FTL: Mantis and their Ships

mantis from FTL one of the greatest and most attractive characters ever thought up he can run at 120% base speed take out foes with 150% damage mod and best of all he is green colored and knows how to handle borders giant alien mantises as mentioned they have sharp claws acidic spit and they live on red ships they're coming for you and your scrap because you get more scrap if you kill the crew and don't just blow up the ship mantis are a Nifty species to have as crew members on your ship they're super fast as mentioned before and terrifying and melee combat making them perhaps the best shock troops in the game whether that's boarding or if you are boarded well the enem is going to be in for a fun time if a mantis is involved generally when encountering their distinct red ships out in the wild of wild space they generally have lower levels of Shield Fields however on their larger ships they have nasty weapons and on all of their ships they have teleporters so that they may board your ship and engage in glorious melee combat however mantis do have a big downside and that's a 50% repair speed so this has led to an interesting situation where the Mantis like the NG they like taking them as slaves so generally on mantis ships you'll find at least one NG crew member this has led to a lot of bad blood between the species or well I suppose bad n machines I don't know but their dislike of each other or rather the the ngi dislike of the Mantis can be seen in some of their events mantis as a species are generally opportunistic Glory Seekers The Hunt is all important and ritualized having the honor of going into a sector that is not mantis controlled to hunt and take trophies well that is something to be proud of and also a reason to attack and board any enemy ship that you come across now once again this translates to their ships as mentioned teleporters teleporter coming around up and because of this I can say they're tied for my favorite species with another their ships are some of my favorites in the game cuz I like boarding I like doing that Jeepers you get more scrap as said so that won't color my opinion of them at all I'm sure let's get into the ships themselves starting with the names The Gila monster is named after hodera suspectum or gila monsters venomous lizards hailing from the southwest of the United States and sran Mexico they're not really that dangerous despite being well pretty venomous and honestly they're little sweethearts look at them very cute the Basilisk named after a mythical lizard whose gaze could turn a man to Stone not too much to say on that name nice and simple the Theus this is named after a thought experiment the ship of Theus so the idea is if you have a ship and over time you replace every single board on that ship right like you you replace the Mast you replace the planks you you replace everything on that ship slowly over time because it gets damaged or for whatever reason by the time there no original pieces left is that still the same ship or at what point does it become a different ship that's the long and short of it and I'm not quite sure why this ship is named as this it's not like its layout is the same as the prior two ships it does have a distinct layout I suppose its coloring is a little similar to the Basilisk I don't know maybe it's just because it's the alternate for man mantis border that's interesting tell me down in the comments if you know because I sure as hell don't Oh and before we get to their ship's unique gimmick as I keep talking about I want to introduce you to the the standard ship array this is here so I'm not too redundant a certain comment was complaining about it I got maybe mildly annoyed by his initial comment but upon thinking on it yeah this makes it so I talk less and do less editing so not a bad idea basically I take the Castro and it's basic stats and I'm going to assume that every ship has these stats Shield 2 Engine 2 oxygen 1 weapons 3 Med 1 pilot 1 sensors one doors one and 16 fuel if there's any deviation from this I'll mention it but if I don't mention a specific system just refer back to this I'll have it on screen when needed now every single mantis ship has teleporters and this allows you to send your crew members over to board enemy vessels it's generally not a wise idea to send them into drones as there is no oxygen on their ships and no one to beat up you can send as much crew over as there are telepads available and you can retrieve up to four crew members at a time teleporting them back to your ship even if you know they can't fit into the room you can teleport mind controlled crew from a hostile ship to yours although I've never seen if you can actually teleport them when mind controlled over to the enemy ship zultan Shields a block teleportation which is a pain unless you get the zolon shield bypass augmentation also cloaking will prevent hostile crew from teleporting onto or from the Hostile ship if your crew is left on an enemy ship when making an FTL jump they're going to be lost permanently even if you have a clone Bay which really sucks it generally gives you a little warning so just