Subset Games Forum

I am a huge fan of boarding. Whatever ship I am running, even if it's an Engi ship, I'll always try to get a Crew Teleporter and a boarding party. Not just because of the increased reward, but simply because it is more entertaining and challenging that just hurling explosive stuff at a target until there is no more target. So I expected the Mantis cruiser to become my incontestable favourite. But after lots of runs, even having a Mantis B run as my highest score ever, that isn't the case.

Mantis B is the biggest offender. Zoltan shield? Automated drone? Enemy with medbay? You can almost see the game laughing at you. Most enemies in the first sectors fall within at least one of that categories. Now, I know the tricks. A level two teleporter lets you damage drones with no risk (unless they have cloaking) and it can be finished off with a boarding drone (unless it lands in a systemless room, in which case you totally wasted the previous 5 minutes). Crew AI can be fooled and gradually killed even having a working medbay. But none of that makes the 5+ minutes it takes to deal with each single ship less tiresome. Mantis A is less frustrating, but still frustrating nevertheless. Bombs and lasers can deal with, albeit slowly and expensively, with drones, zoltan shields and medbays.

"Well", you might say, "boarding-focused ships should be weak in direct combat". But the last point I want to make is that the boarding focus is worthless compared to the drawbacks. Take the Federation cruiser as an example. It starts off with a Mantis and a Rockman (arguably even better as boarding agent due to fire immunity and low-level teleporter survivability). Spend a meager total of 75 scrap and boom, your amazingly powerful Federation cruiser is now also a Mantis cruiser A without the drawbacks, lacking only the pretty "meh" speed augmentation.
In contrast, if you want to convert your Mantis A into a Federation A equivalent, you have to spend 60 scrap for L2 weapons, 40 for sensors, find less terrible weapons, and even then you'll be missing the best weapon in the game, blue Rockman options, and the artillery beam that lets you blow up any single enemy in the game regardless of their defenses.
I wouldn't ask for some kind of buff to Mantis B. It may be utterly annoying but at least it has the unique and brutally effective feature of teleporting a whole army. But the Mantis A is no match whatsoever to the other (much easier to unlock) ships.

So, to be constructive, here are some suggestions:
a) Move the Mantis A teleporter to be adjacent to the medbay so that it actually has a boarding strategy advantage, however small, over the other ships, like Mantis B does.
b) Replace Mantis Pheromones for the following augmentation (some nerf to the B layout might be needed to compensate):
Improved teleporting
Teleporting provides 10-second suffocation immunity. Zoltan shields are bypassed.
This way fighting drones and zoltans is viable with L1 teleporter, oxygen-deprivation strategies are more viable for other enemies, and as a plus you don't have to break rules to say "You don't know how the intruders managed to get past your Zoltan Energy Shield!". All without making the ship much more powerful against normal enemies, just less frustrating and time-consuming to play.

Thanks for reading.

The concept of needing to enhance teleporting to make it better makes me laugh.

Of course the ships are worth it. They make for a unique experience you cannot otherwise get in the game. Unless the only reason you play is to beat the final boss, you should be reveling in the challenges, not scoffing them.

5thHorseman wrote:Of course the ships are worth it. They make for a unique experience you cannot otherwise get in the game.

That's exactly what I'm arguing: it just takes a shop and 75 scrap. What's unique about that?

5thHorseman wrote:you should be reveling in the challenges, not scoffing them.

As I said, I already figured out how to beat everything that can be beaten with boarding. My problem is that each challange should be fun and... challenging. This is neither. Taking down a drone for instance takes at least 30 seconds per hull point with a L2 teleporter and medbay. There's no strategy, no difficulty, no fun, just mindless click and click for eternal minutes doing the same thing. How can you call a challenge something that can be carried out by a simple script?
That is what the augmentation I proposed should do. Get rid of the pointless grinding, devoid of both difficulty and fun, to leave us with the actual gameplay.

