Core Tactics: Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced

[Binky]

If I'm using a Firebomb or Breach weapon, the O2 system is the main target. The enemy will de-crew two other positions (unsurprisingly) to repair it, and they need more time to repair than it takes for you to reload and fire again.
I've found out, in the not-so-fun way, just how difficult it is to repair your O2 when its breached or on fire

[Chunes]

I feel like the sensor upgrades allow for some pretty advanced tactics. Without them, I tend to target their weapons and shields a lot. But when I have the sensor upgrades, I find it effective to attack unmanned stations. Not only will an unmanned station stay down longer, but they're no longer deriving the benefit of whatever station they resultingly un-man. By doing this, it's easy to damage multiple systems on the enemy ship simultaneously, and this snowballs into a very crippling situation as they pull even more crew off stations for repair.

All-around, it's a lot better than trying to keep a single station down (which often doesn't work).

[Hypnotic Geese]

• When you only have a small window of opportunity to let off a quick beam attack - start the cut from the most valuable target room.
• Never commit to half a shield upgrade. Instead, invest in your reactor or save up.
• Plasma storms confiscate half of your energy but favour odd reactor levels.
  
  Reactor:
  
  6 ---> 3
  7 ---> 4
  8 ---> 4
  9 ---> 5
• Breaches in unimportant, low traffic rooms can be ignored until after the battle. They're just temporary airlocks.
• While there's not enough energy to go around, pause after the enemy fires a salvo and switch power from O2 to engines, and then back again afterwards.
• If you're not sure whether something is a good idea, it's worth a shot.

[Createx]

- Upgrade your doors. It will make dealing with boarding a lot easier, since you have lots more time to respond and can effectively reroute attackers. It also comes in useful when your doors are hit and a fire starts somewhere
- The O2 upgrade is only really worth it for the durability upgrade, but you should get it eventually. Else a lucky hit to your O2 room means you need to pull crew there to deal with it quickly. There's usually no reason to keep it at 2 bars however, one is enough.
- With a level 2 teleporter, you can board AI ships without suffocating. This is useful if you can't get through their shields or don't want to waste missiles. Keep a close eye on the cooldown, your crew will be returning with 8 HP. Also, don't ever do this against a ship with cloaking - as long as a ship is cloaked you can't teleport!
- Watch out for what kind of doors the enemy has - grey means blast doors, and that means your boarding crew can't move around just like that.

[Aufklarer]

Thanks for the tips, I learned one new thing which is never a bad thing

Can we get guides like this stickied? I assume these forums are moderated? I wrote a Sieze and Repel (A Boarding Guide) these posts would be helpful if they were collated.

[Caliph]

After playing this game for a few hours I had figured out the beginner types on my own. Trouble is I haven't played it enough to actually get the different types of weapons, I'm still working on getting to the point where my crew gets more experience and I get enough upgrades to be able to run the multiple weapons. It seems when I get to that point, defeat is not that far off

Like my last game last night before I had to get to bed (stayed up 3 hours longer than I planned because of "one more playthrough ), I had 2 burst lasers and the starting missiles. I tore through several enemies with this until one enemy tore up my weapons systems and while I was trying to repair them proceded to smash my engines and helm preventing me from recharging my engines to gtfo and eventually destroyed me while I was a sitting duck. I couldn't repair that damage fast enough.

I've still got more to learn about the game, and I'll be trying these tactics out on my next play through.

[hborrgg]

Something that a lot of people appearently have trouble grasping:
Learn to overwhelm your problems, and never underestimate the usefulness of a large crew. If you send one guy to put out a fire and he isn't able to completely snuff it out before he needs to be rushed to the medibay then all you have done is waste a lot of time and severely injure a crewman. If, on the other hand, you pull half of your crew off their stations and flood the entire room with bodies you can put out a blaze in no time flat and the participants might suffer only a couple singed eyebrows between them. There are many, many situations where this kind of tactic is much easier and much safer than trying to vent half your ship.

The same is true when dealing with system repairs, hull breaches or boarders. Hull breaches are extremely easy to patch up well before all the air has even leaked from the room, while all the fighting in this game basically comes down to numbers (if you outnumber them in a single room then even mantises, rockmen, or drones go down pretty easy).