be a little careful with that and also there's quite a few teleporter blue event options so oh right and every upgrade to the system reduces the cool down time so at level one it takes 20 seconds seconds to cool down before being used at level two 15 seconds and at level three 10 seconds Jeepers and with that mouthful it's time to get on to the ships themselves layout a this warship is designed to enhance its crew for close combat missions The Gila monster starting crew three mantis one NG starting reactor seven notable systems no sensors none at all weapons one and teleporter one starting weapons small bomb basic laser starting augmentation mantis pheromone and notable starting resources 16 missiles to unlock this ship you need to complete the legendary Thief [Music] kazas Kaz kazak kazak ple Kik Jeepers random event alternatively you can defeat the rebel Flagship with the zultan cruiser this ship is baby's first border and it's pretty good when it comes to that one NG to stay aboard and pilot the ship and an encouragement to upgrade that teleporter with the three mantis crew and having three mantis to start with is bloody brilliant cuz mantis are great at boarding oh combine that with mantis pheromones which I haven't even talked about mantis pheromones increase your cruise movement speed by 25% and with the Mantis already large movement speed bonus as well they're going to be zipping I actually had a Legendary Run with this ship not too long ago I had three engin and all the rest of the crew were mantis I even had the legendary Thief himself Kaz kazak pleth Kik kazak pleth k cuz it cuz it you know his name in any case I finally discovered what that small Laser's for if only I had it so I could blow up the Rebel Ship Without sacrificing a mantis uh in any case it doesn't have sensors which kind of sucks but you can always guess where enemy crew are generally there's going to be one at the very least in piloting or the engines so just teleport him in there start doing damage really I don't have too much to say on this the Mantis ships are really about one thing and boarding is pretty simple layout B this warship encourages sending massive boarding parties and keeping strong defense the Basilisk start crew two mantis starting reactor 11 notable system differences Shields four engine one teleporter one weapons one and it's a weak system 40 scrap to upgrade and drones three starting drones boarding drone defense drone one starting augmentation mantis pheromones starting resources 15 drone parts to unlock layout B earn two two of the three mantis Cruiser achievements goody goody gumdrops the first appearance of the fourman teleporter this is great being able to teleport four of your crew over at once into a big room means that you're going to absolutely annihilate all of the crew if there's less than four well they're and if there are four generally most of them aren't mantis so your mantis will pick off the crew members early and then help their fellows along with that too the drones the defense drone is great it pairs well with the level two Shields to keep weapons from hitting your ship while the crew is boarding and along with that too if they don't have any missiles send the boarding drone over it helps a lot early on considering you only have two crew members total gives the enemies either something to distract them or something to harass their systems and generally break them while they're busy fighting off your crew members this ship is incredible you can get huge you can get large you can get massive boarding parties late game four mantis teleporting in at once M oh lovely beautiful that is what we want to see once again This ship's nice and simple not much to say about it other than I love sending my guys over to the enemy layout C with a large teleporter and weapons designed to imped enemy crew this ship is deadly in the hands of a capable boarding party default name the Theus starting crew one NG one mantis and one lenius starting reactor 8 notable starting systems clone of one replacing the medbay teleporter one and weapons 2 starting weapons Crystal lockdown bomb stun bomb starting augmentation mantis pheromones starting resources 20 missiles to unlock this ship reach Sector 8 with mantis Cruiser B and advanced Edition content enabled this ship is interesting now four-man teleporter gun is great I don't want to wait for weapons to charge up I I want to send my crew over immediately and the potential for that is absolutely epic because you have aanus and that means you can do the cool boarding Strat of draining oxygen it does take a little while even if you teleport right into their O2 area and along with that you want to make sure your mantis friend doesn't die of oxygen starvation though if he does you can just clone him with your level two clone Bay clone him nice and quick and if it's hit once well guess what it's a a okay he won't die This ship's nice and Nifty kind of a send over and forget kind of ship while you focus on the weapons cuz they're not weak unlike the Basilisk I'll have more to talk about with this ship in the ranking section speaking of the ranking section The Gila