Back before I got the Mantis B, I would use the Red-Tail (default type B) and either:
[ul]
[li]use the weapons to put the enemy on their last legs before boarding to mop up[/li][li]Or, I would upgrade the teleporter to get the quicker recovery, and I’d send two Rockmen as the first wave, and two whatevers on the second wave - taking advantage of the Rockmen’s bonus HP[/li][/ul]
I disagree almost entirely. Two man teleporters are all you ever need for boarding and the 4 man mostly just means it’s easier. (Note: Easier, not “you take less damage” or “you need to spend fewer resources” just “You have to do less micromanagement”) While there are some ships where it’s not really possible to board with a two man teleporter, they are few and far between and you don’t really lose an appreciable amount of scrap by just blowing them up.
Plus, I hate the mantis B, because it’s tied with the Stealth B for “has the most possible ways it can be completely screwed in the first sector”, in that it is completely useless against drones AND zoltan vessels.
It’s generally desirable to use your ships weapons to destroy the enemy weapon system and medbay if any. The former is what keeps them from doing more damage than you are recovering in extra scrap by boarding, and the latter just simplifies matters. It’s not strictly necessary however.
Actually, nevermind; Reading what you wrote again, we’re mostly saying the same thing from different angles. Except that I do hate Mantis B. 
2 pad teleporters are fine, so are hybrid ships, here’s why:
Rock B starts with Fire Bombs and 4 rockmen 
. As soon as you get a teleporter, you can bomb an enemy room, then teleport the rockmen in there. Even two rockmen are substantial, and their very presence means the enemy can’t put out the fires in the room. This means that while the rockmen are damaging the enemies in the room, the fire is damaging the system simultaneously, plus the fire is also damaging the enemy crew as well.
Also, when you upgrade your teleporter to level 3, it only has a 5 second cooldown. Its perfectly feasible to teleport 2 boarders, then 2 more when the cooldown is up (which is what I do on the Rock B ship). The best part of this is the fact that while you can only teleport out 2 guys at a time, you can teleport 4 guys back to your ship if they are all in the same room. Having a level 3 teleporter also means you can have 2 guys fight, send in 2 fresh guys, send back the wounded and heal, send them into the fray again returning the next 2 wounded guys.
Obviously a 4 pad teleporter gives you a bigger head start, though even it doesn’t help much if you are short on crew or only getting engis. Me, I enjoy the ‘zerg rush’ strategy; Mantis B with 2 boarding drones, rank 2 helm, rank 3 teleporter, 8 Mantis. Send the drones, warp in 4 mantis, 5 seconds later, warp in 5 more :eek: Aside from Zoltan shields, I haven’t had a normal enemy that can withstand dealing with 10 boarders on their ship!
Fire Beam is, in a way, even better than Fire Bomb assuming their shields are down. No ammo, and you can hit multiple rooms. Fire is, in a way, a player advantage because the computer never opens airlocks to extinguish fires- they always use crew/drones to try and put them out.
Completing normal with Stealth ship no shields or teleporter is very impressive, but I have an even harder challenge…
Engi B, only the starting engi crewmember for the ENTIRE game!
When I try and teleport a second wave without recalling the first it won’t let me. Am I doing something wrong?
Probably. All the events that have to be in place to allow for teleporting that I can think of:
Teleported has to be charged and powered
your men must be on the telepad
You have to click the send arrow, not recall
You have to select an enemy room that can accommodate two more of your men
The enemy ship must still have a live crewman - either in your ship or his own.
The enemy ship can’t have a functioning Zoltan shield
Hm. Maybe I tried sending them to a room that only has space for 2 or 3.
Enemy ship can’t be cloaked either I’m pretty sure.
Yeah, the enemy ship can’t be cloaked, but if you already have crew on the enemy ship, you can still target rooms. The teleporter won’t fire until the ship uncloaks, but you can at least queue it up.
Also, IME, you can teleport more crew into a room than will fit, and the excess will just be shunted into an adjacent room. I don’t know if the teleporter will work if you target a room that’s full, but you can definitely split crew across two rooms.
I’m pretty sure you can target a ‘full’ room and it’ll just sortof randomly dump your guys next door; Certainly, this is what happens if you beam BACK to a full teleporter room.
Odds are that targetting a ‘full’ room is something you wouldn’t want to do though, since you might not be able to predict where your lads end up. Probably best to just send them where you want 'em to go.
I kind of ruined the game for myself by using an all ships unlocked savegame. I think I’m going to reset it and start again once I’m done playing Jedi Academy.
Proof positive that my friends who complain that all the ships aren’t unlocked by default are wrong. 
I’m reviving this thread because FTL: Advanced Edition, the free expansion, is available today! It looks like the update adds a new alien race as well as a number of new systems and subsystems. I haven’t had a chance to play it yet; oft wears hats said I didn’t have to wait for him to come home as long as I didn’t go nuts, but we both know that’s exactly what I’d do…
There is also a new Hard Mode, if Normal Mode wasn’t challenging enough. Here’s your chance for you to regain your lost honor, SenorBeef, by beating all the ships on Hard first! 
Well, there goes my final exam prep period 
I rage-quit this a few months ago, after I was one jump away from getting the Crystal ship, but my Crystal guy died because I’m an idiot. Maybe he was in fire and I thought he was a Roc? I dunno, but GRRRRRRR!!!
FTL Advanced is running laggy for my on my PC. Anyone else? FTL and other much more graphically demanding games run fine.
Eh, the RNG can be a dick, but like all roguelikes skill in FTL beyond the simple combat decisions and so on involves two separate knowledges : knowing the game itself (which weapon combos are good or bad, what ship upgrades to sell or to install when, when to take the enemy’s deals, what the various events you can encounter are and what each option you can take does, the best strategy to crush the final boss) and knowing just how far you can push your luck and no further.
I got this sort of enlightening moment playing Dungeon Crawl, when after Yet Another Stupid Death I complained to another player that it was bullshit, the monster had like 2 HP left and I missed him three times in a row. And he said “well yeah, but that had like 5% chances to happen. You’re doing 50 fights per level or more, so if once every 50 combats you get into an “I got 5% chances to die” situation then you’re gonna die, every time in every run. It’s just a matter of *when *the dice roll bad”.
So the game really is about rigging every fight into being absurdly unfair in your favour. If it could go either way, or a victory would cost you more resources than it’ll earn, run away from the get go, don’t even play your luck.
It still sucks when you still haven’t found a fricking Shield merchant in sector 4 on your Stealth ship run (grmbl rassum frassum), but this running away & playing conservatively business (also not being afraid to sell away good stuff if it buys even *better *stuff) has really increased my percentage of successful runs. I’d say I’m batting above 60% wins these days. More on the really good ships (Kestrel, Rock, the artillery beam one…)
I still haven’t beat Crawl, BTW
It’s worth it to board every manned ship for the scrap bonus. Even if you’re ship doesn’t have the epic four platform teleporter [Mantis B is how I roll], buy a two man and upgrade sensors, and board to kill off any survivors after you’ve shot the ship to hell. The extra scrap (and occasionally weapons and crew members) you score are a total game changer.
The boarding drone is a workable poor-man’s teleporter room as well, provided you’ve both declawed the enemy and you can bust their medbay because the drone will go where the hell it pleases and it’s often a dumb place. It tears a big ol’ hole in the hull coming in, though, so that’s cool at least.
Or you can be a complete cock and focus on their O2 room, preferably with a fire beam/missile or a hull laser to eat up the oxygen faster. Tee hee.