Subset Games Forum

Mantis B is swingy but potentially very rewarding; at its best it's only eclipsed by the Carnelian - which I find extremely dull. Don't care for Mantis A much - I prefer the hilariously awkward Slug B. Similar strengths and weaknesses, more character:

Slug B games typically involve tricky decisions: You have quite a few assets, your starting equipment isn't self-sustaining,but almost anything helps - whether you extend your limited missile supply by becoming a better boarding ship or buy an ammoless weapon to play as a gunship with a bonus. Yes, you put yourself at the mercy of the RNG a little... but imo less so than the shieldless ships.

Starting with a teleporter without losing a weapon slot is nice. Starting with a teleporter and a weapon you may want to keep is nice. Layout is a little on the large side for my tastes, but that is occasionally an advantage and it's good at repelling boarders.

The Slug B is a good enough ship IMO. The medbay costs just 60 scrap and isn't hard to come by, and until then the healing bombs heal 100% to up to 4 crew members. They also start with level 2 weapons in addition to having a teleporter (that's 60 scrap saved), and the 2-dmg missiles make short work of drones and zoltan shields until you find an energy weapon. Starting with a fair 25 missiles, running out of ammo before getting either a medbay or weapon is unlikely.
In short, it has boarding + weaponry (in spite of both having no long-term sustainability at first), which avoids the problems mentioned in the OP.

Also of note: the Mantis B is probably the easiest ship to get the Pacifism Run achievement. Two shields and a defense drone are a pretty good defensive loadout.

http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3488
To the OP, the Mantis B is definitely worth anyone's valuable time! And: I have a guide (more like a glorified love letter >.>') that might just help you out a bit! You may already know most of the stuff there, you may learn something new, but I present this dusty old link to you regardless.

Good luck, fellow captain!

Drok wrote:As I said, I already figured out how to beat everything that can be beaten with boarding.

So you claim but you also said a boarding drone could land in a systemless room on an A.I. ship wasting your time. So, you apparently don't know that if you put your boarding party in that room then the drone will get pushed to another room with a system. Then you can power it down while you wait for your teleporter to come off cool down. Then bring your crew back and power the drone back up to get the last point of damage.

zeek wrote:if you put your boarding party in that room then the drone will get pushed to another room with a system. Then you can power it down while you wait for your teleporter to come off cool down. Then bring your crew back and power the drone back up to get the last point of damage.

...brilliant. I'm assuming you know this already, but for any others reading this advice and experiencing the same urge to fly a Mantis B run right now, be advised: you probably want to wait until all the systems are repaired up to yellow at least. If the drone crashes into a red system, I believe the breach will prevent that square from ever repairing, and you'll have wasted the time and drone part.

SmoothPapaJ wrote: ...brilliant. I'm assuming you know this already, but for any others reading this advice and experiencing the same urge to fly a Mantis B run right now, be advised: you probably want to wait until all the systems are repaired up to yellow at least. If the drone crashes into a red system, I believe the breach will prevent that square from ever repairing, and you'll have wasted the time and drone part.

Right you are. If the system is already red and the boarding drone lands there the breach will prevent repairs. However, another caveat is that if you use the trick I talked about above to prevent the drone from landing in a systemless room then there won't be any breach. When it gets pushed to a different room there's no breach in the systemless room or the room he gets pushed to. Just a fun fact really.