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How to Effectively Board an Enemy Ship Even when Outnumbered 2 to 1 or More

By BioticKeen

This very short and easy guide will show you how to board an enemy ship to either get all that good loot fast or to get new crew members relatively easily. Keep in mind since ships are randomly generated results will vary per player.

Award

Created by

BioticKeen
Offline

Category: Walkthroughs

Languages: English

Posted

Updated

30 May, 2020 @ 10:46pm

30 May, 2020 @ 11:08pm

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Guide Index

Overview

Getting Ready and Equipping your Boarding Crew

Boarding a Ship and the Game's Cover Mechanics

Hopefully Success

Comments

Getting Ready and Equipping your Boarding Crew

First, you're gonna need a shuttle obviously, only one is needed.

Second, make sure you have 4 crew members to spare. Any less would make the fight a little sluggish. Bringing more than 4 is optional but not recommended as you'll see later in the guide.

Third, you're gonna want to equip all your crew with shotguns. Assault rifles might seem better because of the extra damage but ultimately shotguns win out almost every time because you shoot more projectiles and they spread out wide. This makes the enemy crew more likely to surrender, especially when there's a hail of projectiles constantly being fired at them instead of one.

Fourth, make sure you only board as soon as the crew wake up. Why? Comfort level is essentially a second health bar and when it reaches 0 your crew member will go down for a time.

Boarding a Ship and the Game's Cover Mechanics

Having radar on your ship can be used to make this next part a little easier but not required. Scan to the left or right of the enemy's airlock to find their large storage, you will be using it to your advantage.

Cover works a little weird in the game. From my experience, when a crew member is behind cover like a bed or table they almost never get hit. The problem though is that these types of cover are weak and will be destroyed very easily making them useless for cover. Large storage containers cant be destroyed though so it will be your only defense.

You can fit four crew behind the storage cover easily, three directly behind the cover with the forth behind the middle crew member. Problems do come up with more because they are very exposed to flanking enemies.

Once you're ready, draft your crew and shuttle, dock to an airlock and unload the crew. Pause the game as soon as you unload and look around for a large storage container and place all your crew behind it. While behind the storage, your crew will hardly get hit from the front if at all. You'll want to focus fire enemies who try to flank you, you can do this by selecting all your crew and right clicking on a single enemy. Eventually you'll get everyone to surrender as they get hit with waves and waves of shotgun pellets.

Hopefully Success

This method will not work 100% of the time, but this tactic will drastically change your chances of survival even when outnumbered.

Reloading several times might be required because of the random generation of ships or because you think the surrender mechanic is really broken ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

??????????

Profit!! Well hopefully.....

Enjoy the easy loot and new recruits.

10 Comments

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azfalt 21 Feb @ 5:25am

You can also stack more crew members to same tile, so if there is only one obstacle to cower behind when shooting, you can adress your crew to go to same tile, by selecting each crew member at a time with same destination to go to.

Example the screenshot where 'Odette' is standing behind the other crew members, Odette is without cover and will take damage, so if selected and moved one tile forward, then Odette will stand in cover too, charing a tile with one of the 3 other crew members.

ulla 8 May, 2022 @ 9:36am

@FoxyAndris if you hail a slaver ship you can sell slaves or if you hail a ship from the faction of the slave you can ceasefire and give them slaves/prisoners i think

Gorkwobbler 1 Nov, 2021 @ 12:56pm

As of version Alpha 13, AI crew members will now wait in ambush just inside the airlock when you are docking with them, usually hiding behind cover objects. It's difficult to board in that situation without casualties. A better tactic is to destroy the enemy ship, then enter through one of the hull breaches away from the airlock. Be aware that if you wait too long and the AI crew members are running out of air, they may swarm your shuttles as soon as you dock and try to recharge their O2 supplies. I recommend sending at least 8 crew members on any boarding mission.

Shotguns have been nerfed since this guide was written. Other weapons are sometimes better, depending on the circumstances and the skills of your crew members.

Delle(DK) 8 Sep, 2020 @ 10:12am

@foxyAndris to sell slaves you have to talk to the "friendly" space ships that you encounter and talk to them about exchanging prisoners. ( it have to be their own faction i think )
Regarding selling slaves/prisoners im not quite sure but i think there are slave traders that roam arround that you bump into sometimes that might help you with that.

CloudsInTheSky 5 Jul, 2020 @ 3:48am

How do you sell slaves. I haven't seen an option for that anywhere. Also I saved a bunch of civilians that were trapped in alien traps but did not receive an option to recruit them either. Thanks for the help in advance!