When I said at first I thought about the time when I first saw the ship(which was almost a year before AE got released), Meanwhile I've got used to the 2 man boarding ships and don't think that the 4 man deluxe teleporter is needed anymore(it's a nice thing for a ship but 2 man boardings work well too).stylesrj wrote:The Shrike only has a 2-man teleporter. But that comes with Mind Control.I find the A version of the Mantis Cruiser better, you only get a 2 man teleporter(which surprised me at first because I thought that all boarding ships need a 4 man one), but nice weapons to take out medbays, a engi to fix stuff and an extra mantis for piloting. #1 and #2 of my Highscore list are from the Mantis A, it's a great ship.
I'm not a big fan of the Mantis A or C. I prefer C over A but the Basilisk is the best Mantis ship, once you get started. Of course you can always fall victim to the FJZCWMCAM (First Jump Zoltan Cruiser With Mind Control And Missiles) or the FJASWMCASFH (First Jump Automated Ship With Mind Control And Solar Flare Hazard) but that can happen to any boarding ship. Reload and try again.
I'm starting to hate docking with stations myself. My Engies keep getting torn apart by crazed cannibals. Guys, they're robots! You can't eat them! What are you? Crazy?
A gives you everything you need:
Basic Laser for Zoltan Shields, AI Ships, Small Bomb(one if not the best bombs) for Medbays, 3 Mantis and a Engi to fix the ship back up.
B is one of the ultimate Boarders
I know that the ??? B also has a 4 man teleporter and nice crew but I never got very far with it(yes I'm having trouble with the ship that everyone rates god/broken tier). Mantis are the better 1vs1 fighters than ???.
C is a mix of A and B
Weapons to help you(Bomb for locking down rooms so your mantis can damage it and the Stun Bomb for keeping crew where they are and easy kills.)
The Stun Bomb could work very well with Lanius Boarders so you could stun them all and then get all the air away from the room.
The boarding crew is a bit strange and gives you 2 options, the classic Mantis boarding crew or Lanius. You probably won't get a Lanius Crew because your only way to fight ships is boarding and doing that in Lanius Sectors is deadly, so you want to switch out the Lanius for another Mantis as soon as possible and then use him on your ship.
You also get a engi for fixing up stuff(sadly it can't move freely around because it needs to pilot the ship) and a nice 4 man teleporter.
One thing that I like about the C one is that it doesn't have the drone system installed, so you can get Teleporter+Cloaking+Mind Control(my favorite combo for AE, not that much a fan of hacking(I've rarely used it) and Mind Control replaces the Drones for me because it's almost needed for the 3rd phase of the boss if you don't want to RNG it(and I've had some very very bad runs where the flagship mindcontrolled one of my guys in the Rocket Room while the Zoltan Shield got active(or in phase 1 by hacking the Mind Control), didn't end well.
I don't think that Zoltan Ships with Zoltan Shields are possible in sector 1, at least not on easy and normal. Never had Mind Control appear before sector 3 or 4 and even then it's rare.
Docking Stations and loosing crew can be very annoying, I started to learn which events can make you lose crew and now I'm avoiding them.
For the space stations, there are only 2 dangerous ones.
The first one is if it's a DAMAGED Space Station, if it's abandoned it's fine but not DAMAGED. The second one is the drone parts quest(which happened to you), check if they answer, and if it looks like the station is empty, don't board it unless you have medbay level 2 or 3.
