FTL: Faster Than Light - MANTIS B BOARDING INSANITY - How to Effectively Board Enemy Ships - PART 1

Hey guys, in this video I use the Mantis B, perhaps the best boarding ship in the game, and try for a victory over the flagship. This video was super long since boarding builds take longer, so part 2 will be uploaded on Wednesday. Stay tuned for the thrilling finale!

[@SadButter]

Npc ships being able to target several rooms with a single burst laser might be the most bullshit thing I've seen in this game.

[@ghjong001]

It's funny how people with different styles can forget their own resources when playing against type. I'm a boarding + drone person who rarely uses cloaking, and I kept screaming at the monitor for you to activate your defense drones.

[@btjr583]

I move my second mantis crewman to sensors initially. It gives me the ability to see how many and species of the enemy crew.

[@legodude19999]

Giga brain

[@Gunleaver]

It can even be important to spot the layouts of enemy rooms. If you have only two Mantis to attack a 3-man enemy crew, some strategy helps. For instance, if they have a Mantis and a Rock, you jump into the room with the Mantis, to inflict as much damage as possible while the Rock slowly walks to that room. Or drop your two man boarding party into a two-slot room so the enemy crew can only fight one--on-one, instead of 3 on 2. Then, if you know where the control panel in a 4-slot room is, you can move into one where your two already-wounded guys are fighting the last enemy at range instead of hand to hand, so the damage is evenly spread between them, making one less likely to die. It's not always possible with a two man party, but you can do it in a room where the control panel is at the bottom. Your crew will occupy the two top spaces and the solo enemy crewman will go to one of the bottom spots, where the control panel is. All these tactics are made possibly by seeing into the ship before you jump. And with two levels of shields, the dodge in the early stages where you only have your starting pair of crew members is of negligible importance.

[@latterdaze]

mad smart

[@charlesdean7563]

To train the rock, every fight have the mantis leave the room right before the enemy dies so that the rock crew gets the final hit each time. That way you don’t waste kills with the mantis

[@Shabazza84]

19:00 Now we finally now what it feels like to be on the wrong side of a Burst Laser II barrel ...

[@latterdaze]

so cool how this game has such an active community they really made something special with this one

[@weskan8722]

This is my favorite ship and I play it all the time. It took me forever to defeat the mothership until I discovered transporters. As soon as I could beam over two guys to take out that annoying triple missile launcher is when I started winning consistently. I also always take over the max crew I can, even if it means leaving the ship abandoned (unless its an Engi, they are useless for boarding actions). Getting that Rock so early was awesome, I would have had him and one Mantis in the transporter room and run the other Mantis back and forth to the pilot room just to warp. 24:30 You took a big risk. Should have beamed into the shield space. 1) It's large enough to fit all 3 crew in one room, 2) Enemy prioritize shields above all else, they would have all gone there to protect the shields leaving the pilot station empty which would have stopped the warp from charging giving more time to take them out. Fighting in the pilot room allows warp to continue to charge. Enjoyed the video though. It was fun to see how different people do things.

[@lavandereisly4194]

I honestly prefer Lanius B for my boarding ship. You only get 2 crew per teleport but the clone bay, a starting flack weapon, the extra damage done by draining a room of air, and the ability to safely board drones make up for it in my opinion.

[@Gunleaver]

At about 16:00 there is a sequence of fights where the player is foolish in his deployment of resources. The first is using the hull missile to take out the med-bay when you only have two missile ammunition, but 16 drone parts. It's a better use of resources to send in the drone. The fight will be longer, but it will prevent the enemy from cycling their personnel in and out of the med-bay with greatest efficiency. You can also use strategies such as taking out the Oxygen room while they are healing, so the air loss from the drone's breach site is harder to heal, and the loss of air will eventually confine the enemy crew to the medbay where the drone can finish them off, because the vacuum plus battle damage will kill them faster. Another tactic is to deploy boarding crew or drone into the shield room, because that is always the first priority of the defending crew, unless they are about to die and have a chance to heal. If the drone is in the oxygen room, your boarding party can distract the defenders by attacking the shield room, or if the boarding drone is in the shield room, your crew will have a free hand to take out the oxygen or med bay. Even if a wounded enemy runs for the medbay to heal while you are trying to destroy it, at 2-on-1 odds, your crew can kill him before he heals, especially if the medbay is already damaged. But the biggest error is in not upgrading his weapons to be able to use the Hull Laser 2. While it was forgivable in the fight with the Med-bay equipped rebel ship, since there were the alternatives of using a drone or missile, on the next enemy, he would have been able to take down the enemy Zoltan shield if he had been able to equip a weapon that does not require resources for each ship. He would also have been able to fight the unshielded drone with those empty rooms that are so vulnerable to Hull weapons, at the exit beacon. Instead of wasting two missiles and only being able to beat a single ship of the last three he faced in that sector, a simple expenditure of 25 scrap would have enabled him to fight all three.

[@zekel787]

Just started to play this game, and am hyper focusing on this game. And your videos are very educational on this game.

[@assailant8722]

I love coming to your comments sections and seeing things like “Oh yeah I’m working on Mantis C on Hard”. I still haven’t beaten Kestrel A on Easy. Feels bad man.

[@najaikari8127]

Six months late, but have you made any progress?

