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[beorn080]

Rock are immune to flame damage, but they have no bonus on putting out flames. Fire beam is still very effective, as it does constant damage to lots of rooms at once. And rock are still vulnerable to lack of o2, which the fire beam is quite good at getting rid of.

Lanius are not immune to fire damage, but make their rooms have no o2, which puts out fires real fast. Fire beam is next to worthless against them, but you know if you are gonna fight them as they only appear in one place.

Edit: also, mantis are horrible at fire fighting and engi are great about it. So mantis ships are tasty sources of roast bug if you have a fire beam.

Anyone else think the rebel flagship would be more interesting with a randomized crew? I know it goes against canon and what the rebels are, but still.

[Neonivek]

So mantis ships are tasty sources of roast bug if you have a fire beam.

Too bad they prefer to spend their time on your ship instead of their own.

[sambojin]

Which makes them suck even worse against the fires you do start on board their ship. Many smaller boarding parties are just free crew training anyway. There's also the "shield room damage thing" that the AI tends to prioritize. Not sure if it's just shield room boarders that they'll swarm against, or if fires count too. I'm sure I've seen them all jump into the shield room oven-bake though, cancelling the boarding attempt asap. Fires+laser damage clears mantis very quickly when they all squeeze into a size four shield room.

There's plenty of ships that it isn't too hard to toast both piloting and shields with the beam (or any combination with the weapon room), that turns many encounters into an easy wait-out.

Still, gotta get those shields down, but with the beam charge being what it is, that's not a huge problem. You'll usually get 1-2 volleys in and then start a few blazes. It's just a prettier and more damaging anti-bio beam of sorts. Kind of. I like it anyway. It's not a halberd or glaive, but it's probably more fun.

It's also nice to have a change with beams, that instead of trying to find "magic pixels" that give you an extra room hit, you're trying for max squares hit, but useful ones. Even systemless rooms are fine if you can hit three squares between piloting and shields. There's a lot of judgement calls for its most effective uses, depending on enemy and your own setup. But the fact is, it'll look devastatingly evil eventually (except vs AIs and lanius).

edit: I'm wrong about the normal damage against crews. I think (maybe. There does seem to be varying damage for lasers vs crew, so maybe it does have 1 10pt crew damage tick on it). Just lots of eventual fire damage. The normal damage to rooms was meant to mean from the fires. It eventually ticks up.

[EnigmaticHat]

I'm 90% the fire beam does absolutely nothing except start fires.  And maybe do damage to super shields, haven't used it enough to encounter that situation.

[Sindain]

I'm 90% the fire beam does absolutely nothing except start fires.  And maybe do damage to super shields, haven't used it enough to encounter that situation.

I know fire beam drones do damage against super shields so I would assume normal fire beams would do so as well.

[beorn080]

Bio beam and fire beam do 2d1 against super shields. Very useful against the flagship if you need it, but generally you can get rid of it in other ways.

I've noticed something about other beams. They do hurt the crew, if the beam actually hits them. Not sure on numbers, but I noticed when I hit the flagship in engi a with halberd, flak1 and ion blast 2. Tried to kill missile room guy, but too much hull damage each time and he healed up to full. So something to keep in mind if you use beams as well. I think it was like 30 damage.

[Urist Imiknorris]

I'm pretty sure a point of hull/system damage translates to 15 points of crew damage.

[Sindain]

I'm pretty sure a point of hull/system damage translates to 15 points of crew damage.

This is correct.

[sambojin]

Rockmen seem to be almost as good as Mantis (well, I'd actually say they are as good or better) for anything boarding related. Yes, they're slower at what they do, but +50 life essentially equates to +50% damage, it just takes a bit longer.

Plus, they don't suck at repairs and fires.

Add in fighting skills and you're golden. Are skills multiplicative off base stats, or additive? Is a fully skilled Mantis doing 1.5x1.2=1.8x damage, or just 1.5+0.2=1.7x normal damage?

Not a huge difference, but with Rockmen being DoT with their life pool, it kind of does end up multiplicative for them. Also makes Engi Med-bot dispersal heals seem a little bit better too, if only as a defense vs enemy boarders. I'll have to check the rate of healing, but it should equate to about 10% more damage (ball-park guess) available before healing. That one extra swing before needing a heal is actually quite valuable.

[Rolan7]

Yeah I feel like they're almost exactly evenly matched, and tend to collect either. I generally prefer the speed (of movement and of damage). I handle repairs with other crew, faster movers than rocks, and I usually don't have problems with fire. Or use fire beam.

It's a neat decision though, an example of how good this game is.

[lemon10]

I generally prefer the mantis for boarding, it is true they don't last quite as long, but being able to kill an enemy 1.5X faster can mean you get to kill an enemy before they get away/get reinforcements, can (very slowly) kill them through a medbay when you couldn't manage it before, or (rarely) deal a pip of damage before enemies come. Plus, as rolan says they do move significantly faster.

Of course, if you have any fire weapons, rockmen are clearly wildly superior, but I find that enough of an edge case not to be very significant.

[Sindain]

In a fight between equally skilled combatants mantis win over rockmen every time (though just barely). Also the extra speed of killing can be very important for boarding based ships, as faster ship clears means less shots that you have to endure.

Rockmen are much more flexible, but I generally consider mantis superior when it comes to most boarding type applications.

[EnigmaticHat]

Mantis get the advantage because they'll do much better in a position where they actually get to fire their weapon (like if there are three enemies in a four person room).  They're also great at the yakety sax dance that ensues when you lose a boarding action but your teleporter is still recharging.

[EnigmaticHat]

Accidentally played a normal mode (as in, not advanced edition) game with the stealth cruiser.  Holy shit, those empty shops.  To say nothing of the event that hacked both my shields and engines.

Still probably would have won against the easier original flagship if I had been playing a better ship like the Kestral, but geez.  Its not exactly harder since I was playing on normal difficulty, in fact its significantly easier, but also a lot less fair.

[sambojin]

Sometimes non-AE is good. There's less choices, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Less crap you don't want in the stores, shields+dodge+cloak are always king, less random hacking crap to get screwed by.

But yeah. It makes you appreciate just how good AE made the game. Not to mention how much further Captain's Edition pushed it as a mod.