[the.trav]

Can this be pinned? First time I came to this forum I didn't see it at the top and it's pretty useful info.

Here's some more advanced tips /exploits

1. Exploit one sided combats to level up your crew:
Weapon skill is increased for every shot fired.
The easiest way to make use of this is with an ion cannon that is capable of holding down your opponents weapons indefinitely.
Alternatively, if you manage to find an opponent with high shields and no missiles, you can use a crap beam weapon to flail at them while you've got your own shields maxed so they do no damage in return.

Shield skill is gained every time a point of shield is restored while in a combat.
This includes if you turn it off yourself.
Against some of the weaker enemies, this allows you to level your guys up in shields quite quickly.

Piloting and engine skill are gained even when attempting to dodge beam weapons that your shield could have absorbed.

The upshot of all this is that your first shield upgrade should be a priority, and prolonging an early fight can give you 2 stars in 4 crew positions within the first sector. That's a major bonus when carried across many encounters.

If you've got tons of time you can build a crew of interchangeable experts this way, however I've never bothered

2.
If your boarding party is doing poorly and your teleporter isn't cooled down yet, you can continuously run them back and forth across the ship (benny hill style) and they'll take substantially less damage (sometimes zero) as the enemy crew chases them.
Be careful with this though, your crew needs to complete moving into a room to be successfully teleported out.
An alternative use for it would be to delay the serious combat until you've got 4 guys on board their ship so you can outnumber them.

[POINGjam]

It's possible someone else has posted all of this.

I like to dance my fighter crew. You can make them swap places in rooms.
Say you have a human and a zoltan fighting in a two-square room against a mantis. Let your human start off tanking the mantis with the zoltan in the unoccupied space. When the human's health is low enough, around 15 to 20, pause the game and send it out of the room, then send the zoltan out and back in, then send the human back in. Unpause the game and they should trade spaces.
You should win the fight without losing either crewmember. Play with the formula in differently sized rooms and with different combinations of crew vs enemies. A well composed four man boarding team can tear shit up this way.

You can take on AI craft with a level two teleporter and one or two of crew at full health other than zoltan. You can do the same thing with a level one teleporter and one or two rockmen or crystal folk. Obviously the new Lanius race is your best option, but they don't seem to be common.

Zoltan can steal power from cooling down systems. Say you use a level one cloak. When the cloak expires and the cooldown starts, send in a zoltan, put all your power into systems so you have none left over, then pull the zoltan back out of the room. The system will lose its power but continue to cool down as normal. You can put the zoltan into any other system and operate at full power.
This stacks with number of zoltan. A level two cloak needs two zoltan for full power retrieval, three needs three. Works with anything else that has a cooldown, or anything that's been locked down by ion weapons. Haven't tested against hacking but it might help.

A damn fine boarding team is one to three mantises and one rockman, or one to two mantises and one to two crystal folk. The rockman can be danced around the room as the mantises weaken, it can hold a burning room while your mantises commit murder elsewhere, and sticking to one won't hamper your damage too much. The crystal folk don't tank as well, but lockdown is crazy overpowered if used properly.

Find the most benign crew member to leave alive on the flagship. This will vary depending on your strengths at the end of the game. Send in targeted boarders to take out the gunners so they don't repair their systems. The rest you can burn down or feed to mantises if you can find a way to take the healing room out of the equation, but remember to leave the oxygen system intact and one alive. An automated flagship can't be made toothless.

Split up enemy boarders. If there's one pounding on the door and another on its way, open the door for a split second then close it again. The one will run into the next room, the other will be stuck on the door, and you can fight them one at a time or spread them out so as better to suffocate them.

Don't feel bad about save scrubbing. It's a good way to learn to play and to prevent rage uninstallation while you build up a tolerance to losing.

Hope I've contributed something useful.

[Rinimand]

Also, if one of your Crew gets Mind-Controlled by the enemy, and you have a Mind-Control system available, you can use your Mind-Control to "undo" the damage so your crew member is back on your side again.

(Sorry to necro an old thread, but a quick search didn't provide this tip anywhere, and Googling for "FTL tips" brought me to this thread)