How do I win with mantis ship A?

[Raving Rabbid Soldier]

I have beaten the game (on easy) with all ships except Mantis A. I have tried the same strategies as the other ships, but have not been successful. Next time I'm going to invest in engine, auto-pilot, and drones. What would you suggest?

[Skinny Pete]

Get better at boarding with just two Mantises. Tricks like the safety dance and so on, to gang up two on one whenever possible. Also, this is pretty "no duh" stuff, but beef up the weapons. You're going to have to use them more than with the Mantis B.

Part of boarding successfully with the two square teleporter is just keeping your first wave of boarders alive until the next two arrive, then tweaking their locations in the room so that the new arrivals take the bulk of the damage.

You don't want to lose any crew.

Twinge's "Safety Dance" video
http://www.twitch.tv/darktwinge/v/4589861
Crew Positioning in General
http://www.twitch.tv/darktwinge/c/6442154

The first is especially good for Mantis A, because it basically shows how you can annihilate 4 human crew with just 2 Mantis boarders.

[Thundercracker]

i roll with just the two boarders. i always fight in 2x1 rooms. i usualy let my weapons soften up the enemy crew before i send my boarders.

remember that you must upgrade weapons! you NEED to be able to do 5 damage a volley, or the flagship is going to take a lot longer than it otherwise would.

i wouldent use drones. get mindcontrol + hacking instead. works a whole lot better with boarders, if you ask me.

mantis A is a great ship that has a lot of possibilities, especially swimming in scrap on easy, i've probably put more time into it than any other ship besides fed B.

[Xiarn]

You don't have complete control over drones, so medbay Boarding can sometimes be disastrous if they shoot a room you have guys in. Like W said, Mindcontrol and Hacking are great for it. Boarding/Ion or defensive drones are always nice to have though.

Your boarding crew when fighting the flagship is there to jump on, kill everyone on the relatively safe first stage, and then be on dissasembly duty. Just remember to not kill the guy in the laser cannon room, and to not destroy O2. 2 leveled mantis should be able to rip apart the dangerous bits of the ship in pretty good time, and then you can pick at it whenever you want.

If you don't have a decently reliable way of taking out the medbay, such as hacking, bombs or missiles, the fight can be a lot harder, as you won't be able to take advantage of the ships specialization.

A little tip with mind control, if you time it so that just before whatever weapon volley you fired impacts the enemy ship, they won't have a pilot so they'll lose a lot of dodge chance.

As far as upgrading the piloting goes, I generally get it for the increased durability. Very rarely do I reach the end of the game and not have 5+ people running about the ship.

[notund]

The Experimental Bio Beam helps a ton. Use it to soften crew and then kill them with your mantis.