Boarding a tough Kyoto

[Bill Huntington]

I've boarded two Kyotos successfully. But the third one is a handful. I've stopped 10 or 15 km away from the target, taken out two escorting Yokohamas, and taken down the Kyoto's shields. But the target has turned towards me and taken out my Boarding Pods every time I've tried. The usual advice was based on the target facing you and not being able to fire at Pods directly in front. Not true in this case.

I tried without taking out the Yokos and they were shooting down some of the Hammers in the Missile Barrage. Initially the target was sideways and I got some Marines on it once. The hull was too damaged to finished the boarding because the Yokos had thrown off my calculations with their fire support.

This Kyoto is a skilled pilot. At first other escort ships are deployed. When I'm close they dock in the target so I can't take them out. Once the marines are in flight in their pods they come out again and defend the target. That's 3 Katanas and a Claymore.

Tactical advice, anyone?

[AleksMain]

Use drones to distract enemies.

Use Mosquito Missiles for antimissile defense on one of the turrets.

Use other turrets to kill small enemies with Flail Barrage Missiles.

[RAVEN.myst]

The usual advice was based on the target facing you and not being able to fire at Pods directly in front. Not true in this case.

This typically holds true for frigates and corvettes, as they have a forward gun banks, not turrets. But ships with turrets in the front (carriers, a couple of frigates, almost all destroyers) can certainly shoot incoming missiles from that direction.

[jlehtone]

Indeed, but there is some variance on effectiveness. Bomber missile barrage at Osaka from flank suffers much more attrition than a "head on". Number of turrets that can fire at direction is the likely explanation.

I did board a Woden recently. Pods from front. Something did shot pods down. 12 got to the hull (and took the ship), 5 survived EVA, and 4 died either in the pod or soon after.

Yes, I had a Sirocco launching pods, while I was circling the target with Dragon, both drawing attention of the turrets and keeping the shields low. I was behind the ship at the time those pods were lost, so it was essentially my fault that the front turret had nothing better to do than aiming at incoming missiles.

[fireanddream]

I've seen turrets shooting at boarding pods occasionally (like, three or four times in 500ish hours) but most of the time they ignore them. If you stay OOS when the boarding operation completes all the escorts won't go hostile against your new ship. They'll stay red for a while but won't attack.

Another benefit of staying OOS when your marines breach the hull is the ship won't take hull damage.

The best strategy if they don't shoot you on sight, is ignore all the escorts, fly right next to the kyoto then fire at it a calculated number of hammer torpedoes. Then jump out as soon as your marines reach target ship and stay OOS the entire time.

[Bill Huntington]

Thanks all for your replies!

Fireanddream, I tried your suggestion and got the tough Kyoto on the second try. Not quite enough Hammers for the Barrage the first try. I finished with a bump and destroyed the target. I got all the shields and a little hull damage the second time, dropped the missile pods and did the unfocused jump in Asteroid Belt. Yes, the escort was all blue when I came back. My new Kyoto was 4 km away and nothing was red in the sector.

I used to use a two ship boarding technique in TC, with a Tyr and a Sirokos. The Tyr would bring the shields down and the Siro would fine tune a bump and launch marines from 10 m. Yes, 10 m, touching distance. They couldn't be shot down that way. I haven't used it in AP until now. The Cobra is harder to handle that the Sirokos. The 3 x 1 shields are less the target but we're only talking about a few percentage points of shields.

Thanks for the advice, all!

[delray]

There's a random 1% chance that pods will die on contact.

[Bill Huntington]

I wondered about that. Thanks, delray.

[lighters]

In my experience, in AP AI turrets do shoot down boarding pods if they have nothing better to do. Flaks do a pretty good job of that in fact, and even big guns can score a random hit once in a while. I dislike excessive reloads when boarding so I always shield my pods with a cover screen of Flails right before and after the pods. The marines are too valuable to send the pods naked. The cost of Flails and some extra hull damage are not worth the risk. If you're boarding a weak target, then you need Wasps instead of Flails.