For a gunship + teleporter build you have a few roles you want to fill:
So how many of each role? It's different at different ship levels, and depending on what crew you pull out of your gas draws, you can vary it a lot. Below level 5, it really makes no difference because you don't have the teleporter. But what worked for me was:
| Ship Level | 5 | 6 | 7/8 | 9/10/11 | +Extra Bedrooms |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Max crew* | 6 | 8 | 12 | 15 | 24 |
| Boarders | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 |
| Rushers | 2 | 2 | 3 | 4-5 | 4-5 |
| Gunners | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4-5 | 6-8 |
| Defender | 0-1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 5 |
| Repairers | - | - | - | 0-2 | 3 |
(*You can get more crew than what's listed in the table by buying extra bedrooms from daily sales. They're the best bang for your BUX so always save to get them!)
Rushers vs Gunners: Conveniently some of the best rush screw are also some of the best gunner crew. This allows you to effectively double dip. Alien McAlienface or Paralympic God are great examples - one crew that excels at two roles. Where possible getting these multi-purpose crew is usually a great addition and should be prioritised. Two jobs for the price of 1 crew slot.
Repair Crew: Usually you don't actually need any repair specific crew (hence the dashes in the table). You can get by with your gunners, rushes and defender crew that also repair your ship. This is especially true at level 1-6 when you don't have many crew so everybody will need to pitch in repairing. At all levels though you still need crew members repairing your ship, so everybody on your ship should eventually help repairing no matter their initial role.
There are two lists. The first is 3 star (Unique) gas draw crew that you can get a limited amount of per day. The 2nd list is the top ranked crew out of all possible crew in the game, but these guys are really hard to get without serious time and/or BUX. The lists are ordered by their score for each job. Remember though that these aren't the only crew that will work, this is just the top 5 based on my maths. There are plenty of crew who will fit into each role that aren't listed below. Feel free to go look at the full crew list yourself.
These crew you can get by spending Gas in the crew section of the shop. Who you get is random and you can only try 12 times per day. You will also get 1 and 2 star Common/Elite crew, but they will never have an ability so they're worthless and should be fired. Keep firing crew and drawing new ones until you get what you want!
Best in the entire game - don't expect to actually get these guys without a lot of effort and time!
None of this works without decent room and crew AI. Your boarders need AI to teleport to the enemy ship, your weapons need AI to target the right rooms and the rest of your crew need AI to repair any damage your take. Below is everything you need for Gunship+Teleporter AI. For a more general overview of how AI works, see Pixel Perfect's AI Intro.
This section is split into two sub-sections, room AI and crew AI.
First - power your teleporter and your shields! Just give them both maximum power like so:
Next get all your weapons to focus fire the same room. We want to do maximum damage to a room that our boarders won't be in. To do maximum damage you need all weapons firing at the same room. For this guide, set all weapons (including missiles) to hit their Android Studio, if that doesn't exist default to a random laser room.
Read the Pixel Perfect's guide on focus fire to understand how this logic works if needed.
If you spot a really juicy unarmored room like bolter or security gate, don't be afraid to manually target it with all your weapons.
Missile AI is exactly the game as all other wapon AI except you also pick which missile to shoot.
First missile launcher should fire Rockets. They're cheap and do all types of damage and are generally excellent to spam. If I notice there is an excess of crew in the room I'm targeting I will manually change this to fire Junglers until the defenders are mostly dead, then swap back.
Your second missile launcher should fire Scarlets. These do damage but also help block repairing (as the defending crew have to put out the fire before they can repair). Once no more defending crew are trying to repair, I manually swap this back to Rockets.
Lots of people try to EMP specific rooms like the TP or Hangar - personally I don't find that very effective. If my opponent has good rush crew, then they will board/spawn fighters before my EMP gets there anyway. And if their rush crew sucks then they're not a danger to me and can be ignored. Either way EMP doesn't really help and reduces my damage output significantly. It's much more effective to try to kill your opponent faster than it is to defend something poorly.
Your 3 boarders will target critical rooms your weapons are ignoring - shields and reactors. Since your weapons will be targeting their android studio (or random laser room), it isn't necessary or safe to have a boarder also target weapons. Getting the shields and/or reactors offline is much more impactful to the outcomes so it's worth sending them there.
Your first and best 1 or 2 boarder(s) should take our their shield room. No shields makes all your weapons far more effective. These guy don't move, they defend the shield room till victory or death. With a decently levelled Zombie, he should kill at least 2 if not more enemy crew. The goal is to have the shields offline for as much of the battle as possible.
Once no more defenders are trying to repair their shield room, feel free to manually move shield boarders around once you're certain the shields will stay offline (this will happen regularly against no-AI opponents).
If you have 3+ boarders you can also send one to your secondary target - reactors. Reactors are hard to kill and often well defended with explosives so this is a long shot play to hopefully to reduce your incoming damage a little and to distract repair crews. Since there will be more than 1 reactor, boarders with this AI will run around between all the enemy reactors and hopefully draw repairing crew away from the room being focus fired. Because of the regular reactor defence though, expect this guy to die regularly. As long as your first few boarders took out their shields, you're still in a great place if this guy explodes.
(*With manual controls it is possible to make your boarder run into a room with explosives, then immediately run out before they explode to set them off but not take any damage - the downside is you're then stuck manually controlling that guy for the rest of the battle.)
Put your first boarder right in your Teleporter room along with your two best rush crew. Since only 3 crew can fit in the Teleporter at one time, this guarantees that boarder will go first. Put your other boarders in an adjacent room. Once there is space in the TP, they then won't have to walk far. Something like this:
Once you unlock Python 2, you can get tell your boarder to come home when they're low health. This is really great when you're trying to level them as they'll teleport back to your ship before they die, keeping them alive to gain XP if you win. Recommended if you have access to it.
You want 2 rush crew in your Teleporter to start (to rush the first boarder across to their shield room), then the rest of your rush crew in a weapon room (Plasma Discharger is a nice choice):
Read up on cool Rush AI on PPG. Above works for me. While you have full shields (for the first second or two before any shots are fired) stay in the teleporter room and rush it. Then get out (once they've used their rush ability they're no help just standing in the teleporter room) and go to the missile room until your ship is damaged, then heal stuff.
For gunner rush crew it's much easier - just delete the 2nd line. Rush whatever room their in (then when your ship is low on HP start help repairing).
Gunner AI is the same as rusher AI just without the rush ability:
This is for a gunner with the First Aid skill - once you've taken damage heal yourself. Otherwise just hang out in the laser room (or missiles) till your ship is pretty badly damaged, then go help repair.
Defenders run to where the enemies are.
This AI requires some Python3 commands (Friendly room has enemy crew). If you're below ship level 9, you'll have to ask someone in your fleet to post a crew with this command for you to borrow. You can then copy it's AI and paste it into your own crew member.
Once you have that command, the rest of the logic is fairly simple. Run to the room, attack/gas anyone as you can, then go repair other stuff. If nothing else is happening hang out somewhere.
Repairers are very simple - just go where there is damage.
This is for a crew member with the First Aid or Healing Rain skill - once you've taken damage heal yourself. If there is any damaged room, go repair it, otherwise hang out in the laser room.
You'll eventually want to split your crew into "waves" so only some crew repair at the start, and other wait till you've taken some damage to repair. Please read Pixel Perfect's guide to Repair AI for much more in-depth look at this.
You can get REALLY complicated with AI, but what is above will work just fine even without going crazy. You don't need complex to be better than 80% of players and make progress.