Another reason zoltan are S tier : if you have two of them on shields, that shield bubble is IMMUNE to ion damage.

Slugs make the best pilots because a piloting system is affected most by the sudden loss of a controlling crew member. Sheild guy mind controlled? Ten percent difference. Pilot mind controlled? Between fifty and a hundred percent reduction depending on how upgraded your autopilot is

The best way to use Lanius in my opinion is to use them to destroy O2 rooms in a boarding action, then send them around the other ship sucking the O2 out of vital rooms, they are practically unique in this style of boarding

The slug tier placement confuses me because they're basically straight upgrades to humans apart from the almost negligible 10% faster skills. Way more blue events, being able to guarantee pilot won't be mind controlled... Honestly, I'd totally rather take multiple slugs over a human unless I'm buying them from a shop and have to pay the price difference

Slug are essentially humans with mind powers. A tier plox
They have exactly the same ship board abilities as humans do besides the faster training which you mentioned was not a big deal. their immunity to MC and life scan abilities makes upgrading sensor systems unnecessary, saving scrap. And they have more blue events.

Sectors tier list?

22:00
If you have drone recovery arm, use the hull repair drone, and jump after getting a few heals, you will gain the drone used and keep the health healed. Broken.

I gotta put Zoltans in A, moving them around always ends up wrecking my power grid & I've ended up not noticing I'm down a layer of shields or one of my weapons is offline for a couple seconds because of them

The slug/human thing exposes a weakness in the tier system. Given a choice of recruits, if I have no slugs, I'm taking a slug over a human every single time; if I have at least one slug, then I'm taking humans. Which ends up higher tier when you take that into account depends on whether you think you're more likely to be considering your second slug or your first.

Lanius are absolutely amazing because of AI behavior. Use them for area denial. When boarding, they quickly cause the enemy to abandon the room, leaving you to munch on the system (no weapons for you folks!). They're also amazing for boarding defense because they discourage enemies from attacking critical systems. They're worth at least A tier.

Rocks are terrible firefighters. They may not take damage while putting out fires, but it takes them a long time to get to the fire and they only put it out at normal speed, so your system takes MORE damage than if you had sent any other race to help. Because Engies move at normal speed and put out fires twice as fast, they're by far the best firefighters in the game. Similarly, the slow Rock movement speed means they're not good at chasing boarders. They are, however, the best anchors in the game when no Lanius is available, particularly as a pilot. They keep your evasion up with their ability to hold out for a long time under fire/in combat. I would never take more than one Rockman unless I'm going for fire boarding. C tier for me.

Slugs have a lot of blue events (and some of those are critical), which by itself is worth B tier in my opinion.

Offensive drones are not good for damage because you can't aim manually and they often shoot rooms that don't matter. Combat drones are better than beam drones because they help your weapons get through shields.

Hull repair drone is easily S tier if you get it in an event or in an early shop, the free 3 HP repair without spending a drone part every jump will save you so much scrap and being able to patch up between flagship stages is also super useful.

1) The bonus scrap you get for boarding needs to be considered.  I only destroy a ship that I cannot board successfully.  So I value Mantis more than you do, and I devalue Engi much more, usually keeping at most 1 for doors or sensors to run around for repairs.    2) Lannis can board drones and get massive combat experience doing so.

System repair drone is a trooper, I don't NEED one on my runs, but I'm always happy to get one. I've had one carry me through the fire and flames of the flagship at least twice, its a champ at fixing breached oxygen rooms. Its also common to be the drone included when buying the system if your ship doesnt start with it.

I would say Slug is at minimum B tier, if not actually A tier. Your points about stacking them is valid, however they're strictly superior in every way to a human, barring the xp gains which, as you said, are minimal at best. It might not be enough better to bump them up a tier, but they should, at a minimum, be at the same tier as Human. A single slug can be quite a useful crew member, especially as your pilot.

The boarder drone is fucking terrifying.

Kestrel, almost to the end. One proceeds to land and distract 4 of my crew inbetween a round of heals, in my damn shield room.

After I kill it, it then comes back in my engines, before I die to missiles.

I argue the system repair drone is actually S tier
A) Cheap
B) Can go into dangerous environments for normal crew
C) Low power consumption
D) Doesn't have to be permanently powered, you can keep it unpowered and when one of your vital systems gets damaged you can reroute the power to the drone for repairs
E) Only requires one drone part to create and won't be destroyed by jumping.

Only downside is they're kinda dumb and have gone into rooms with borders only to get fucking yeeted.

The thing about anti-drone drone is, it can stop the most annoying drone in the game, the hacking drone (provided that you remember to activate your drone before the enemy's hits you). It really helps with the flagship's first stage as well, because of this.

Slug's are not C teir. Slug pilots are THE BEST because when they pilot they cannot be mind-controlled. You only need 1 however.

12:12 the anti drone is an S tier because it gets rid of the annoying drones in phase 2 which makes it almost entirely harmless, especially if you get two

Real talk I would definitely watch a music tier list. Be interesting to see a tier list with all A's and S's.

Mantis are A tier, they can run a minor system like security and ditch it at any point to save your other crew when you're boarded by an enemy