[@oculusrift4022]

ten months late, but have you made any progress?

[@Neelo5000]

twelve months late, but have you made any progress?

[@TheChemistGaming]

Twenty four months late but have you made any progress?

[@kanjuura]

twenty-eight months late, but have you made any progress?

[@TheEldritchGod]

I prefer the Shriek for boarding. Two guys who each act as a hull breach to drain the oxygen and a mind controller from the start. You can even take out drones since you don't need oxygen.

[@carlnesbit6767]

I felt pain when you didn't even consider buying the Z shield bypasser... I consider it a must for boarding runs.

[@julianchabane4612]

I find Boarding builds very easy (even on hard) to get to the end, and then I find the flagship nearly impossible.

[@babassoonist557]

Oh my god the pirate ship with boarding flak I and burst laser II, do the devs hate us? Like just shove the two best weapons onto one ship and have the enemy board you while you’re at it

[@nopushbutton]

love boarding runs. they're so star trek TOS

[@babassoonist557]

I wish it was easier for boarding dedicated runs to win. but I guess the extra scrap from not blowing up normal ships should help pivot to a build that can kill the flagship

[@nopushbutton]

@@babassoonist557 well yeah, but then again using boarding makes the flagship a lot easier... really, they're trying to get you to throw everything you've got at that fight, I think

[@dixy1988]

Nice video - made me install the game on my laptop again :) What addons/mods are you using in this gameplay?

[@Walczyk]

27:39 you are way too worried about oxygen

[@seangallagher9435]

This is a pretty old video but when boarding the pilot is the last guy to leave his station to fight you.

[@middlemayhem]

when you kill your whole crew in the first few jumps lol

[@jacksonjessup6331]

What edition are you playing? I dont have the lines that tell where the fleet will advance or some of the alien species i saw in this video.

[@potatoheadpokemario1931]

I believe he has crew diversity and advanced rebel ship tracker mods

[@ShinyUmbreon765]

subsetgames.com/ftl_mods.html here's for the rebel tracker will follow up with the crew diversity

[@Caesar512]

12:41 "We took some damage... there's really nothing we could have done there." Not true. With 5 power you have enough to power up both layers of shields, which does make you invulnerable to this ship. The one remaining power point can be passed around, first put into the teleporter to do crew damage, then when the cooldown is up you can bring them back, put that point into o2 for a moment to get levels back up, then put that point into the medbay to heal, then put it into o2 again to restore the o2 lost during the time this took to do, then back into the teleporter and repeat until the crew is all dead. This might seem like a nitpick but this run was full of avoidable damage. Unlike a gunship strategy where you can alpha down the enemy weapon system and prevent incoming damage, boarding strategies take longer to execute so you have to work really hard to prevent damage wherever you can because it can add up, and absolutely can be the difference between a win and a loss. Food for thought. I get that you have stated that you know you maybe undervalue bording strategies. My only comment is that unoptimized encounters (like this one) may be skewing that judgement somewhat.

[@hdckighfkvhvgmk]

since you know a lot about boarding, can you help me out? I'm trying to do all ships on hard difficulty, and have done about half of them. Currently I am trying to win on Mantis C, but I cannot for the life of me figure out a way to get out of the early game without taking MASSIVE damage, or just not being able to kill many ships due to medbay. I have done other boarding ships in the past (lanius B, crystal B, and even fed C all on hard), but this one feels like it requires some wacky tech/playstyle that I'm not aware of yet.

[@richardkenan2891]

How do you get a Slug crew in an early-mid sector and *NOT* put it directly in piloting? I get that your Engi already has some experience, but you don't really want an Engi in piloting anyway, you want it somewhere you can send it around to repair damaged systems without gutting your dodge chance. I may have been burned a few too many times by getting my pilot mind controlled and eating a ton of damage from not being able to dodge. It's like getting O2 up to level 2 before the flagship just to avoid having to die or jump away if it gets hacked.

[@austinfultz3926]

Idk what I'm doing wrong but I just lost a solid 10 runs without even leaving the first sector. I feel like the only way to win with this ship is to get insanely lucky.

[@ripsterhipster5948]

Part two when?

[@spearmintz1]

It's in the description, but wednesday!

[@thecouncil1024]

When do we get another Roper cameo?

[@manowar200]

I cant find the part 2 A little help ?

[@bryanandchiu]

Probably a pain but has anyone thought about posting ftl videos with timestamps per fight?

[@od1401]

Fuck man, hate those zoltan shield plus burst mk2 and ion combo any day of the week let alone in sector 1 with a boarding ship. They had 4 effective shield pen and immunity to boarding you were gon a get boned no matter what. My god then a flak cannon burst mk2 ship with boarding and cloaking straight away on 2nd sector, you had some real bad luck here

[@anosmianAcrimony]

In the fight that goes through 27:30, I would NOT have beamed anyone over. They have weapons that can hit you. I could just imagine that tagging the Teleport system and leaving them stranded over there in zero oxygen.

[@anosmianAcrimony]

I’d have put them in the empty systems instead - get the Mantis manning the engines and weapons.

[@Hedning1390]

It is so demoralizing when you get defeated and go to youtube to find tips, only to come a cross videos where the youtuber has insane luck with the enemy encounters and doesn't have to show any effective boarding tricks.

[@MOISECRIMI]

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