Subset Games Forum

I want to get the type B of the mantis cruiser, but i always take terrible amounts of hull damage and can barely make it through the 1st sector. Any help would be loved

I’ve not played the Mantis_A much myself, like you mostly to unlock the wonderful Basilisk.

You’ll be best playing it as a boarder ship, keeping the Small Bomb ready as back-up – use it to disable weapons if they’re a threat while you’re killing the crew, or use it to break the medbay if they have one (in this instance, you’re torn between using it at the last minute when crew retreat to heal, or use it early so you get a second shot if the first misses). If you’re playing as a boarder, you’ll of course need more crew asap so that you can still man ship systems and have a back-up boarding crew. Consider upgrading the tele-pad and medbay both to at least level 2 early on. The medbay will improve your downtime between boarding and the tele-pad will allow you to either retrieve your crew if it starts going South, or send the back-up team over quickly so you’ve got 4 boarders wrecking things. If you’re playing this as a boarder ship you can also more easily focus early upgrades on shields/engines and a defence drone/cloak depending on what you find and can afford. This means you shouldn’t get hammered so much as you’re killing enemy crews.

The starting weapon loadout is pretty weak with this ship and even more so seeing as until you upgrade, you can only have 1 weapon online at a time. The laser is useless by itself and using bombs constantly will chew your missile stocks up; so if you’re not going the boarding route then consider spending some early scrap upgrading your weapons so you can run both at once. Take shields down with the bomb, then save missiles and plink away with the laser. Pray to the random number Gods that you get some better weapons fast!

The first couple of sectors will probably be a bit rough until you either get more crew and an upgraded tele-pad or better weapons, but once that’s sorted you’ll be laughing.

Achievements-wise: ‘Battle Royale’ can easily be farmed in the first few encounters, then just restart the game once you’ve got it. One or both of the other two should follow naturally over the course of a game if you play as intended. ‘Take no prisoners!’ comes just by playing a boarding game and you’ll get ‘Avast, ye scurvy dogs!’ with a boarding event or a later encounter with a high-crew ship so long as your defences are good enough to avoid/mitigate incoming fire and you don’t carelessly lose a crew member. Bearing in mind you’ll hopefully have at least 2 Mantis to fight with that should make it a bit easier.

thank you! however over the day i posted this, i had a really good run with this ship, and got the type B which is pretty much the only ship i play now!

Have fun, its a great ship!

Oddly my very first win was with the Mantis A.

To be honest I was only playing to unlock the Mantis B, and had just managed to get the unlock the B variant in the second sector, but decided to keep playing to see how it would go.

The RNG gave me a ton of crew in the first two sectors, it seemed every ship I took over had a prisoner. It kept going throughout the game, got to the point where I was constantly rejecting new crew members. Ended up with four Mantis, 3 Engi and a Zoltan (I swapped my Engi Weapons guy for him, since I never actually fired my weapons he didn't have much in the way of skills to lose in the swap).

I picked up a Hull Smasher Laser II somewhere around sector three, and a scrap recovery arm and that was pretty much all I ever needed. By the time I hit the boss I had maxed shields and near max engines and cloak, but the damage avoidance from the shields and dodge was so good that I didn't need to cloak through the power surges.

Weirdly I never seemed to hit shop with augments, and had sold all my drone schematics by the time I picked up drone control (just had the sys repair drone at the end). Could have been even tougher.

Investing in shields early let me survive to jump past AI ships, and once I got the Hull Smasher the Zoltons were easy.

Certainly didn't expect my first win to be in this ship, but it was fun!

Don't race to kill the crew yet, instead take time to destroy all the systems on a ship assuming the hull is not too terribly damaged that way you can get your Mantis fight lvl up.

4 Golden Glove Mantis is a weapon in it's own right.

Also lvl 2 autopiloting may not be a bad idea as early in the game you will send all your crew to board. Still dodge chance might not be high but it will be better than nothing.

To train your mantis, just upgrade your Teleport, and go wreck Auto Scouts. They can heal themselves so they are the perfect target.