What are the easiest ways to deal with AI ships when playing as the Mantis Cruiser?

Perhaps the biggest weakness of the Mantis Cruiser (Type A, anyway) is its inability to deal effectively with AI ships. Before Advanced Edition, the general advice was to either improve your weaponry, or use an upgraded teleporter to board the enemy ship and save your boarders just before they suffocate.

Advanced Edition has added several new weapons and systems. Do any of these offer a viable alternative? I'm loathe to spend large amounts of scrap upgrading my weapons, and playing leapfrog with crew seems extremely risky.

One way of looking at it is that the Mantis A is designed for boarding, and has already "spent" scrap on that strategy. Spending further scrap on upgrading weapons to a level where they can take down AI ships seems extremely wasteful, because if you're going to use weapons that powerful, why play as Mantis in the first place?

Basically, I'm looking for a strategy that will allow me to forego upgrading the weakened weapons system if at all possible; otherwise, I'm hoping there's a 1-power weapon in AE that can perform a bit better than the hopeless loadout the ship starts with.

Related: How to destroy AI ships without weapons?

Solution 1:

One option is to look for the Emergency Respirators augment. It's reasonably cheap, and halves the damage your crew take from lack of oxygen, meaning they can last a reasonable amount of time in an oxygen-free environment. You shouldn't be too worried about "playing leapfrog" with your crew, since whenever you send in boarders they're always going to take damage from something; suffocation is just a different cause. Indeed, the Fregatidae-class Federation Cruiser comes with this augment and a teleporter as standard, and I've successfully beamed Zoltan aboard oxygen-free ships and brought them back alive. That particular ship, however, is more than slightly insane, so don't be too eager to replicate its strategies.

Also, following 5pike's comment, the reconstructive teleport augment can be immensely useful here by completely healing your boarding party every time they beam somewhere, meaning that the usual problem associated with having a clonebay is largely nullified.

You could also start looking for some Lanius crewmen to add to your boarding party, who will of course be completely immune to the effects of low oxygen.

Finally, you might want to look into picking up a clonebay. Rather than bringing back suffocating boarders, just let them die and clone some more!

Solution 2:

What's already answered are good strategies, but you don't need special augments, crew or systems: with a level 2 teleporter you can beam, damage 1 or 2 (with mantises) bars of a system, and return the assault team just in time before they die. You can't do this for the last point of damage though, so you should go for the shields at some point.