Combat experience grinding.

[omican]

I've just found a way to maximize combat skill of the crew.
Few things you should know:
1. Crew member gets 1 point of combat experince every time he lands a killing blow on an enemy OR destroys one "hit-point bar" of enemy ship's (sub)system.
2. Destroyng of the last HP bar a (sub)system by sabotage or fire deals 1 hull damage to the ship.
Thus, the idea of combat exp grinding is to continously damage (but not destroy) enemy ship systems by boarders and allow them to be repaired.

Things you need:
1. At least lvl 2 crew teleporter.
2. An automated drone enemy with weak weapons.
3. Functioning healing bay.

The algorithm is:
0. (optionally) Use your weapons/ion cannons to bring down drone's weapons to a point where they cannot pierce your shields.
1. Teleport 2 of your trainees to drone's system with at least 2 HP bars. Weapon system is preferrable, keeping the drone harmless.
2. Wait till your trainees destroy 1 HP bar of the system (see it with lvl3 enhanced sensors or by room icon color changing).
3. Teleport them back and heal from suffocation damage.
4. Wait for the drone to repair 1 HP bar of damaged system.
Repeat 1-4 till all your SWAT team is fully trained.

Remarks:
- avoid full destroying of the system - hull will be damaged, and eventially you will destroy the enemy with your crew members aboard.
- suffocation damage is 6 hp/sec, so 20-second lvl 1 teleporter delay is fatal for most races.

With some agility, It is possible to destroy 2 HP bars of different drone systems within 1 cycle. I've done this with mantis crew + feromones, dunno whether it is possible with non-mantis boarders.

It seems that if there is at least one member of the opposing crew alive, he would always engage into combat instead of repairing ship systems in safe rooms. Thus, it would be very hard to make the same grinding cycle with manned enemy ship.