Basket takes out the Mantis Cruiser for the first time, on Normal with Advanced Edition content enabled. The ship is The Gila Monster: a crew teleporter, a small bomb ("which doesn't actually hurt the ship"), a Basic Laser and the Mantis Pheromones augmentation. The plan is to send the crew over and fight on the enemy's deck. The run takes three parts and two games. The first crew is lost in Sector 1, and the second Gila Monster is destroyed in Sector 5.
Part 1: Out of air, and a restart
The first crew is three Mantis, Chriz, Bomfy M and Borman, and an Engi, Atreyu. Basket reads out the Mantis achievements before starting, among them killing five enemy crew in one fight without taking hull damage.
Sector 1 is a Civilian Sector. The boarding plan works early. Basket bombs an enemy's weapons, teleports two crew over and clears the ship. "I just got some achievement," Basket says. Another fight brings "a cool weapon" that fires several missiles for the cost of one.
Then a Pirate Interceptor starts a fire, the weapons go down, and Basket realizes "I don't have any ship sensors." Basket works the doors against the fire, and then: "I took out all the air and our O2 is down." The game-over screen reads "All crewmembers have died," score 270.
Basket starts again with the same ship and a new crew: Shelton, Phillips and King (Mantis) and Xin Xin (Engi). Rebekah, a Rockman, joins soon after, and Basket pays ten scrap to delay the Rebels. The part ends at a store with too little scrap to buy anything.
Part 2: Stun Bomb, Pegasus and Mind Control
Basket picks the Engi Controlled Sector for Sector 2, hoping to kill "a bunch of crew." A Mantis Fighter teleports boarders in, and Basket lets them go without air before sending the crew back at its weapons. The win pays out a Stun Bomb ("stuns for 15 seconds"). The next fight adds a Pegasus Missile, which "shoots two missiles that do two damage each," though Basket notes "everything we're doing is taking a lot of missiles."
A distress beacon gives a free crew member, Willow, and a store sells Drone Control with a Defense Drone I. Sector 3 is Engi Controlled too. Basket beams a damaged ship's crew aboard instead of saving their ship ("I like more crew"), and Ma Fan joins. At the last store Basket wanted a laser and found a Hull Beam, so the scrap goes to Mind Control, the ship's final system slot: "now we're broke." A convoy offers a reactor upgrade for fuel and supplies, and Basket declines.
Part 3: Low on fuel
Part 3 opens at the jump to Sector 4, "very low on fuel." An Engi ship carrying a virus costs the crew Ma Fan, and a crew member named Virus joins after the fight. A civilian ship offers one more crew member, and Basket dismisses Rebekah to make room. The Stun Bomb is sold for a Combat Drone I.
For Sector 5, Basket passes on a Slug nebula ("slugs are scary") and takes the Rebel Controlled Sector. A long fight with a hacking ship ends in a win, and Basket reads out an achievement: "kill five enemy crew in a fight without taking hull damage or losing a crew member." "Well we got one of the achievements, that's good."
Fuel runs out beacon by beacon, three, then two, then one. The last fight is a Mantis Assault in a nebula, with the hull critical and the fuel gauge reading NO FUEL. Basket uses Mind Control and the bomb, then: "Oh no! This bomb did too much damage."
How it ended
The Gila Monster is destroyed. The game-over screen reads "One last explosion marks your fate as your ship is torn apart," score 1836. The last crew list before it shows Shelton, King, Xin Xin, Willow, Felicity, Virus and Berko. The Top Scores screen lists both games, 1836 in Sector 5 and 270 in Sector 1. Basket plans to fly this ship again "because I want to unlock the next one."
