Boarding operations help

[Cursed Ghost]

hi all

I was wondering if someone might be able to tell me what I'm doing wrong because I cant seem to get boarding operations to work

gathered together 5 marines one has fight skill of 5 starts one had 4 stars one has 3 stars and there are 2 with 2 stars trained them all up to about 3 starts in all skills and decided to try and take on a soft target (a civilian TL) to train up my troops fight skills

however every time I attempt to take the ship I get mission failed and the entire team is eliminated and I cant figure out what is going on and why it wont let me take the ship i mean its a civilian ship there are no troops on bored only passengers and there are no internal defence system so you would think I would be able to take the ship with out any casualties but about 5 or 6 times in a row now my boarding attempt has failed with the loss of the entire team

what is going on why cant I take the ship considering I've seen loads of people on here say they have taken civie ships with out any losses

I'm running the latest version of X3TC 2.7

[Kitty]

hi all

I was wondering if someone might be able to tell me what I'm doing wrong because I cant seem to get boarding operations to work
[...]
I'm running the latest version of X3TC 2.7

That is where you failed. You shouldn't has installed that patch.

From 2.5 it is usually said you need more marines to cap a TL.

[garv222]

My disc comes with 2.5 installed or something like that. The newest patch just came with my copy.

Anyway, the mistake you made is a common mistake that many people make when first trying boarding. You should be using as close to possible to the max amount of marines for a boarding op. 5 for a TM, m6. 20 for a m7, m2, m1 or a TL. The days of boarding with a minimum investment and a maximum return are over.

[SIMON POPPLEWELL]

You will need at least 10 marines to capture a TL. The only ship you can really capture with 5 marines is an M6 or TM and you will probably suffer some casualties.

[Cursed Ghost]

I see

ok next question why is it that my transport ship has the annoying habit of countermanding my orders and not launching the troops ?

because I normally have to give the command like 6 or 7 times before the troops will actually launch and this is when the target ship is at a stand still and only travelling at like 1kph because I'm hovering like 300m away from the ship so its in collision avoidance mode and just turning on the spot

also what's the quickest way to replace lost marines because it seems to take hours real time to do advanced training all skills I mean its taken like 3 days just to get the troops I have up to 3/4 stars in all skills is there no way to speed up the training process a bit because replacing losses is a bloody nightmare that's why I only get 5 troops left from the 10 that you get given doing the terrain plot because they got killed trying to take the vidar and the truelight seeker

I've since bought a couple of replacements that have 3 and 4 start combat ratings but no skill in anything else and geting them up to the minimum 3 start that seems to be need to even get aboard a target ship is taking forever

[Nanook]

I see

ok next question why is it that my transport ship has the annoying habit of countermanding my orders and not launching the troops ?...

Perhaps because the gaming mechanics for boarding from an M6 or TP are a bit retarded, to put it mildly? Yeah, it's my pet peeve about M6/TP boarding ops. Stealing a little ship from another little ship is a lot harder than stealing a big ship from another big ship, which seems to me a bit backwards.

[Cursed Ghost]

Stealing a little ship from another little ship is a lot harder than stealing a big ship from another big ship, which seems to me a bit backwards.

eh ?? say what now ??

also is there no other way to train up fight skill other than by boarding ships because if ego in there infinite wisdom has decided to make boarding harder there really needs to be a way to train fighting skill that doesn't involve loosing troops

either that or or make training faster so that you can get a full squad of troops up and running in say an hour realtime so that I don't have to wait days for replacements which is far to long

[efernal]

either that or or make training faster so that you can get a full squad of troops up and running in say an hour realtime so that I don't have to wait days for replacements which is far to long

I almost agree with you there on that one since I only get to play maybe 10 - 12 hours a week. Then Again that might take away from the excitement I will get when I am able to start doing "good" boarding ops. Right now I have to be selective about what I try to steal and I have some reloads. Just so long as I know it is doable its ok with me.

[Berserkenstein]

either that or or make training faster so that you can get a full squad of troops up and running in say an hour realtime so that I don't have to wait days for replacements which is far to long

I almost agree with you there on that one since I only get to play maybe 10 - 12 hours a week. Then Again that might take away from the excitement I will get when I am able to start doing "good" boarding ops. Right now I have to be selective about what I try to steal and I have some reloads. Just so long as I know it is doable its ok with me.

I recommend hanging out in pirate sectors to look for targets, that way the sector police won't get in your way. A good place is Moo-Kye's Revenge, look for paranid nemesis or helios (disguised as paranid high tech transporters I think, might be something else) Paranid Hyperion Vanguards sometimes will wander through there if you get lucky. Agamemnon's fly through there too, but you can't take those until you get an M7M.

[garv222]

Unfortunately, the early stage of boarding is riddled with marine losses. It' can be very tough to get those marines to survive and boarding on TM and m6 will almost always have some losses even with elite marines due to the game mechanics.

One thing that helps is to wait until you have a very strong income and buying out all the marines. Some people say only buy 3 star and up in terms of fighting. I bought any marine with around 30+ fight rating and just just trained them in engineering and I put a few in hacking as well. I ignored mechanical because I used boarding pods.

The combined numbers of all those marines make for a decent chance for survival for most of the marines and the ones that survive the process do get to be some fearsome marines. Eventually I had about 20-40 100 fight marines and very very rarely get losses.

[SIMON POPPLEWELL]

Stealing a little ship from another little ship is a lot harder than stealing a big ship from another big ship, which seems to me a bit backwards.

eh ?? say what now ??

also is there no other way to train up fight skill other than by boarding ships because if ego in there infinite wisdom has decided to make boarding harder there really needs to be a way to train fighting skill that doesn't involve loosing troops

either that or or make training faster so that you can get a full squad of troops up and running in say an hour realtime so that I don't have to wait days for replacements which is far to long

Boarding with TP/M6 is a real nightmare since 2.5. It's a lot easier to board with an M7M using boarding pods, as you can send 20 marines at a M1, M2 or M7 and suffer no casualties. This is due to the fact that numbers really count in the success of boarding. 20 1* in fighting marines will succeed where as 5 5* marines will fail.

[XanII]

Can someone give me a heads up on boarding in 2.7.1? How much do you need to cap a M6? Havent done that in quite awhile.

Still so that you need cannon fodder and preferably pods to get the job done or is the skill now being weighted in more again like in pre 2.5?

[NUKLEAR-SLUG]

5 marines can take an M6 most of the time. 6 is a little better if you're able to TP them onto target.

[Berserkenstein]

Unfortunately, the early stage of boarding is riddled with marine losses. It' can be very tough to get those marines to survive and boarding on TM and m6 will almost always have some losses even with elite marines due to the game mechanics.

One thing that helps is to wait until you have a very strong income and buying out all the marines. Some people say only buy 3 star and up in terms of fighting. I bought any marine with around 30+ fight rating and just just trained them in engineering and I put a few in hacking as well. I ignored mechanical because I used boarding pods.

The combined numbers of all those marines make for a decent chance for survival for most of the marines and the ones that survive the process do get to be some fearsome marines. Eventually I had about 20-40 100 fight marines and very very rarely get losses.

Well, you can actually find four star and five star fight marines in the beginning of the game. I managed to get 5 four star marines and a bunch of 3 star marines and I trained them all to 100 hacking, engineering, and mechanical. Haven't lost one yet, and now I have around 12 maxed marines and a bunch in their high 90's. Just waiting for 21 maxed marines so I can start boarding Q's J's and K's.