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FTL: Faster Than Light Wiki
For crew races comparison, see Crew races comparison table.

Boarding occurs when hostile crew are onboard a ship. Crew Teleporters facilitate this by beaming crew onto another ship, and certain events spawn boarders on your ship. While the crew is on the opponent's ship, they can fight enemy personnel and damage systems and subsystems.

Boarding: general principles[]

Combat[]

When boarders and defending crew are in the same room, they fight. Every few moments, a crew will deal a random amount of damage to an enemy, with the amount of damage being dependent on the race and Hand to Hand Combat Skill of the attacker, as well as combat damage boost from Lv2+ Mind Control. Crew must not be moving in order to damage a target.

For reference, the amount of damage that an unskilled human crew deals per hit is 3 to 7 HP, an average of 5 damage per hit.

When boarders are in a system room without hostile crew, they start sabotaging the system - a red bar on the top system level starts to fill in. When the bar is filled, the system takes 1 damage, and if a system is completely destroyed by the sabotage, the ship takes 1 hull damage. Sabotage from boarders and fires adds up, increasing the overall progress. Sabotage progress is reset once there are no boarders or fires in the room.

Crew kills[]

An enemy ship without a clone bay is considered defeated when its last crewmember reaches 0 HP. If the ship has a clone bay, it is defeated when the last crewmember has finished their death animation, and its clone bay is destroyed. When a ship is defeated, its weapons and drones are disabled, its Zoltan Shield is removed, and you get a reward. If your Crew Teleporter is broken with no crew left on your ship, your boarding party will teleport to Piloting room. If the ship was Cloaked during the ongoing crew combat and the enemy crew is defeated, the Cloak will continue to last for a full duration till its 'charge' is depleted and the system goes on a cooldown.

Rewards for killing enemy crew are usually higher than rewards for destroying the ship. The reward can be in a form of a weapon, a crewmember or other items, resources and benefits in encounters with default rewards (so is true for fights against Lanius).

Boarding enemy ships[]

Boarding with playable ships[]

There are several ship layouts that are either described as being intended to carry out boarding actions, carry utility weapons or systems to assist boarding actions, or otherwise improve specific species traits to provide an advantage during boarding. These ships include the Federation Cruiser C layout, all Mantis ship layouts, the Slug B layout, the Lanius B layout, the Rock B layout, and the Crystal B layout.

Enemy crew AI[]

In general it is useful to know about how the enemy AI works so that this can be exploited. Enemy crew will be assigned a task, and once assigned often do not change what they are doing. The priorities appear to be;

  1. Heal - The enemy AI will stop fighting and go heal if it can, the only exception being if the room it is in is already locked down then it will fight to the death. Once in an active healing room, a hurt AI will not leave for any reason until it is fully healed.
  2. Defend/Repair the shield room - Unless actively healing in the Medbay, the AI will always drop what it is doing and go and defend or repair the shield room. For example you can keep the enemy crew running between jobs and never fighting by positioning one person to attack a system on one side of the ship, and another crew repeatedly enter and leave the shield room (from an empty room or lower priority target than the first). This will cause the enemy crew to switch between attacking person 1 and running to defend the shield room from person 2, who leaves before they get there causing them to head back to fight person 1, all the while allowing person 1 to destroy the system.
  3. Pathing - if the AI has decided to move somewhere, then it will often not change its mind until it gets there (the exploitable exception to this being mentioned above). This can be exploited with Lockdown and/or Hacking (to lock doors) along the path of the AI.

Doors[]

Unlike friendly crew, boarders are unable to move through closed doors on a ship with a level 2+ Door System. Instead, they must break doors open. When a door is broken, it remains stuck open for 7 seconds, after which its functionality is restored and it can be manipulated again (e.g. closed). Broken doors on enemy ships stay opened, with few exceptions: 1) a broken door of the hacked system room will restore its functionality and auto-close in 7 seconds (depowering the hacking system before the door's health is reset will allow to keep it in the broken state); 2) when a room is breached, its doors will automatically close (if the Door System is functioning).

Doors of a hacked system room function as level 3 blast doors (regardless of the ship's door system level) and allow unimpeded movement of boarders and mind-controlled crew, but block the ship's crew movement.

Doors maximum health is dependent on Door System level and game difficulty setting.

Boarding party management[]

The boarding party should also be micromanaged to avoid the weakest one from dying. A useful trick is to rotate the crew around within a room, by pausing, sending the crew out of the room, and then without unpausing sending them each back into the room one individual at a time (the order you do this determines their order in the room), then finally unpausing.

Boarding support[]

Sensors[]

Level 2 Sensors grant complete vision of your and enemy ships' interior. Information on the hostile crew (quantity, composition) and enemy crew drones can be essential for a successful boarding. Sensors are disabled in nebulas, but doors opening/closing and the Doors system level can still be observed.

