There have been significant changes to boarding in 3.0:
Xenon_Slayer wrote:Hi all,
I'm looking into the reported problems with boarding. As you can see, there have been some rather drastic changes in RC1 and I'll highlight the main points below to hopefully shed some light on any problems your having or any issues left with the feature.
The major changes include:
- The removal of Veteran and Elite marines from traders. You can only acquire recruits
- Marines can now die during a boarding mission, even if it ends in success (with lower level marines having a higher chance of dying)
- Surviving marines have a chance of being promoted to Veteran and Elite
- The 'boarding resistance' of a target is visible in its info menu
- The strength difference between the different types of marines is now greater
The boarding resistance is the new major factor. Previously, the strength of a boarded target was based on if it was a L or XL sized ship. Now, it is similar to how the sell price is calculated.
So that includes:
- The base worth of the ship
- The current hull value
- The state of surface elements
- The drones on board
With 50 recruit marines and a decent Marine Commander, you can expect to be boarding L sized freighters/miners once their surface elements are mostly gone and hull is below 50%.
Damage the ship more and you increase the survivability of your marines in a trade off for the value of the ship.
After a successful boarding, you may have lost some marines but some may have been promoted so after acquiring replacements, the overall capability will be higher for the next boarding. You'll be able to board bigger ships or have ships be less damaged.
Hopefully that info will let us know if there's a problem with the balancing.
As such, I thought I would take a look at the script code and update this thread.
Boarding Phase
There are exactly 5 rounds and if your number of marines is reduced to 3 or less you lose.
Per Round
First, if you
fail Yisha's mission you immediately lose 15-25% of your marines, regardless of your attack power. (There is no positive benefit to passing the mission other than no automatic losses.)
Next, your current (updated for losses) attack power AT is calculated:
AT = (R*0.5 + V*1.5 + E*5.0)*MO
Where:
R,V,E are the current number of Rookie, Veteran, and Elite marines
MO is a value between 0.01 and 1.01 representing your officer's skill. A 5 star officer is 1.01 while a 4 star is should be around 0.81.
The enemies boarding resistance BR can be seen in the detail menu for target ship. It is calculated internally so the exact formula is currently unknown (except for what is stated in the quote above).
If
your AT is more than 10 over his BR, you win the round with
no losses.
If his BR is more than 10 over your AT, you suffer (16*BR/AT)% to (18*BR/AT)% losses.
If your AT and his BR are within 10 of each other, you have a ((BR-AT+10)*5)% chance of suffering 5-10% losses (otherwise, no losses).
Losses
The loss percentage is applied to the current number of marines. For each loss, a marine is selected to kill in the following way:
1) The different classes of marines (Mk1, Mk2, Mk3) present are gathered.
2) One of the classes are selected, with lower Mk being more likely (the exact probability distribution is not known)
3) A marine in the class is killed
After Success
The ship ownership is transferred and a "boarded signal" is sent. (This signal appears to be handled internally, so I have no idea about things like reputation loss in open space.)
Each surviving marine has a chance at promotion. A rookie has a 25% chance of becoming a veteran. A veteran has a 2% chance of becoming an elite.
The officer may level (increasing his boarding skill only).
Comments
It has been noted in other topics that BR counts drones with no discrimination of type. So utility drones (e.g., cargo) count equal to combat drones. This tends to give freighters and miners absurdly high BR values until the drone bay is destroyed.
It appears doing Yisha's missions is no longer optional. I guess someone at Egosoft got mad that we were all skipping the missions they put so much work into...
The maximum possible attack power is 50*5*1.01=252.5.
The number of marines of each type doesn't matter when calculating losses, but whether each type is present does. So, if you have room, always have some rookies on board to sacrifice.
Unlike before, the target's BR doesn't change over the course of the boarding. However, losses do reduce your AT, (significantly) increasing the change of losing later rounds. As such, suffering minor or moderate losses is nearly impossible. It's either no losses or massive losses/failure.
A 5 star officer with 50 rookies has AT=25.25, while a 5 star/50 veteran crew has AT=75.75. So training up your marines quickly is important. This means your first target must have BR < 15.25 (if possible?). Thus, with no losses, you will gain roughly 12 veterans and your AT increases to about 37.9. If the BR is any higher than this, you will suffer massive losses and only gain a few veterans. So finding a soft first target is also critical.
TL;DR
To suffer no losses, calculate your AT as above and subtract 10. Destroy the target's drone bay and damage the hull (or other surface components) until the displayed BR is less than this number. Also, you should not skip/fail any of Yisha's missions.