How to win with mantis ship, advanced ed?

[MightyThor2000]

Got the advanced version and I still need to unlock the slug ship so I'm trying to win with the mantis. I have gotten to the boss a couple times with a really tricked out ship but don't know how to deal with some of the new advanced edition stuff.

First time I had a flak 2 and a burst laser 2 and a beam drone 2. I also had cloaking and teleporter due to starting with that. On the first phase of the boss ship I teleported my mantis crew in to disable the missile launcher, and figured my flak cannon and burst laser will easily drop shields letting my beam drone kill the ship. Well they launched a hacking drone at my O2 system and I didn't know how to bring it back online. I found out too late you can break into the room. Will breaking into the room stop the hack and/or allow you to repair the system? Or do you have to take out the hacking system on their ship? My crew all suffocated which was really pathetic cus my ship had taken no dmg and their's was nearly dead.

Next time my ship was amazing! Yet I still lost... I somehow managed to get 4 zoltans on my ship which enabled me to power 3 shields, nearly maxed engines, a full compliment of weapons with 2 burst lasers 2 and a burst laser 3, and 2 combat drones! That is a ton of firepower! This time the phase 1 hacker targeted my engine room. I broke into the room and it seemed to nullify him. I had all my lasers on their shield system and my combat drones wiped out their ship fast.

Phase 2, same story though I took out their drone control as well, took a couple points of hull dmg.

But phase 3 GAH!! They mind controlled one of my zoltans and I didn't know what to do. I ended up just killing him. Then their super beam weapon somehow hit my whole ship and lit like 5 rooms on fire. I just couldn't put them all out and we burned to death. The mantis ship seems very poorly laid out for clearing oxygen to put out fires. It's impossible to put out fires in the shields or weapons or those surrounding rooms without draining the piloting and engines, kinda sucks. I think my issue here was not having a cloak. I figured I would have enough firepower it wouldn't matter but the mind control also threw me off.

So is cloak still the way to go vs the boss? And how to deal with those new systems? I like the mantis ship cus boarding is fun and grabs you far more resources early but I seem to have all these problems with it, not sure why.

[project_mercy]

Fighting the flagship can vary a lot based on what you have available, but you need a balance of offense and defenses to be consistently effective with it. While you can power your way through with a pre-ignitor and some massive guns, it's not really a strategy that pans out consistently well.

Having a cloak is always really handy, though not required. I generally only put 1 energy in the cloak, as It's mostly used for dodging and not weapon cycles. If you have stealth weapons, then feel free to put a few more in, though I find there's more useful places for the energy.

If you're not rocking the cloak, than baring a few other odd options (zoltan shields and shield+ drone, etc), you should endeavor to have close to max shields and engines. I personally generally go max engines and 3 bubbles of shields, but it depends a lot on the ship. If you pick up a battery you can use the battery to power the last bit of engines or shields as necessary.

The hacking in phase 1 is always going to be randomly problematic unless you set aside something to deal with it. The easiest (and probably most useful) is a defense I drone. It probably won't stop it completely (especially on the mantis ship which is HUGE) but it can do a decent job of delaying the inevitable. It has about 15 shots. Since it will be firing these while cloaked, your defense drone won't have anything else to throw it off, though you have to be good about making sure you get it up RIGHT as you jump in, else the hacking drone will hit early. You can also try bombing the hacking module (breach bombs are nice for this), or hacking their hacking module.

If you have a zoltan shield bypass then you can use those same breach bombs or hacking modules to bomb/hack the drone bay in phase 2 and the Mind Control in phase 3.

[MightyThor2000]

So if they hack your o2 room can you break in and repair it to get the o2 flowing again?

[project_mercy]

So if they hack your o2 room can you break in and repair it to get the o2 flowing again?

You can't. There's no way to get the hacking module off your ship outside of destroying the other ship. All you can do is cause the module to power done, either by destroying the hacking system on the enemy ship, or hacking their hacking system with your own hacking module . The only reason to cut your way into a hacked room is either that system is damaged and needs repairing, or there's an enemy in there damaging the system.

