"Fly By Boarding" (Video)

[LughC]

It's more fun not to is a reason it needs to be fixed not a reason it should be kept.

Just because I find it more fun to use a different approach does not mean everyone should be forced to play the same way I do. Know of people who do find it fun to fly the XL's. Think they should have the option of doing boarding with their favourite ships too.

As far as risk reward and time invested it is by far the best way to go about not just getting ships but making money from early game all the way until the start of the late game when you have a massive station network.

Again - freedom of choice is the important element here as far as I'm concerned. Personally only do boarding if it's ships I want to keep (e.g. during my ZYA Split game I stole a considerable number of Argon warships for my demolition fleet), or if one of the factions offers me a mission to steal a ship from one of their rivals. In the latter case the rep & mission rewards are more important to me than the value of the ship. Problem with using boarding purely to raise cash is that I need to be there. Prefer to get the bulk of my cash passively, mostly from my trade fleet or from stations. Meanwhile I spend my time doing missions for the factions. However, again, other people may differ in their opinion on what constitutes fun & may prefer to spend the bulk of their time doing boarding ops instead. I have absolutely no problem if they choose to do that in an efficient manner, such as PhotonPulse's method. Particularly so if their time to play X4 is limited - getting to the later stages of the game faster using this method may be ideal for them.

You're right, balance should be secondary to player choice. They should just add a capture button right under the board option for people that don't want to deal with things like marines or combat. Just hit the button and the ships yours

[GCU Grey Area]

You're right, balance should be secondary to player choice. They should just add a capture button right under the board option for people that don't want to deal with things like marines or combat. Just hit the button and the ships yours

Wouldn't go quite that far. Should always at least be necessary to go through the motions (which frankly fly-by boarding pretty much is) & risk losing some marines in the process. Incidentally, did notice that, due to boarding pods having to approach a fully armed vessel, PhotonPulse did lose a few marines on their way to the target. Bit sloppy to lose marines at that stage, but guess that's just in the nature of the technique. Don't imagine Asgard's XL beam would be particularly good at sniping turrets anyway...

[LughC]

Wouldn't go quite that far. Should always at least be necessary to go through the motions.

Why are you cramping on player freedom? R click claim would still be a motion to go through.

[Alan Phipps]

You do know that you two are never going to convince each other? (Cue music to Frozen's 'Let it go' )

[Nanook]

Ok guys, let's not get personal, ok?

As for the topic, I've said it before and I'll say it again. The only real problem with the fly-by boarding is the fact you can do it with impunity, i.e., no rep loss. That, IMO, is just ridiculous. When the ship changes hands, to yours, there should be significant rep loss based on the size of the ship. Anything less feels, to me, like opening up a console and just giving myself the ship. I feel 'dirty'.

[Raevyan]

If only the boarding commands like disable engines, turrets etc. would actually do what they say. Then one could simply select a few ships > board and be done with it.

[GCU Grey Area]

If only the boarding commands like disable engines, turrets etc. would actually do what they say. Then one could simply select a few ships > board and be done with it.

They do, at least for Target Turrets - if I'm using a bunch of fighters to help with a boarding op I prefer to nuke engines personally to give them an easier shot at the turrets.

Main catch though with this approach is that you need to be ready to call them off (i.e. remove orders) when they've finished disarming the target. Also need to be particularly careful if you've given them missiles for the task. Missiles, particularly those with decent burst radius (e.g. Starburst), are really quite effective at smashing turrets, etc. However, just because you've recalled the fighters doesn't get rid of any missiles currently in flight.

Consequently found it's best not to have too many assistants for boarding ops - half a dozen or so can be useful, significantly more than that runs the risk of all those inbound missiles obliterating the target even after the fighters that launched them have been recalled. Guess who thoroughly overcooked the target with a swarm of 16 Starburst-armed Buzzards (2 launchers per ship + Blast Mortar as backup) the first time they tried this approach...

[grapedog]

Ok guys, let's not get personal, ok?

As for the topic, I've said it before and I'll say it again. The only real problem with the fly-by boarding is the fact you can do it with impunity, i.e., no rep loss. That, IMO, is just ridiculous. When the ship changes hands, to yours, there should be significant rep loss based on the size of the ship. Anything less feels, to me, like opening up a console and just giving myself the ship. I feel 'dirty'.

I'm in agreement with this if you were to remove the penalty for disabling the ships systems. Or have ship system disabling only applicable to the ship and/or wing being targeted, and not a faction wide rep loss. I'd be totally fine with losing a fixed amount of rep per ship size if I wasn't also losing rep just for taking out each turret and engine. That seems excessive to the spirit of the mechanic.

[GCU Grey Area]

I'm in agreement with this if you were to remove the penalty for disabling the ships systems. Or have ship system disabling only applicable to the ship and/or wing being targeted, and not a faction wide rep loss. I'd be totally fine with losing a fixed amount of rep per ship size if I wasn't also losing rep just for taking out each turret and engine. That seems excessive to the spirit of the mechanic.

