Best way to deal with enemy boarding

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eleazar6
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Joined: Tue Jun 16, 2015 6:05 am

Best way to deal with enemy boarding

Postby eleazar6 » Tue Jun 16, 2015 1:54 pm

This game is HARD. I keep losing crew to boarders. Why are they always stronger.?
Leylite
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Joined: Mon Mar 31, 2014 4:21 pm

Re: Best way to deal with enemy boarding

Postby Leylite » Tue Jun 16, 2015 3:23 pm

Boarders tend to get "free hits" on your crew if they're standing in a room and take shots at your crew as they move into position. Races like Mantis and Rockmen will also consistently beat humans in one-on-one combat, the former due to their bonuses to combat damage, and the latter due to their huge health pool.

There's three good ways to deal with boarders:

1. Outnumber them - a Mantis may do 1.5 times the damage of a human, but two humans will do twice the damage, plus you can swap them around so as to use most of their 200 total health.

2. Get them into the medbay somehow (usually by venting other rooms; boarders will try to avoid going into or staying in rooms that have no air in them).

3. (can be combined with 2) Send a spare crewman to the doors room to man the doors; this upgrades doors by a level so that boarders have to break through doors before they can go where they want (possibly takings suffocation damage). At this point you can either beat them up with your crew, or just keep suffocating them until they die or retreat.

Note that all of these strategies are much easier if you pause the game as you hear the teleporter sound go off, determine where the boarders are boarding, come up with a plan, then unpause (pausing occasionally to make sure everything is proceeding normally, e.g. the enemy ship doesn't blow up your doors).
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stylesrj
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Re: Best way to deal with enemy boarding

Postby stylesrj » Tue Jun 16, 2015 7:17 pm

Adding on to that, I think boarders get stronger the further you go in. As in, they have higher skill at combat. Because I've seen my Lanius take the same beating in any sector despite the fact that as they attack faster from greater, the enemy should take more damage.

But then again I'm probably not paying too much attention and the enemy is still the same and a 20% boost to combat speed translates to sweet F/A.
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athorist
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Re: Best way to deal with enemy boarding

Postby athorist » Mon Jul 06, 2015 3:25 am

(For Advanced Edition), for 2 or more boarders, use mind control to get them in-fighting. They'll usually fight each other directly, so your crew won't even take damage. The engi nanobots are a good augment for boarders, because your crew get healed anywhere in your ship. But turn the medbay off if you're using mind control, so that it doesn't heal the boarder.

But really the most effective thing is to upgrade the doors, because even if you don't have enough crew to fight them, you can still vent the room. I usually upgrade doors by the end of sector 2, after shields and engines have four bars each (but not necessarily fully powered), unless I have enough crew to man the doors. It solves a lot of headaches.
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onehitparry
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Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 9:48 pm

Re: Best way to deal with enemy boarding

Postby onehitparry » Mon Jul 20, 2015 10:09 pm

Boarders tend to have above average stats. This can be overwhelming for new players, but there are a couple of things that you can do to help tip the fight in your favor.

1. Send your crew to the medbay and vent the rest of the ship. Venting the ship forces boarders to flee to any room that has oxygen remaining, which will be the medbay. By forcing a fight in the medbay, you put your crew at a serious advantage. You essentially put yourself in a state where your crew has infinite health. In addition, if there are more boarders than there are spaces in the medbay, extra boarders will be forced to wait in a depressurized room and slowly suffocate until there is space in the medbay. This strategy is optimal early game because it doesn't cost money, you'll have only a few crew members (so only one will be forced to sit in a depressurized room, which you can keep pressurized if you want). In addition, because of the easier curve of the game early on, abandoning posts (cockpit, engines, weapons) is not as severe. This strategy does have its risks, however. If the Medbay or the O2 room get damaged, you will be in sever trouble. In addition, Lanius do not require oxygen and so you might as well kept all the airlocks closed against them.

2. Upgrade doors. Upgrading doors is a relatively cheap investment that you can make anywhere and it helps greatly with fending off boarders. Rather than depressurizing the entire ship, you can precisely target rooms such that only boarders are affected while keeping your crew safe from suffocation. At the very least it allows you to slow boarders down while they attempt to force their way through the ship, giving you time to weaken the enemy ship before diverting attention to the boarders.

3. Mind control. This was mentioned above, but just to reiterate, if you have mind control, you can use this to turn one boarder against his crewmate. This could turn a 2 v 2 into a 3 v 1. Quite powerful! That said, I wouldn't go out of my way to get mind control just as an anti-boarder deterrent. I have found that Mind control is generally more useful for distracting enemy pilots and reducing enemy ship evasion.

4. Hiring Mantis and Rockmen. Pre Advanced Edition, I always tried to get a two dedicated brawlers (2 mantis, 2 rockmen, or 1 of each) with the goal of using them to board other ships (say the missile room of the boss). With these crew members on hand, if anyone tried to board me, I already had two crew that were prepared to throw down. Once AE released, however, the expanded options made dedicated brawlers less of a priority. Much like mind control, I wouldn't got out of my way to pick up mantis or rockmen. Just do it if the opportunity comes up, it's convenient, and makes sense with your overall ship strategy.

5. Anti-personnel drone. personally, I don't use anti-personnel drones. I tend to keep reserve drone space for defense drones, combat drones, and maybe hull repair. That said, it's always good to be aware of any options you have available to you.

That about covers all the things I can think of. I make liberal use of 1 and 2. 3 and 4 are much more dependent on which directing my particular run is going. I hope that helps and good hunting!
evilbaga
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Re: Best way to deal with enemy boarding

Postby evilbaga » Tue Aug 04, 2015 12:57 am

Have maxed out combat stats.

Maxing out combat stats of your crew is easy on some ships.

What you need is:
a) Lvl 2 Teleporter
b) Enough shields
c) A little luck.

You have to come across a Auto-scout that cannot penetrate your shields. Then just board and reboard him to max out your crews combat xp. As you dont have to take any system of his down to zero (thus dealing Hull Damage), you can, theoretically get infinite Combat xp (aka max out all your crew - even the engies).