That said, if you have level 2 O2, then you should be able to "gas up" your ship again in between hacks.

It's generally handy to grab level 2 (or more) of piloting, sensors, O2 and doors. Piloting and sensors results in blue options and gives you some protection against damage. O2 gives you protection against slug o2 hacking and lets you gas up in bad situations. In the case of O2, you don't need to keep it powered up fully all the time. Just crank it up to fill back up and then turn it back to maintenance power.

Heck, with level 3 O2, you can actually sit in a room with a hull breech and be fine.

[TFBeyond]

What Mercy said. The only way to disable a hack is the destruction of the hacking system or the ship it's on. That said, having the flagship hack your O2 is something of a blessing. Upgrading oxygen to 2 costs very little scrap and gives you a few extra blue options throughout the game. Then if the Flagship hacks your oxygen, just put one extra power in it and boom. You don't have to worry about the hack for the rest of the fight.
Level 2 oxygen also lets you counteract a single breach if you open all the doors to the adjacent rooms, so it's great for those pesky drones punching holes in your hull.

If one of your guys gets mind-controlled, you have three options -- destroy/hack (probably not a good idea to hack it, there are far better targets for a hack) their mind control, use your own mind control on your controlled guy, or just get everyone else away and leave them to it. If a system has multiple bars of power in it, the MC victim won't be able to destroy it before the effect ends. Send in someone to distract them (ideally an engi) if you can't afford to let that system take any damage.

[MightyThor2000]

I won a couple games with other ships, once with the engi one and once with the rock cruiser. I think it gave me some perspective on the boss fight. On the rock cruiser I had tons of scrap and got that o2 leveled up and it was no issue having it hacked. The mind control still sucked but I mostly ignored the guy then repaired the system he was attacking. It seems like the mind controlled guy won't roam, he'll just attack whatever room he is in. I thought about putting all my guys in system less rooms to start but I believe the mind controlled guy walks right through blast doors, they still open for him.

I also think the cloak is still pretty much required for phase 3. I can survive the drones if my shields are up, but that super laser in phase 3 always sets my whole ship on fire. My issue with mantis has been not having cloaks I think. Going to take another stab at it. Though I am realizing getting off to a good start is pretty random. Like if you fight a drone ship with 2 shields before you get any weapon upgrades you're screwed since your crew can't board and your small bomb and puny laser can't get through that shield.

[project_mercy]

Well, as an FYI, capturing a ship (which is done by killing the crew somehow. Boarding with your guys is generally the easiest way) will result in the most scrap/items you can get. That means that the mantis ships generally are easier to equip/upgrade than other ships, because you should be getting more scrap than normal.There are a few exceptions to this:

First, Early on you have little (or no) effective way to destroy AI ships. Because of this, the mantis ship is the one ship you probably want to AVOID nebula nodes early on instead of hitting. More often than not, if there's a ship there, it's an AI ship. You want to hit as many active ships as you can.

Second, Mantis C is difficult to start with. While it has a 4-man teleporter, it only comes with a stun bomb, a lockdown bomb, and extremely limited missile ammo. The only way you can kill an AI ship is to slowly teleporter the Lanius over there, let it wack down the systems slowly. Eventually the ship will blow up, and your Lanius will clone back on your ship. Doable, but takes forever and is extremely boring.

Normal ships are even worse. You have 3 starting crew. A Mantis, an Engi and a Lanius. The engi is terrible at fighting. A single mantis will get murdered, so you're left with the Lanius and the Mantis. Except the Lanius will slowly eat the atmo out, making it difficult for your Mantis. And you have no effective way to stop enemy guns except Ion Bombing them.

I generally try a rough combination of the following tactics. Teleport the Lanius and Mantis over into the weapons room. They start fighting. When the Ion Bomb comes up, bomb THAT room, and run the Mantis out just as the bomb is landing (hopefully they pulled the pilot down to fight you so it hits). Run the mantis down to the clone/med bay and start attacking it. Keep ion bombing the Lanius's room, slowly the air will vacate, killing everyone. In theory the weapons will also stay somewhat ioned as a result. This assumes the bombs actually hit, which is iffy. Sometimes you need to throw the lockdown to trap people in/out of certain rooms. The ship would be a lot less iffy if it started with the same missile count as the Bulwark did.