Why should it make a difference to rep consequences for destroying subsystems if that's done during the course of a boarding op or in normal battle? Unless you're suggesting that the rep consequences for such actions should be removed completely? Would find it rather odd myself if it became possible to completely disarm & immobilise a ship & the owners simply didn't care. Although less so than if the rep loss became dependant on what the player was planning to do to the ship after smashing it's engines, etc (smashing engines absolutely fine if the ship's about to be boarded, but not OK if the player's intention is to destroy it).

[thijso]

My main boarding MO is to approach with my Balaur and take a scan. That tells me if I need to be careful (missile turrets are annoying if they have ammo) and if I have enough marines with enough experience.

Next step is to shoot the engines so the target is dead in the wa... space. I shoot them down to around 5-7% each, so I don't get the rep loss of destroying them. Engines stop working below 30%, but if you have a good service crew they repair it pretty fast. Also, any repair drones that show up I kill (and take the rep hit).

Next I go around and bring all the working turrets (you won't believe the number of SCA Phoenix's that fly around with all missile turrets, but no ammo) down below 10% so they stop working as well. With the Balaur this is nearly always possible without taking hits yourself, although the single smaller turrets I can just take out before my shields get below 0%, so don't really bother with taking care. If turrets give covering fire, it becomes more important to be careful, obviously...

Once the target is a sitting declawed duck, I teleport to my Barbarossa and intiate the travel drive run past. Drop the marines, set all the things to very high and make the Barby keep it's distance. Then teleport back to the Balaur and wait for the boarding pods to land and start their thing. Usually I shoot the hull down to 90-95% to speed up the next phase, and stick around.

A lot more work than just a flyby, but it eliminates the pods being killed before landing.

And yes, the rep loss for boarding should be fixed. I like the idea of killing marines and service crew counting as rep loss kills in some way. Makes sense, and might be the easiest to implement.

[grapedog]

I'm in agreement with this if you were to remove the penalty for disabling the ships systems. Or have ship system disabling only applicable to the ship and/or wing being targeted, and not a faction wide rep loss. I'd be totally fine with losing a fixed amount of rep per ship size if I wasn't also losing rep just for taking out each turret and engine. That seems excessive to the spirit of the mechanic.

Why should it make a difference to rep consequences for destroying subsystems if that's done during the course of a boarding op or in normal battle? Unless you're suggesting that the rep consequences for such actions should be removed completely? Would find it rather odd myself if it became possible to completely disarm & immobilize a ship & the owners simply didn't care. Although less so than if the rep loss became dependent on what the player was planning to do to the ship after smashing it's engines, etc (smashing engines absolutely fine if the ship's about to be boarded, but not OK if the player's intention is to destroy it).

I get the argument, but I think if you're getting a flat penalty for boarding, you shouldn't also get flat penalties for targeting subsystems. That's a double-whammy, I don't believe it is in the spirit of the mechanic of boarding. And I'd be fine with losing rep for targeting subsystems if it only affected the rep from that ship, or that ship AND it's wing-men, if it has any. I just don't think if there was to be a flat penalty for boarding, which I believe there should be... that you should also get penalized during the prep stage.

In my mind I would prefer the penalties to disabling subsystems to stick to just that ship and it's wing-men. So you're not free and clear to just disable targets, you still get a rep hit with that ship and you get an angry ship or more than one angry ship. Then once you launch pods which shows intent to board with marines, that you get a solid negative rep hit one time to the overall faction reputation, based on the size of the ship. Perhaps an Asgard is -6, while an L miner might be -2, and a destroyer is -4.

[Raevyan]

If only the boarding commands like disable engines, turrets etc. would actually do what they say. Then one could simply select a few ships > board and be done with it.

They do, at least for Target Turrets - if I'm using a bunch of fighters to help with a boarding op I prefer to nuke engines personally to give them an easier shot at the turrets.

Main catch though with this approach is that you need to be ready to call them off (i.e. remove orders) when they've finished disarming the target. Also need to be particularly careful if you've given them missiles for the task. Missiles, particularly those with decent burst radius (e.g. Starburst), are really quite effective at smashing turrets, etc. However, just because you've recalled the fighters doesn't get rid of any missiles currently in flight.

Consequently found it's best not to have too many assistants for boarding ops - half a dozen or so can be useful, significantly more than that runs the risk of all those inbound missiles obliterating the target even after the fighters that launched them have been recalled. Guess who thoroughly overcooked the target with a swarm of 16 Starburst-armed Buzzards (2 launchers per ship + Blast Mortar as backup) the first time they tried this approach...

I don’t consider it working if you actively need to stop their orders so they do not kill off the target. The command says disable and not disable and destroy. Also, when I last used this command they just hit the hull and didn’t destroy a single turret or engine. The only time they actually killed a turret was when I tested this with missiles. But turrets were killed because of splash damage.

