Sulla did put Slug C 10th, and while I'd certainly drop Fed A below it you can kind of shuffle the rest of the stuff in that tier area. Starting with systems is valuable, and hacking is the best/most versatile in the game.
MC is weaker than cloaking or hacking but cheaper and doesn't consume resources in compensation. You can use it as boarding bait, but it's also useful to screw with evasion, deny repairs, or crew kill RFS by shooting into a crowd of enemies it causes in shields. Forcing a fight between two AI crew attempting to put out fires is great - they let it spread and take damage from it.
Most often with Lanius B you can board and fire flak while moving room to room - this causes AI crew to pull its pilot and tank evasion w/o MC. MC can be used to overwhelm defending crew depending on numbers from there or shield bait like you say. In most cases I'd fire flak at weapons or med bay, but you can use it to damage enemy crew also. Advance flak also allows for some pretty ridiculous damage output against 2-3 shield bubbles even with 4 power or less, so this often turns into a good gunship/boarding hybrid.
Rock B really is kind of bad, though obviously better than A. Without crew TP (can use micro tricks like above to screw evasion and bomb weapons, then stand in weapon room), fire bombs need a combination like cloaking + hacking + MC to be worth your time. Without those, they charge slowly, can miss, and many enemy crews will put out the fires between shots. The important thing in this game is to win without taking hull damage or losing crew, with killing enemy crew preferred but secondary. Fire bombs with that much support can burn out a hacked weapon room and MC the enemies to death as fire spreads, giving you good/consistent rewards without risk at the price of one missile. But Rock B doesn't start with any of that, and it's unusually vulnerable itself owing to no venting (unless you breach yourself
) + slow crew. The flexibility to transition to boarding or gunship (heavy pierce is decent as a follow-up weapon) + starting with vendor loot augment keep it out of the bottom tier, but Sulla's placement of it is fair IMO.
MC is weaker than cloaking or hacking but cheaper and doesn't consume resources in compensation. You can use it as boarding bait, but it's also useful to screw with evasion, deny repairs, or crew kill RFS by shooting into a crowd of enemies it causes in shields. Forcing a fight between two AI crew attempting to put out fires is great - they let it spread and take damage from it.
Most often with Lanius B you can board and fire flak while moving room to room - this causes AI crew to pull its pilot and tank evasion w/o MC. MC can be used to overwhelm defending crew depending on numbers from there or shield bait like you say. In most cases I'd fire flak at weapons or med bay, but you can use it to damage enemy crew also. Advance flak also allows for some pretty ridiculous damage output against 2-3 shield bubbles even with 4 power or less, so this often turns into a good gunship/boarding hybrid.
Rock B really is kind of bad, though obviously better than A. Without crew TP (can use micro tricks like above to screw evasion and bomb weapons, then stand in weapon room), fire bombs need a combination like cloaking + hacking + MC to be worth your time. Without those, they charge slowly, can miss, and many enemy crews will put out the fires between shots. The important thing in this game is to win without taking hull damage or losing crew, with killing enemy crew preferred but secondary. Fire bombs with that much support can burn out a hacked weapon room and MC the enemies to death as fire spreads, giving you good/consistent rewards without risk at the price of one missile. But Rock B doesn't start with any of that, and it's unusually vulnerable itself owing to no venting (unless you breach yourself
) + slow crew. The flexibility to transition to boarding or gunship (heavy pierce is decent as a follow-up weapon) + starting with vendor loot augment keep it out of the bottom tier, but Sulla's placement of it is fair IMO.