You could make the argument with most any ship. If you sell some stuff and buy some other stuff, you can make most any ship equal to any other ship, save the federation cruisers and Zoltan ships.

You may have misunderstood my "revel in those differences." Your Mantis B isn't SUPPOSED to take down early Zoltans and scouts. Run from them. That early penalty offsets the massively overpowered 4-man teleporter that doesn't even need overpowered mantises to make it overpowered. Once you get a weapon or two you may as well phone up the rebel flagship and tell it to self destruct itself.

gila monster should lose a Mantis crew and upgrade the single laser to dual laser
basilisk should gain a Mantis crew and lose the defense drone
Osprey should lose the rockman
Nisos should gain the rockman
stormwalker should gain slug crew and healing burst weapon should never miss
carnelian should have another upgrade to teleporter

5thHorseman wrote:You could make the argument with most any ship. If you sell some stuff and buy some other stuff, you can make most any ship equal to any other ship, save the federation cruisers and Zoltan ships.

Agreed, but there shouldn't be such a massive difference in the value of the initial setup of Mantis A, as mentioned above. If you have a ship specialised in X that sacrifices the equivalent of 500 scrap in drawbacks, but any other random ship can do X just as well for 200 scrap, something is not quite right.

5thHorseman wrote:You may have misunderstood my "revel in those differences." Your Mantis B isn't SUPPOSED to take down early Zoltans and scouts. Run from them. That early penalty offsets the massively overpowered 4-man teleporter that doesn't even need overpowered mantises to make it overpowered. Once you get a weapon or two you may as well phone up the rebel flagship and tell it to self destruct itself.

Yes, I understand how ridiculously powerful (and fun) the megaporter is. It's fine to leave the B layout as a high-risk high-reward ship. Altough I'd rather to be able to face any enemies and give up the drone control or other system to compensate, I understand your point of view.

Drok wrote:

5thHorseman wrote:You could make the argument with most any ship. If you sell some stuff and buy some other stuff, you can make most any ship equal to any other ship, save the federation cruisers and Zoltan ships.

Agreed, but there shouldn't be such a massive difference in the value of the initial setup of Mantis A, as mentioned above. If you have a ship specialised in X that sacrifices the equivalent of 500 scrap in drawbacks, but any other random ship can do X just as well for 200 scrap, something is not quite right.

I'm with 5thHorseman on this topic. (I'm pretty sure that) The devs have admitted that the ships are not all created equal and that this is an intentional design choice.

I understand that you have a rough time starting off with the Mantis A. I do too, that ship is a PITA to get running. I don't think that means the game needs to be balanced in any way. I think it's all fine as-is.

theoryofkrin wrote:carnelian should have another upgrade to teleporter

Wat.


Also - I'll take The Gila Monster over The Osprey any day -The Osprey can never get cloaking!

I like both of the mantis ships. They are good boarding vessels and well setup to do their job. The plan B is a bit harder starting due to its harder ability to take zoltan or certain automated ships in any sensible time frame but once you get some crew of pretty much any race it becomes hands down the best boarding ship ever. The 4 slot teleporter right next to the med bay is pretty much the best boarding ship design features you could ask for.

Finding some basic weapons to strip zoltan shields is not really that hard to do or that much to ask.

Now if you want to ask about if a ship is worth it to you I present the slug deck plan B ship. This is a boarding ship that is both low on crew and has NO medbay to start. You are stuck relying on the heal bomb and praying to god they don't evade it. Really it pretty much has nothing really going for it and is just a lot harder way to play the game.

There is nothing quite like fending off a boarding action only to have your pilot evade your own healing bomb and have your crew die because of it. Of all the ship designs I think this ship is probably the hardest one to succeed with.

kaid wrote:There is nothing quite like fending off a boarding action only to have your pilot evade your own healing bomb and have your crew die because of it.

A harsh lesson, but now you know to depower your engines before heal bombing your own ship, right?