[GCU Grey Area]

I don’t consider it working if you actively need to stop their orders so they do not kill off the target. The command says disable and not disable and destroy. Also, when I last used this command they just hit the hull and didn’t destroy a single turret or engine. The only time they actually killed a turret was when I tested this with missiles. But turrets were killed because of splash damage.

Don't mind issuing recall orders myself. Means I can let my fighters chew on the hull for a while (so the marines won't take so long drilling through it) & then recall them when I reckon they've done enough damage. Find this a particularly useful approach if I'm flying a ship with few or no main guns.

I don't normally use the Disable Target option (prefer Target Turrets myself). Disable's just not specific enough as far as I'm concerned. Have seen them also go after main shield generators when using that particular order, which I very much prefer to leave intact. Often do my boarding in -30 rep hostile territory & those shields sometimes make a critical difference to whether or not I can extract my new ship intact. Also the more potential targets those fighters have the less effective they'll be, since their firepower will be split. Prefer them to focus their fire much more. If it's a particularly tough target I'll get them to smash engines & turrets before initiating the boarding op (i.e. have them configured as an attack wing & select subsystem targets for them one by one).

Missiles are not essential, they just make the process much quicker & more convenient due to the splash damage. Have used this approach successfully with conventional weapons too (e.g. bolt guns). However due to the disarmament taking longer there's a also significantly higher risk of losing fighters to turret fire. Maybe difference in outcome is dependent on pilot skill level? These days minimum skill for my fighter pilots tends to be around 4* piloting 3* morale (HQ trained).

[Headbenger]

The video isn't available anymore :/ I made a new one, just 1 minute

https://youtube.com/shorts/3BAMFHA6mGY? ... jvqHpH3vgP

[chew-ie]

The video isn't available anymore :/ I made a new one, just 1 minute

https://youtube.com/shorts/3BAMFHA6mGY? ... jvqHpH3vgP

Nice! But .. *cough* maybe not pointing out that nice exploit RE the marines in a fashion it gets fixed

[Zloth2]

Well, *I* think it should be fixed - so I fixed it. It was pretty simple, too. I just don't do it.

That said, what I would like is an option to set the marines so that most ships can only launch one marine per second. Dedicated war ships could do two a second. Maybe let the Shark, Asgard, and Raptor do three. That's something I can't do myself.

Don't force it on everyone, though. Far too many people want to play that way.

[Nanook]

...
That said, what I would like is an option to set the marines so that most ships can only launch one marine per second. Dedicated war ships could do two a second. Maybe let the Shark, Asgard, and Raptor do three. That's something I can't do myself.

Don't force it on everyone, though. Far too many people want to play that way.

Yeah, no offense but that's a pretty bad solution. 'Normal' boarding can already be quite slow and time consuming, given that we're launching pods with 6 marines all at once and they can take a while to get to the target, let alone start the hull entry, which doesn't start until all marines are on the target. I can't imagine having to wait for 100+ marines to depart my ship at one every second.

[jlehtone]

I can't imagine having to wait for 100+ marines to depart my ship at one every second.

Asgard can carry 360 marines. Imagine Omaha beach where allied would have sent one man at a time from the ships to shore ...

[Zloth2]

Yeah, no offense but that's a pretty bad solution. 'Normal' boarding can already be quite slow and time consuming, given that we're launching pods with 6 marines all at once and they can take a while to get to the target, let alone start the hull entry, which doesn't start until all marines are on the target. I can't imagine having to wait for 100+ marines to depart my ship at one every second.

120 would take just 2 minutes, assuming you are using a freighter for your military operations - something that seems like a pretty weird idea to me. Use a destroyer and it only takes one minute to get 120 out there. An Asgard could toss 360 out in a minute.

The point is that you can't just get up close and overwhelm ship defenses by throwing a cloud into space at once, giving the defending ship only a few seconds to blast all of them. As is, we hardly have to worry about knocking out a few turrets to give our marines a chance. Put this in there, and you'll have to think about breaking turrets and staying in the resulting shadow because a single M turret could kill every one or your marines before getting to the target ship.

You could still do a lot to overwhelm if that's what you really want to do. Four Falx could send over 80 in 10 seconds. A Behemoth could carry all four frigates and either just send 20 of its own marines in the same time period or send up to 20 more alone. You'll want to keep all the ships close together when doing this or take out a bunch of turrets.

[GCU Grey Area]

Not keen on this idea at all. Suspect it would do nothing at all to prevent people using a fly-by boarding approach against friendly targets. It would however be highly detrimental when boarding hostile targets in their own territory, which is usually the case for my boarding ops. Generally have -30 rep with the previous owners & use a quick & dirty, smash & grab approach (i.e. smash engines & turrets, knock hull down to ~70%, then fly close & send in the marines).

I simply don't have time to hang around stationary for an extended period of time while every enemy ship within radar range activates their travel drive & converges on my position. I need to drop off the marines ASAP & then get as far away as possible from my boarding target, in order to draw enemy ships away from it (so they don't destroy it the instant my marines take control). A minute is an eternity when ships can fly at several km per second in travel mode...