Slug crew and Lifeform Scanner augmentation provide visuals on any hostile crew on your and enemy ships. Slugs also can clearly see the interior of adjacent rooms. However, crew drones cannot be detected at distance by neither.

Hacking[]

A hacked room has Level 3 doors, which allows to break or damage some systems or impede and split enemies to fight them more efficiently. A hacked room's doors can be manipulated - opened and closed for enemy movement - by de-powering and powering again the Hacking system when necessary.

Medbay hacking use cases:
1. Actively hacking will drain the health of hostile crew in the medbay at 13 health per second, while friendly crew are unaffected. Enemy will try to break out of the room, rather than fight. (exceptions: locking down the room before active the hacking pulse will make enemy fight; 1 medbay crew on the phase 1 Flagship will fight no matter what)

2. Alternatively, teleporting into a (high level) medbay (with few crew) will allow to destroy it before enemy comes inside. Enemies can be scared off once they break the room doors - by activating the hacking pulse; meanwhile the broken doors will restore their strength and functionality after 7 seconds. (so Hacking-2 will suffice to let the doors "heal" themselves)

Lockdown effect[]

The Lockdown ability of Crystal crew and property of Crystal Lockdown Bomb create an almost unpenetrable barrier (requires at least 5-6 crew to break it before the crystals meltdown naturally) inside a room, obstructing any crew movement through the room's doors for 12 seconds. The Lockdown prevents doors from being opened or closed manually: they can only be manipulated via ship's all-doors control function. However, doors that serve as airlocks can be opened and closed manually. The Lockdown also resets the 'health' of the blast doors. The crystal barrier doesn't impede the fires spread. It is possible to lockdown a room while exiting it, so that the enemy will stay there alone.

Lockdown can be used to separate enemies or deny access to a designated room, thus allowing easier crew kills and/or destruction or damaging of enemy systems.

If the room is locked down, then enemies will fight there to the end. However, if the lockdown is applied after the enemy starts leaving the room, then they will try to break the barrier instead of fighting.

Stun effect[]

Stunned crew is unable to move, fight or do anything else. Stun Bomb (15 seconds stun) and Ion Stunner (5 seconds stun) can stun all crewmembers and drones in the room, then boarders can move in and attack defenseless enemy. However, Ion Intruder drone will stun only enemy units, including those affected by player's mind control, for 6 seconds. On the other hand, the Hacking Stun augmentation will stun any crew and drones present or entering the room during the whole duration of the hacking pulse (up to 10 seconds).

Mind Control[]

If the enemy ship has cloaking, then they will use it immediately after the start of a fight. However, by starting the fight paused, you can mind-control an enemy before losing vision due to their cloak. (but you still cannot board until they decloak)

Use cases:
1. A mind-controlled enemy can be teleported to your ship for an easy kill, and, that way, the enemy crew combat potential on the enemy ship can be weakened. (enemies can't do this to you)

2. Board into enemy shields room and mind control an enemy there to pull other enemy crew and keep them there, while (some of) your boarders go and destroy a medical unit or weapons.

Boarding Drones[]

Boarding drones - Boarding Drone and Ion Intruder - create a breach in a room they appear, and they always target a system room. A player cannot order a drone to move and attack a certain room or change its position in a room, a player can only de-power and re-power the drone. Once the drone is destroyed, another boarding drone can be sent only after a 10-second cooldown and also costing 1 drone part for deploying it.

The Boarding Drone will stay in a room until it the system is destroyed and there is no hostile crew, then it will move to attack the nearest system room (it is at this moment an attempt can be made to alter the drone's target room). The breach, caused by the drone, can drain all oxygen (unless the ship has level 3 O2 or the breach is repaired by a Repair Drone or with Slug Repair Gel), which will cause suffocation damage to all crew races besides Lanius.

The Ion Intruder will ionize a system, stunning all hostile crew and drones for 6 seconds, and then move to another system. The cycle repeats usually between 2 system rooms. Positioning your crew in the room, which the ion intruder is going to ionize, is safe and will allow to damage enemy crew during the stun; then moving to the next room allows to repeat the same exact process.

Fire Bomb[]

A fire bomb is guaranteed to cause 1-2 fires. Boarding with Rockmen into a room with fires is very effective, if not opposed by enemy Rockmen. Fires damage systems over time, eventually destroying them partially or completely, and repairs cannot be undertaken, except for by a Repair Drone, if Rockmen continue to stay in the room. If not taken care of, fires spread quickly, especially in a 4-tile room. Once all 4 tiles are on fire, enemy non-Rockmen crew will try to escape the room. Each fire causes 1.2 HP damage per second (Rockmen and drones are immune), and, when oxygen is burned down, the suffocation damage of 6.4 HP per second is also added (Lanius and drones are immune). Enemy crew will start to run out of the room with fires at below 20% HP threshold, and will start to leave an airless room at below 25% HP threshold.

