I bought a load of marines and remembering back to my younger days (when i was only 49) i remembered to buy minimum 2* and mainly 3* in fighting.
I have had them on an intense training regime and most are at least 4* across the board with some being 3* and one is 5*. I loaded 5 of the best into my JD equiped Iguana on standby.
I then bought a Boa and loaded four Perseus Sentinels into it each with four HEPT's then, equiped with a JD placed that on standby. Oh the Fighters are all Gold Wing.
So choosing Light Water as a semi interesting sector i eventually got offered a defend station mission so before accepting i saved.
After a few Gladiator spawns i eventually got a Centaur - save.
After the usual misfires and button fumbling i had the shields kept stable at 2-3% by Gold Wing and flew to my Elite Forces Iguana, jumped into the pilots seat and headed back. Again after a few pathetic attempts i got all five marines cutting hull, they entered "with ease" and all five now fighting deck 1 - save.
Now for the strange bit.
Leaving them to their own devices and reloading from this point (btw the Centaur had absolutely no defenses ie sentry lasers adv firewall etc) resulted in:
a) all five died
b) 1 survived to capture
c) 3 survived to capture
I did this again with another mission - same result. I've now done it with a total of three Centaurs - same result.
So i figure try a different ship in a more controlled environment.
I contract the Mammoth from Omnicron Lyrea to fly to the unknown sector below Black Hole Sun and tell him to stop his engines
This time i have 10 marines all minimum 4* (i think one was 3*). Same process except this time i use the Iguana remotely untill all 10 marines are through the hull and fighting deck 1 - save.
Again i run through from this save many times with results:
a) all die
b) 1 captures ship
c) <varied number> captures ship
d) 8 survive to capture ship
Ok so what is my point ? Well if the marines were totally untrained those are pretty much the results you'd expect but after investing 3.5mil or more into each marine i would expect the survivers to be much higher ie 8-10 ALL the time.
With harder ships and more defenses i'd expect more casualties, but in an undefended TL i seems a little TOO random.
Don't think i'll try anything bigger until i can use boarding pods, but i suspect the rng is the same.
Is anyone else experiencing this same HUGE variance despite the massive amount of training ?
On a side note i was amused to capture another Mammoth that happened to be passing through with a Crystal Fab M on board, after capture i could not stop it, i even jumped into the pilots chair and still it would not stop ! It was going to place that station in Nathans Voyage come hell or high water, and the station wasn't even mine afterwards !