monster this ship has a great starting crew it is literally everything a mantis ship could ask for three mantis and one NG perfect that's great that really really encourages you to upgrade your teleporter so you can start sending more and more boarding crew over I know it doesn't have sensors but eh like I said earlier you're going to know they're probably going to be in the piloting or the engine room they're not strictly necessary though they are nice the weapons are subpar and that's to be expected with any mantis ship because they focus on boarding though I will say the small bomb can be useful early game for destroying clone Bay or Med Bay cuz let's be honest you're going to have a tough time destroying the ship without those destroyed and you don't want your crew member to die you know trying to take it out while fighting off an enemy what I'm getting at these these really don't need to be that great they can be upgraded later and in the hands of a capable boarding Party The Gila monster can do very very well so with that in mind I think the Gila monster deserves a low a because there are better boarding ships I'm going to be quite honest but this one it is solid it is very good the Basilisk all right level two Shields right and a defense drone nothing is going to hurt your ship for the first two sectors two mantis and a boarding drone the boarding drone's great for help early game although the enemy may just ignore it and go for your mantis so it's kind of a wasted drone part in some scenarios but but the two mantis and the four-man teleporter this ship has great potential I would say it has the best potential to be the the greatest boarding ship in FTL the fact that you're going to get to the point where you can send fourman boarding parties over and later if you're actually insane enough to do so eight man boarding parties once you get that teleporter upgraded it does have a weakened weapon system fine fine but boarding that's what these ships are about boarding it's capacity to annihilate enemy crew should you get lucky enough to fill up on all mantis or a mix of mantis and Rockman combined with defenses makes this an amazing ship probably probably tied for my favorite ship in the entire game this is an easy s tier SS s front of s great ship the thesis now here's the key you can do the cool Strat of draining enemy oxygen and killing them that way along with you know punch them to death however lenus are hard to get and not to mention most of your crew is going to die from a lack of oxygen also along with that the Clone Bay is great level two is very good but if it's hit and goes down that's not good that's priority number one to fix along with that having your crew heal in between fights is really difficult level two helps but unless you get like a reconstructive teleport augmentation that's a little a little rough cuz you don't want to kill the Mantis after every fight because then you know he loses his combat potential true a lot of people just you know s stick him in like no oxygen just to finish him off so he can be back at full health but that's that's very inefficient I don't like that and even with the NG crew member the defense of the ship is not great especially coming off of the amazing basilisk as well as its bombs they're very situational I hardly ever use stun bombs I'm sure there are situations where I have used them eh and the Crystal lock down bombs they have their uses like trapping enemy crew in rooms so they can't get to the med Bay or locking off the Clone Bay so your crew members can just destroy it and then puppy guard it so you know they can't fix it I generally just sell them you need to get crew quickly with this ship it's probably the more clunky of the Mantis ships because of its combined traits as with the previous ship if you can get a large crew base this ship can be insane although compared to the Basilisk I find that I die way more often early game with the thesias and have to restart however I have had many amazing runs I beat the rebel Flagship probably six times with this ship uh and probably more so with the Basilisk see that's the thing I keep comparing it to the Basilisk it will never be as good as the Basilisk so with that I say it's in low B tier it has a lot of potential but it's start is definitely not as good as the other two mantis ships and with that I'd like to thank you all for watching in any case as always I have some exciting stuff planned so I hope to see you all in the next video

Channel: Sideshow Sam

Views: 4,323

Keywords: FTL, Faster Than Light, Rougelike, Real time strategy, RTS, Space, Sifi, Firefly, Star wars, Galactic republic, republic, engi, FTL faster than light, space ship, space, nebula, crew, game, video game, manage, repair, asteroid, crew management, 2012, subset games, great game, cool dude, sunglasses, blonde, powerful, emotional, science fiction, management, human, humans, jokes, bad jokes, oxygen, shield, shields, engine, ship, ship combat, combat, medical bay, teleport, teleporter, melee, mantis, bug, boarding, board

Id: pROSN50LICY

Length: 16min 45sec (1005 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2024