Breach Bomb[]

Breach Bombs deal high crew damage - 30 and 45 (for Mark I and Mark II, respectively) - and can complement Lanius oxygen-draining ability. The enemy cannot counter the oxygen drain (caused by breaches and Lanius) by opening doors of multiple rooms: on the contrary, a breached room's doors will be shut once a breach occurs and also when it is sealed - if the Door System is operational. However, level 3 Oxygen system completely counters the O2 loss due to a single breach (or Lanius) and slows down the O2 drain caused by two breaches/Lanius. So, creating the O2 loss equivalent to three breaches allows to reach a quick suffocating effect even if the breach gets sealed (e.g. with Slug Repair Gel), and it becomes impossible for the enemy to re-oxygenate the room afterwards while two Lanius stay inside.

Heal Bomb[]

Healing Burst can heal your crew for 150 HP. It never misses if targeted at your ship, but can miss if targeted at the enemy ship with evasion (including that granted by active cloak and auto-pilot).

Mantis Pheromones[]

Mantis Pheromones can help avoid combat damage while moving your fast-pacing crew aboard enemy ship.

Boarding airless ships[]

Emergency Respirators can be very helpful in boarding airless ships, especially the Auto-ships: two 100-HP crewmembers with the augmentation can deal 5 points of system damage instead of just 2. If the crew moved between the adjacent rooms, the 5th point of damage occurs during the crew dying animation; if the crew are stationary, they can be teleported back with ~2 HP left - the necessary sabotage damage occurs during the teleportation animation.

Boarding Auto-ships[]

  • Boarding Auto-ships requires suitable crew and/or systems: these ships lack oxygen. Using Lanius is safe, while sending other races can pose a risk to them. Crystal and Rockmen can get away with Level 1 Teleporter, while Level 2 is enough for any other race, except for Zoltans (they need Level 3).
    • 2 Crystals can destroy 6 system levels and be teleported back. (1 Crystal can deal 3 system damage)
    • 2 Rockmen can destroy 3 system levels and be teleported back. (1 Rockman can deal 1 system damage)
    • 2 non-Lanius 100 HP crew can destroy 2 system levels and be teleported back (with Teleporter-2+). (1 crew can deal 1 system damage)

Boarding Lanius ships[]

  • Lanius ships lack oxygen, but, unlike Auto-ships, have crew. Nevertheless, Lanius Scouts, which have 2 crewmembers, can be successfully boarded with a regular crew (Humans, Mantis, Rockmen) and a Medbay to score crew kill rewards once their crew is softened enough with conventional weaponry. Lanius Bombers have more crew and can have Mind Control, Cloaking and Clone Bay at the same time (Door System, too).

Warnings and precautions[]

  • Weapons and asteroids hitting a room (or tile, in case of beams) will damage your crew as well as the enemy.
    • Healing Burst will heal only your crew (and mind-controlled enemy).
  • Destroying an enemy ship while your crew is on it will kill your crew.
  • Beware of burning fires while you're boarding: they will damage the ship's hull when a system burns out and, thus, can destroy the ship accidentally.
  • If the enemy ship jumps away with your crew onboard, you will lose the crew, and the Clone Bay will not revive them.
  • Be wary of ships with Cloaking: you cannot teleport crew onto or from the ship during the cloak. Level 4 Sensors or hacking the Cloaking system will provide you with the cloaking and its cooldown duration information.
    • Some Auto-ships have Cloaking. If you don't have a Clone Bay (or if it might get destroyed), you will have to rely on level 2+ Teleporter to retrieve your asphyxiation-prone crew before the enemy ship enters the cloak (even Rockmen won't survive 25+ seconds without oxygen); and while sending boarders with Teleporter-1 can be delayed - i.e. board just before the (long) cloak, - so that your crew will survive during the cloak, or you can order your crew to damage (destroy) the enemy Cloaking system, it doesn't help much in making the fight safe, nor does it prevent the enemy ship from escaping without jeopardizing your crew. Nevertheless, boarding with Lanius or Crystal crew, or with Clone Bay and Backup DNA Bank augmentation support, is safe, unless you let the enemy escape with your crew onboard (Crystals can survive long enough for Teleporter-1 to be available and enemy Cloaking-3 to finish).
  • On Hard game difficulty, when your crew is onboard enemy ship, your Teleporter system will be among the priority targets for enemy weapons.
  • Some ships, including the Auto-ships, have Mind Control. And if your ship has Zoltan Shield, one of your crewmembers will be mind-controlled (unless they are Slugs) once they appear on the enemy ship, and you won't be able to retrieve your mind-controlled crew till the mind control wears off.
  • Be wary of ships with Shield Overcharger: unless you have Zoltan Shield Bypass augmentation or a means to destroy the Zoltan Shield, you won't be able to teleport crew onto or from the ship with an intact Zoltan Shield.
  • Upgraded Door System on the enemy ship will impede your crew movement between the rooms.
  • For Federation Cruiser Layout A and B with a Medbay, turn off the Artillery system to avoid destroying the enemy ship and killing your own crew. Same applies to Federation Cruiser Layout C, if your Clone Bay can destroyed or disabled during the fight (including environment hazards).
  • Boarding the Auto-ships with separated rooms (Auto-Assault, Auto-Hacker) makes it impossible to move the crew between the rooms to retrieve all of them in 1 cycle. Moreover, simultaneously teleporting 4 crew onto an Auto-ship results in the crew positions swapping (compared to their placement in the Teleporter). At the very least the wrong positioning of the crew makes it more difficult or impossible to deal maximum system damage with certain setups, while in the worst case will lead to losing some crew. [the following examples might need additional thorough testing]
    • Teleporting into Auto-Assault's Weapon Control will place crew #4 and #3 into the Weapon Control, while crew #1 and #2 will be placed into the Drone Control.
    • Teleporting into Auto-Hacker's Weapon Control will place crew #4 and #3 into the Weapon Control, while crew #1 and #2 will be placed into the Hacking.
    • Teleporting into Auto-Scout's Weapon Control will place crew #1 and #4 into the Weapon Control, while crew #3 and #2 will be placed into the Shields.

