Can I play as a ship boarder?

[GoLookAndKill]

Well, thanks everyone for answering my questions! In now know that not only playing board game is possible, but it's in theory the way you earn the most

I do also note that I should adapt according to the situation, like a good pirate would do

Well I'll give it a shot with the basic ship this week-end, and we'll see.

Fly safe !

[samjones]

So am I the only one that takes out weapons first? My process is usually to hit the weapons and then send the boarders to the weapons to keep the repair crew from fixing them. Boarding is pretty effective (and gets more so as your boarding crew levels up), but it takes a fair time. I don't want my ship to get blown to pieces while the boarders are doing their thing.

[hborrgg]

If you want to play around with boarding right from the beginning then you'll probably need to download a profile editor and use that to unlock all the ships right away. There are a couple of ships that start with teleporters or are otherwise good for boarding but they tend to take quite a bit of grinding to unlock.

[Drasha]

You can get a teleporter in the first or second sector fairly easily. When I am boarding with a rag tag crew I normally wait for my weapons to charge up send a missile into their cockpit since I know some one will be there and take damage then beam ontop of them for an easy kill because they are down some health.

If their weapons can get past my shields I some times target them as well so I can take my time killing them. Boarding is all about the extra scrap / events you can get out of it. Though it does feel like you get less fuel so I tended to buy more when I am boarding ships a lot.

[UglyMug]

Best way to board, imo, is to teleport your boarding party directly into the cockpit immediately when combat starts. If you force the pilot off the helm (or kill em), they'll get no evade against your opening weapons salvo and make it much more effective. When the pilot runs back to the medbay to heal, that's when you missile/bomb it. Kills a guy and with noone manning the helm, there's little chance of it missing.

Immediately decrewing the cockpit is the quickest and most effective way of directly impacting ship to ship combat. A lot more effective than trying to interfere with repairs after your weapons have already landed.

Also, try to avoid nebula beacons and nebula sectors for a boarding setup. Not having your sensors and having to go in blind can make it a lot riskier. Particularly if you go with rockmen since they can't run. Also pay attention to doors, if theirs are upgraded. Easy to get trapped on low health with nowhere to run and the tele on cooldown against blast doors. Cloaking also makes it impossible to retrieve crew, so be aware of that.

[alextfish]

I think, with a secret race crew and an upgraded porter, couldn't you beat every fight in the game with bording? AI ships repair so you can keep breaking their systems to damage them...

I've tried that. I had ion weapons, system bombs and heal bombs equipped. It has one flaw which I felt very silly for not realising first. It's so easy to smash the last system, destroy the last HP, and then go "Wait... my CREW...!!" So you need at least one weapon that can deal the last point of damage, even if just a Basic Laser (as your crew can take out the shields). Or to be prepared to jump away from automated ships... or, I guess, warp in a disposable crew member to kamikaze the last point of damage.

It'd be nice if the crew back on board your ship could come in and scrap the automated ship, once your boarders have completely neutralised all its offence, the way they can with piloted ships...