Marines and their equipment?

[KomitoDnB]

Pretty sure I get the jist of using marines, however a few things still puzzle me before attempting my 1st boading...

In the last day or 2 i've got my Boreas fully kitted, only thing left to do with the cobra is get Hammer Heavy Torpedos so will build a factory, cannot wait to try this out!

So, with marines, I understand the buying, training etc, but what's the deal with the weapons they use? Do they come with their own guns etc?

I ask as i've seen several different types of guns in the game:

Phase pistols
Stun guns
Laser pistols
Plasma blasters
Disintegrator rifles
Terran EMP rifles

So, do Marines come with a standard gun, and you can upgrade for them to be more effective, or certain targets are defeated more effectively by using specific weapons to their weaknesses?

Or are they all just for show?

[lyonhaert]

The guns have no affect on their performance during boarding. It's just a resource used by stations that "produce" marines/mercenaries.

[Alan Phipps]

All those sidearms are Just for show or as trade wares - unless you go modded of course. Or maybe you already have; Phase pistols, Stun guns, Laser pistols and Plasma blasters are not in vanilla - ah, but are mentioned in the low-yield sidearm description though. Low yield sidearms, disintegrator rifles and Terran EMP rifles are the vanilla trading wares.

[jlehtone]

Our Marines fight with their bare tentacles.


There is one ware though that does improve their performance: Boarding Pods.

Likewise, the NPC ships may spawn with upgrades that affect the odds of boarding negatively: Hull Polarization, Sentry Lasers, and Firewalls.

[KomitoDnB]

Thanks, currently just training about 40 marines up

[lyonhaert]

Cool, what's your training methodology so far?

[fireanddream]

Find abandoned ships, whip out stun grenades out of thin air, throw stun grenades at thin air, won.

The routine of our marines.

[KomitoDnB]

Cool, what's your training methodology so far?

Well, I buy the marines with the highest fighting I can find, then depending on their other skills i'll either advance all skills or an individual skill, got a few up to 2/3 overall already, another day or 2 and will have around 40 battle hardened marines


Edit - Wonder if someone can fill this in for me?

I tried boarding the Hyperion Vanguard several times, I used the Vidar M6 and Cobra M7M to achieve this, I tried with Vidar alone and the M7M alone, but with the Vidar the marines would just float around space never reaching the Hyperion cuz it's too fast or whatever, the M7M was slghtly more successful as it has the boarding pod, however getting maybe a 20% boarding success rate as they keep getting destroyed before reaching. Then when it does reach, however either I destroy the Hyperion or the Hyperion destroys me before the marines get a chance to finish, so then I tried using both ships, the Vidar running interference while the Cobra fires off the boarding pod without drawing attention, this was a bit more successful but still 50/50 whether they reach the ship or get eliminated before boarding, after 6 successful boardings I realized I need to use marines with higher skills as they keep failing.

I'll get it eventually, I have 56 marines in training and they are all around 2-3 star overall at the moment, a few have 4 star fighting so that's cool.

About the boarding process, I haven't noticed what I am doing wrong, is it just random that the CPU destroys incoming boarding pods, or is there a knack to it? I've tried watching several YouTube videos but neither of them seem to explain success rates etc.

[Jimmy C]

is it just random that the CPU destroys incoming boarding pods, or is there a knack to it?

Sometimes, the CPU just gets lucky with the turrets. There's nothing that can be done except reload until all pods make contact.

As for boarding a Hyperion, or any aggressive M6 for that matter, you only need to stick around to suppress the shields until the marines cut through the hull. If you can't seem to avoid incurring extra damage to yourself or the target, just jump aaway until the boarding is complete.

[KomitoDnB]

So when the boarding crew have successfully boarded and began their takeover, at that point am I required to remain in the same sector?

[RainerPrem]

Edit - Wonder if someone can fill this in for me?

I tried boarding the Hyperion Vanguard several times
...
I realized I need to use marines with higher skills as they keep failing.

...

Hi,

Whenever I go for a Hype, I only put the 6 (X3AP:8) best Marines in my Cobra. They *should* have 4-5 Star engineering, and there should be at least two each with 5 stars in another skill.

In one game I bought a second Cobra and always kept the 6 best marines in it only to be prepared when one of those Vanguards went for a stroll into a not-Paranid-Central sector.

I admit I'm a Hyperion-addict sometimes.

cu
Rainer

[KomitoDnB]

6 marines? Howcome I can only have 5 on my Cobra? You know something I don't?

[ubuntufreakdragon]

a ship can be boarded by 1 more man than it can store this last man will spacewalk after sucsess.

[KomitoDnB]

Ah, see i've been playing the game non-stop, i'm pretty tired lol, got mixed up thought the M7M could only hold 5 marines, but that's the vidar that can only store 5 lol, that's even better

And cool, never knew about the "1 more" thing, thanks