Defending against boarders[]

If you have boarders on your ship and you jump away before the enemy ship surrenders or explodes, and end up in a beacon with another neutral ship with a teleporter, the boarders will teleport away.

Doors and venting[]

Upgrading (or manning) your Doors system to level 2 or 3 will slow down boarders, as they have to attack doors to open them. This allows for an effective venting of rooms and manipulating boarders' movement since non-Lanius crew suffer asphyxiation damage in airless rooms and enemy boarders will attempt to leave such rooms (with hazard stripes). It can be useful to vent empty rooms on your ship ahead of time, so that enemy boarders will begin to suffocate immediately. Note that each time the boarders force doors open they cause air to leak out of the room they're entering.

Lockdown[]

Lockdown ability of Crystal crew can be used defensively to separate enemy boarding groups and efficiently suffocate the hostiles. It is even possible to lock down a room while exiting it, thus leaving the enemies there alone.

Zoltan Shield[]

Zoltan Shield prevents boarding the ship via Crew Teleporter (and with Boarding Drones), but the event-spawned boarders will always get through: the event text will say "They must have a Super Shield bypass unit; boarders are on board!" - this occurs even if Advanced Edition Content is turned off.

Your Zoltan Shield will prevent teleportation of hostile boarders, if you decide to hack enemy Crew Teleporter in order to send the event-spawned boarding party to the enemy ship.

Medbay[]

A working Medbay can be a good place to deal with enemy boarders. Moreover, the boarders can be guided to come to the Medbay by venting other rooms on your ship. Beware that Lv1 Medbay can't out-heal Mantis combat damage. Engi Medbot Dispersal heals significantly slower than being in the Medbay, but provides an edge for your crew across the whole ship.

Nevertheless, if your crew cannot outdamage boarders in the Medbay and/or it gets destroyed, this could turn out to be a disaster.

Bomb weapons[]

Bombs can target your ships' rooms with 100% accuracy. Destroying a system with a bomb will prevent taking the hull damage (in case of inevitable sabotage damage).

Anti-Personnel Drone[]

Anti-Personnel Drones have 150 HP and are immune to asphyxiation and fires. They can be very effective against borders that suffer from asphyxiation.

Crew Teleporter hack[]

Actively hacking the enemy ship's Crew Teleporter sends all boarders to the enemy ship.

Cloaking[]

Active cloaking prevents the enemy ship's crew from boarding your ship or from returning back to their ship.

Mind Control[]

Mind-controlling a boarder can significantly weaken the boarding party in 1v1 fights or force enemy to target and kill a turned member in case of a larger party spawned in the same room.

Boarding guides and tips[]

  • Zephyr's Practical FTL - Boarding and Hand to Hand Combat: Dancing (Fill Order), Medbay - Standing Room Only, Crystal Boarding, Four Person Teleporters, Kiting and Doors, Knowing your enemy, Venting, Overwhelming the Enemy Medbay, Boarding Auto-Scouts, Medbay vs. Clone Bay, Miscellaneous Boarding Info.
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