AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Guys, can we just talk about this?

I am ripping hair out trying not to die early.

By the time I was in sector two, I had 2 engis.

Getting your engines on fire in a solar flare
Fires spreading and your door systems on fire
Mantis boarding parties

The most rustled off I've ever been at the game was when I was in the middle of the fight to get the mantis boarding ship and I fucked up and my boarding party died. I was on the engi ship so it's not like they could take them out

It's pretty fucked up when no matter how well you're doing, how powerful your ship has become, you can still reliably be destroyed by a single boarding party.

That's why I try to carry at least one mantis and one rockman

I managed to secure an "anti-personnel" robot, something to be used against boarders. It did marginally better, and by that I mean it lasted a whole two seconds longer than I expected it to.

I was wondering how those antipersonal bots do.
I'd rather have a rockguy for general rockbro usage.

Blast doors help

And opening the airlock to weaken them.

I've honestly never had a problem with boarding parties in my 20+ games so far, as long as you have blast doors and rotate out your combatants you should be fine really.

You can reliably force enemy boarding parties to combat you in the medical bay. If you pause the game and open all doors but the room you want to herd them to, they'll go for the closest room with oxygen. Once they're there, just pause and shut all the doors again to prevent more oxygen loss.

A summary of me playing FTL:

EVERYBODY'S DEAD, DAVE

Boarding parties on their own are simple enough to defeat, it's when they come on board in conjunction with a fucking spaceship battle that I lose my shit.

Why are you firing on the ship you just teleported your crew onto? Are you that fucking stupid?

I can get to section 5 or 6 pretty reliably, but that's when my strategy of powering through without any upgrades stops working.

I've gotten pretty decent at handling boarding parties, though, even when using Engis. my biggest problem now is dealing with ships later in the game with strong enough shields that I can't count on taking them down with one or two missiles.