) Higher hps, this means they will survive longer (even though they'll kill enemies slower), meaning it is much more likely that they'll survive through a poorly timed flagship cloak.

and, and more importantly, because it gives you a bunch of extra options for taking out systems, including the medbay:

2) They are completely fire resistant.

The fire resistance gives you an enormous tactical advantage, especially when taking out important systems. Lots of weapons can light fires, and a few even specialize in it (fire bombs and fire beams). If you get a fire going on the flagship in an important room (like the Medbay, but it works for any room), you can immediately teleport your rocks in, and pretty much lock that room down until the room is completely ablaze and the system totally shut down - and, unlike any other strategy that I'm aware of, you can do this even if the flagship still has a completely functional Medbay.

Without rocks, setting a fire on the ship is pretty much useless until most of the crew is already dead (as the crew will put it out before it's done any significant damage).

Set fire to the Medbay, teleport your rocks in, and the odds that they can hold out until the fire has done enough damage to put the Medbay offline is VERY high - and every crewman that sets foot in that Medbay to try to dislodge your rocks will take serious damage. Last night, I did this, and from 1 point of damage + a fire, the rock boarding party held out until the Medbay was completely engulfed in fire, and every member of the flagships crew was at about 25 health (and thus, the Medbay was offline permanently, as no crew could go in to repair it without dying - and they didn't even try at that point). I teleported my rocks back, healed them up, then sent them back into the flagship and killed the crew off without breaking a sweat.

With Mantises, it's much more difficult to take the Medbay out permanently. You have to break through the shields, do another 3 points of damage to the Medbay to take it totally offline, then teleport your Mantises in - whereupon they'll be attacked by at least 3 (and often 4) crew. Even Mantises will have to retreat quickly with those odds, and if you can't get them through your Medbay and back onto the flagship quickly, you'll be right back where you started with the flagship having a yet again completely functional Medbay, and fully healed crew.

[SDEngineer]

As a note, I like mantises as well. When I'm putting my crew together, my favorite composition is 4 engi/zoltan/human/slugs to run the ships systems, and 4 bashers. I try to get 2 mantises and 2 rocks. The rocks are my main boarding party, and the mantises are my main anti-boarding party response team. Rocks are too painfully slow to be able to respond quickly to an incursion on the far side of the ship, but when you're invading another ship, that's not a liability.

I do use the mantises as a second boarding party for the flagship in P1 (since you don't have to worry about the flagship boarding you in that phase), and use them to take down high priority targets, where their extra damage is a real benefit (like the missile launcher, which needs to go offline ASAP), but to crack the harder nuts (like Medbay denial), I use the rocks.

[A_N00B]

I personally prefer the mantis, as in the 4 mantis boarders paired with the 4- pad tele on the mantis b ship,

nuff-said

[More Dakka]

Fire + rock is indeed very very powerful, although you can go entire runs without seeing any fire-focused weapon (albeit other weapons do often have a small chance of causing fire) unless you're using the one rock ship which starts with a fire bomb (but no teleporter ).

Mantis speed is handy for eluding or catching up to crew even on an enemy ship -- fleeing until your teleporter recharges, for instance.

[Ironarcher]

I think Rock would be better, although mantis are faster, so on the boss which you don't need to move around in I would recommend Rock.
VERY IMPORTANT: Killing all crew members on the boss does not work, so leave the beam or laser weapon controller alive. Killing everyone will activate the AI, making it very hard on you. Additionally, those 3 random lasers that come out once in a while don't hurt you if you have at least some shields and evade

[postman]

It doesn't hurt that bad to kill all the crew if you're well equipped for it. A four-person teleporter lets you take out the shields in no time, and it's a short jaunt from no shields to dead boss unless you have no weapons...

I had no trouble, for example, in stage 2 to take out two guns, the drone control (because I was annoyed with the boarder), and the shields--all with no crew to slow me down.

[Ironarcher]

It doesn't hurt that bad to kill all the crew if you're well equipped for it. A four-person teleporter lets you take out the shields in no time, and it's a short jaunt from no shields to dead boss unless you have no weapons...

I had no trouble, for example, in stage 2 to take out two guns, the drone control (because I was annoyed with the boarder), and the shields--all with no crew to slow me down.

Noooo... killing all the crew lands serious trouble for your ship. The ship goes into AI mode if you kill the crew, which AUTOMATICALLY REPAIRS SYSTEMS, making it almost impossible to kill the ship, or it would take incredible amounts of time, more than necessary. Additionally, keeping the one guy manning lasers (the second weapon's compartment from the left) which fires 3 bursts should be no problem if you have at least some shields ready.
http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2024, SPOILER! But if you really want to go head

[greetingsfromoslo]

So I'm thinking of beating the boss via boarding. I have a few questions.
1: What's the best thing to invest in?
2: Mantis or Rock? Rock have 150 HP, but mantis have double damage.
3: General tips on boarding?

Isn't question 1 and 2 the same, as implied by the thread title?

1+2
I would say that I prefer Mantis over Rock because they dish out their damage more quickly, which I find usefull when I quickly need to take down the vulnerable weapons systems located in the top rooms of the flagship. Take out the rooms in this order: Missiles-Ion-Beam. Teethless, the ship is now a sitting duck. Leave the guy operating the lasers, because with him untouched through all the three phases and the ship otherwise unmanned (because you killed the rest), they will never be able to repair the damage you inflict or oppose your boarders in other parts of the ship for the rest of the game. If you kill him, the AI takes over and makes the task much more difficult than needed. Just to be clear: you can't win earlier even if you kill of all of the crew in the first or second phase, because the boss must always be fought in three phases, with or without crew. It's just that much harder against an AI instead of a lonely guy in the laser room.

3
Flagship: Never teleport to the MedBay with a two man teleporter, unless you have completly disabled it in any way. If you have a four man teleporter, go for the Shield room instead, because the crew must then have to walk out of the room to get healed and your boarders might kill of some of them with their blasters while they walk out of the room to the MedBay. Also with their shields damaged or taken out, it should be easier to destroy the MedBay. Remember that the AI prioritize to fend of boarders over repairs. That is also a general tip that can be usefull in other circumstances.

General: Mantis is better than rocks to board and harass ships. While you wait to take out the MedBay of the ship, you want to teleport inside to disturb repairs. As mentioned before, the AI prioritize to fend of boarders over repairs. Your fast Mantis will continously keep the crew busy on the chase instead of making repairs. This take some micromanagement, but is well worth it while you wait to take out the shields and the MedBay with your heavy guns and for the teleportation timer to complete another cycle.

If you manage to get four boarders into a ship, even with a two space MedBay online, you can take out some of the crew if they are three or more crew on board and you engage them in a four space room.

Another usefull tip is that the cloak is not disturbed by teleportation. You want to get as many boarders as possible inside a ship, use the cloak in order to flood their ship with boarders and kill of the crew before their weapons systems are ready to engage. If they have a teleportation device themselves, wait for them to come to you and bring the fight to your turf. This time you use the cloak to prevent them from teleporting back to their ship when their health is critical. That's an extra kill or two that will totally negate any access your opponent has to a functional MedBay, and should make it easier to kill of the remainder of the crew on board the enemy ship.