Training marines

[Ezarkal]

So far, I found some pretty good ways to train service crews and managers, and even though I'm still experimenting with training pilots I think it's getting there.

However, I'm having a hard time building up a decent marine squad.

Would anybody have tips on how to quickly level up the NPCs boarding skill? Or is the only way to board, board and board again until you're bored with transferring crew? Pun intended.

[Imperial Good]

Would anybody have tips on how to quickly level up the NPCs boarding skill? Or is the only way to board, board and board again until you're bored with transferring crew? Pun intended.

Boarding is currently the only way to level up boarding skill. Outside of boarding or claiming ships marines appear utterly useless. You do not even need to possess them to defend your L and XL assets since only the player is capable of running boarding operations.

The only way to efficiently level boarding is to board ships with high loss chances. This is obviously counter productive to levelling up as you stand a fair chance at losing the marine during such operation.

For now the most efficient way to board ships is to throw unskilled marines at the problem. Marines, like all crew and software, are free if refitted at your own facilities and hence you can throw endless numbers of them at a ship until the defending crew eventually drowns in them.

[Ezarkal]

Thanks for the answer. I've started to get a more serious look into boarding, and I wanted to have a dedicated small and specialized hit squad for this purpose.
But from what you're saying, I may as well just take a L transport and swarm any targets with hundreds of little dudes. XD

[pref]

I wanted to have a dedicated small and specialized hit squad for this purpose.

I tried the same, had a crew of 7 on my personal ship.. After boarding about 30 ships most of them gained a second star. The first star comes almost instantly, but then progress slows down extremely so for the next you need tens of ops until the majority gains another skill (they gain irrelevant skills often).
When on average they hit 2 star, i could board a ship with ~10 defenders without losses (regardless of ship class/type).
And according to the roadmap it becomes even slower at higher skill.

I gave up on it as i cannot be bothered with crew transfer, and the whole process lacks real challenge or any sense of progression.
What's left is going the L transport route with rookie disposables or just hitting the hull until a single marine can do it - having to keep around or alive/away several of my ships with their oh so bright AI is just a sure way to frustration which by the way is probably the intended method.
Might be fun doing a couple times, but grows old very quickly. If i want to board ill just launch X3 it's so much better in every aspect.

Last i played was 2.0 so if there were changes i'm curious - but haven't seen any improvement regarding boarding since then.