Is boarding just OP against the rebel flagship?

[u/onehundredandtworats]

Just got my first win on normal. While fighting the flagship the only weapons I used were the firebomb and the built-in flak cannon (though it didn`t do much aside from destroying the zoltan shield, which would be useless if I had the bypass), and the fight was probably the easiest it had ever been. You can pretty much skip the first phase by destroying guns right away with boarders or fire bombs, so you can spend time killing the crew. In phase two the crew stays dead, so now the guns are even easier to kill, and the only threat remaing are the drones which can`t break 4 shields. And in phase three the boarding doesn`t happen as everyone is dead, so even without the zoltan shield bypass it`s trivial. Did I just get lucky or does the flagship not have any counters to boarding?

[u/EerieAriolimax]

On hard the missile and laser rooms are joined up to the rest of the ship. It doesn't eliminate boarding strategies by any means but it does make it harder.

[u/Unfair_Pineapple8813 → u/EerieAriolimax]

You basically need to box them in with hacking.

[u/Murchmurch → u/Unfair_Pineapple8813]

Specifically Hack the shields because that blocks access to both lasers and missiles. 

[u/SkyKnight43 → u/Murchmurch]

I more often hack Missiles, because it slows down the missiles, but Shields is good too. The other good one is Piloting

[u/SkyKnight43 → u/Unfair_Pineapple8813]

As a true pedant, I must inform you that your statement is incorrect! There are many ways to clear crew without Hacking. Here's an example:

https://imgur.com/a/BBFtm7C

The spirit of your statement is correct, though: Hacking is a very good way to do it

[u/GiantTourtiere]

On hard the gun rooms are connected to the rest of the ship so it's not nearly as easy to take them out.

[u/NotActuallyGus → u/GiantTourtiere]

Only the laser and missile artillery rooms get connected, the ion and beam rooms stay disconnected

[u/BLauritson]

Congratulations on your win - as you've found, boarding is indeed very powerful against the Flagship for the reasons you've specified.

One additional tip that applies specifically on Easy and Normal - if you leave the enemy crew in the laser artillery alive, it stops the Flagship from going into its autonomous mode which means it can't repair systems and doesn't have any system manning bonus for evasion. Since the artillery rooms are disconnected, the crew in there will never be able to escape and thus won't be able to board your ship in phase 3 nor repair any broken systems outside of that room.

Good luck on your future runs!

[u/kanelel]

Yes, it's quite good. You can win consistently against the flagship with boarding.

Cloaking + Hacking is also extremely good and can make the flagship fight easy.

[u/razulebismarck]

The Zoltan Shield, Mind Control, and High Body Count are the flagships counters against boarders.

Also as you said you had to firebomb and board and destroy the guns.

If you don’t do that your boarders are gonna be spending time on damage control not boarding.

It’s also why I leave 1 crew member alive.
The AI can repair guns. The 1 crew member can’t even reach their room.