Advice needed on current situation.

[Sinriel]

Returned to playing FTL after couple of months and got just as addicted as last time. The thing, I favor a certain play style, either with high shield + drones for safety first, or total offensive - with weapons, mind you - never bothered to much to tinker with boarding, just not my cup of tea.

Started this one, sectors 1 and 2 were quite poor, was thinking about restarting, but then things got quite nice, even of couple of mistakes, and this is the situation and the beginning of sector 5. I am already quite a killing machine and ships go down QUITE fast. But, I am at the store and there is crew teleporter available. I guess it would be taking it just for the sake of having it, because...

I believe with the money I have, a little bit of invesment into defending and I will be more than well prepared until I reach sector 8. I mean, I already am doing extremely well on the offense side.

And it's not like my crew is really made for boarding...

So just wanted to hear your thoughts.

Thanks in advance.

[mrguy888]

The teleporter is amazing vs the boss especially since you are not going to have cloak so you should probably pick it up regardless. You have no missile defence so taking the enemy out fast without boarding would be how I would go about missile armed enemies. Every ship you can safely take by boarding you should though since you get better rewards.

[UltraMantis]

I see you have a Slug that isnt doing anything usefull. They make fine boarders, so consider Vivimord and Maxwell as weapons from now on. They can take out enemy crew and can be joined by others when the teleporter recycles.

Two things to remeber when boarding:
- first neutralise enemy weapons. Not neccesarily all, but knock out the ones that can hurt you
- if they have a medbay, diasble it before you beam aboard.

Since you also have the artillery beam, once it is no longer needed TURN IT OFF! Or you will vapourise you attackers along with the enemy ship.

[Vindaloo]

The Osprey is a beast once it gets a teleporter. Use either the Mantis + Slug, or Mantis + Rock, as a boarding party and you can disable most ships. Boarding takes some getting used to, but it is a ridiculously effective strategy in FTL.

[TomIveson]

One of the toughest decisions when getting a teleporter is choosing which crew members to use as a boarding party. You have a Rock, who would make an ideal boarder, but he's your engine man and given you're at sector 5 already I'm guessing he's pretty good at it (can't see the bottom of the screen), so that's a conundrum. He could do both: the engine room is close enough to the teleporter space that you could move him in and out as needed whilst training up another crew member on the engines. Alternatively, just go Slug/Mantis - that should work.

In addition to what UltraMantis said:
- Board at every (reasonably safe) opportunity, even if it doesn't really help you in the battle. Your boarding crew will become much more effective with combat experience.
- Be prepared to lose crew. It happens. Your teleporter gets hit, or they jump away, or you quickly get overpowered, or (most likely, in my experience) you fuck up and blow the ship up with them on board. Boarding makes the whole battle more complicated, and it's easy to lose track.

Incidentally, that is the same weapons layout I had when I cleared the game with the Osprey (plus teleporter). Save your bombs!

Edit: Now I see it - your Rock is indeed an engine master.