The problem with that start is, when you do win this, your lanius will be beat up. But you can't do anything about it. You can't "airlock heal" it since it's anerobic. So, I find the medbay being the first real upgrade I try to buy after 2-blips of shields. A real gun is handy too. Then again I pretty much always swap out my clone bay for a medbay, because I detest clone bays.

Finally, Lanius ships are basically impossible. You can try to wait for the lockdown to come up, then lockdown some room, teleport your one Lanius in, blast it, then get out or try to stun people one-by one, but it just doesn't work all that well. Finding a second Lanius boarder can make it less terrible, though usually by then you have actual guns or something viable.

[MightyThor2000]

I was just referring to layout A cus I wanted to unlock the slug ship. I finally beat it on probably my 6th try. All the stuff you mentioned kept happening to me, I would run into AI ships early (seriously a 2 shielded AI ship in sector 3ish is impossible to beat!), I ran into some lanius ships one time, a lot of it was cus I didn't understand the advanced ed changes yet. Like I had a really good setup for the flagship one time but my o2 got hacked and I didn't know what to do, another game they mind controlled one of my mantis boarders and I didn't know what to do.

But I finally won, ended up on the flagship and I swore I was going to lose again because I got there using a chain ion and a charge ion cannon with my mantis boarders. I had a bunch of missiles I was going to swap in for the boss but was conserving ammo and getting the higher scrap from boarding. The problem was in sector 8 you run into a bunch of rebel ships with 4 shields and my ions couldn't get through that or at least not quickly enough to not take heavy dmg and hey no stores around to heal before flagship! So I kept jumping out and was not able to swap my weapons and mistakenly jumped to the boss with those ions. I got down to like 40% hull left and my ship all on fire, I'm screwed right? Well I nearly punched a whole through my keyboard but I jumped out again, put out all the fires, swapped in my missiles and went back to fight the boss with like 1/3rd hull strength but a pegusus, a hull missile and a swarm launcher. Easiest boss fights ever. Phase 1 I teleported in and took out the missile launcher, missile'd the hacking system and ship died fast. Phase two I cloaked during the super power up drones, missiles wrecked them. Phase 3 same thing. I think I took 1 point of hull damage through all 3 phases lol.

[mmm888]

You finally beat it! I've been playing the Mantis A for a week (sadly two) and still haven't managed to beat the flagship. I'm at the point if the start sector is a nebula: i quit. If I face an auto-drone: i quit. If the sectors to the Last Stand are too red or purple: i quit.

And just when i think it's time to lay back, hit cruise to the glorious end, in sector 4 or so with a few shield bubbles, something horrible happens: A meteor kills my entire boarding party: i quit.

I'm often playing during breaks at work, so not as sharp as i should be; or after work, when i'm not as sharp as i should be because i'm not supposed to be as sharp as i should be after work. But Mantis A does require more attention than other ships. Babies. So losing due to a mental lapse after a few is okay. Mantis A for being Mantis is so vulnerable.

But depending on dumb luck to get through the first 3 sectors is rubbish. Give the Mantis A what the Mantis deserve. Some teeth are whatever they use. Or some speed. Bump up those engines so i can run from Auto-drones or Zoltan shields or Lanius Cruisers or entire nebula in pheromone style!

Did AE make the Mantis A weak?

[project_mercy]

Did AE make the Mantis A weak?

Not really. I prefer fighting a ship with a clone bay vs a medbay, so it's strengthened in a few cases.. You have to deal with mind control now, but usually they MC someone on your ship early on, so it's not a huge deal. Hacking the teleporter can be a bit annoying, but it's rare they do that. Shield+ drones can make bombing and teleporting problematic until you get a laser than can keep them down, but they're relatively rare.

I would say the only thing that got weakened was teleporting to the Flagship on Hard to take out the mega laser or mega missile launchers, and I'm guessing you're not playing on hard. So I'm going to go with "No" as my answer.