Unmodified legit having an Asgard at 54minutes playtime.

[Omni-Orb]

Game version 5.10
DLC:All
Unmodified.
Game start: Accomplished Scientist
Savegame:https://easyupload.io/6pwj2z

This is the quickest most efficient I have been able to board an Asgard.
This is how I did it: Collected the abandoned destroyer and sold it for a lucky sum of 9.4million Cr, which is the highest I have seen it being sold for so far (It has random equipment)
Bought 19 Ides ships for boarding for 7.4 million Cr and was lucky again with the Intervention Corps Asgard which only had 77 crew out of 360, only 15 of which was veteran marines, which makes it extremely easy to board on the first attempt. Did the Basic Engine Mods Research Mission while the Asgard was being boarded. And traveled to the Asgard straight after I completed the mission.
It was won just as I arrived. Was standing on the bridge at 54 minutes playtime.

[flywlyx]

The luckiest part is actually a proper equipt Asgard appears in time
There was one time I try to board an Asgard in the early game and notice it carries more than 5 guiding missile turrets. That mission doesn't end well.

[LameFox]

The luckiest part is actually a proper equipt Asgard appears in time
There was one time I try to board an Asgard in the early game and notice it carries more than 5 guiding missile turrets. That mission doesn't end well.

I messed around with boarding TER ships in fly-by a game or two ago, just to see what it was like, and I learned something very strange about their missile turrets. A lot of the ships they build with them seem to have few, or sometimes no missiles. Deep in TER space where they have almost no enemies to fire them at (very rarely a FAF ship). I had seen it happen before, during regular boarding ops against Intervention Corps ships, but always assumed they had used up their ammo. Now I'm not so sure...

[Omni-Orb]

The most fun surprise is when a ship I try to board has a turret with EMP missiles, it feels like it's made as a defense against easy boarding.

[linolafett]

I guess a new speed run category was born

[Raptor34]

This is why I say the bigger ships should have more and better crew.

[GCU Grey Area]

This is why I say the bigger ships should have more and better crew.

Agreed. Would make boarding such ships an interesting mid-late game challenge, after a suitably strong marine force had been recruited & trained up, either by boarding easier ships or using HQ marine training facilities.

Back when the Terran DLC was released I was shocked at how weak the marine complement aboard Asgards were. Decided that if I wanted to make it any sort of challenge to acquire one I needed to get the blueprints, construct a shipyard & build one for myself. Took weeks to get my first Asgard instead of, apparently, less than an hour. Feel that should be the other way round in terms of difficulty. Think 100 or so elite marines on each Asgard should do that.

[ggttcc2]

Asgard itself is already an exploit.
Being able to board it early make it even more so.
These two things are way off balance and have to be changed one way or another.
So players don't have to handicap themselves if they want any challenge.

[LameFox]

They do sometimes have better crews, it varies a bit like their loadouts. However, the value of the ship is so much greater (in credits and practical use) than the value of marines that even if it had a full crew of good marines it'd still probably be worth wearing them down with multiple boardings to take the ship. Not that you really need an Asgard, I suppose. It's not as if there's some serious challenge in this game that you are forced to contend with.

[Imperial Good]

In my opinion I would change the loadout of NPC Asgard ships to always have full crew of which at least 200 are veteran or specialist marines. This should make them the hardest ship to board in X4 pushing them out of the reach of early game boarding strategies which is more appropriate for a hard to obtain end game ship.

[Omni-Orb]

It's not as if there's some serious challenge in this game that you are forced to contend with.

Time is.

In my opinion I would change the loadout of NPC Asgard ships to always have full crew of which at least 200 are veteran or specialist marines. This should make them the hardest ship to board in X4 pushing them out of the reach of early game boarding strategies which is more appropriate for a hard to obtain end game ship.

Simply having full crew even if/especially when a few or more are veterans makes it much much more difficult even if most are recruits.
77/360 crew is the lowest i have seen the Asgard, it was a 'lucky' try. Most times it has ca 200 crew with around 70 being veteran.

[Raptor34]

In my opinion I would change the loadout of NPC Asgard ships to always have full crew of which at least 200 are veteran or specialist marines. This should make them the hardest ship to board in X4 pushing them out of the reach of early game boarding strategies which is more appropriate for a hard to obtain end game ship.

Syn and Asgard should have full crew. I mean, if crew is supposedly that important to ship handling, doesn't it currently mean all NPC ships are running substandard atm?
Though imo it should be a 50/50 split between crew and marines, with the Asgard being biased to the higher ranks while Syn could be whatever rank.
Frankly I think all military ships should have full crews tbh.

Besides that, perhaps old anti-boarding equipment would be nice. You can semi-solve the fly by boarding situation by having high tier ships have certain equipment that makes it way harder to board, but since they are subsystems, can be dealt with by just shooting them off, thereby forcing you to aggro them. Another effect would be making boarding a little more dynamic without going back to the old if you **** up keeping shields low then say bye bye to those marines you spent hours training.

Like Hull Polarization can be changed to Shield Polarization, where shields would have a percent = shield strength chance to zap your boarding pods. So you want to kill it before you send out the pods.

[Imperial Good]

Simply having full crew even if/especially when a few or more are veterans makes it much much more difficult even if most are recruits.
77/360 crew is the lowest i have seen the Asgard, it was a 'lucky' try. Most times it has ca 200 crew with around 70 being veteran.

Syn and Asgard should have full crew. I mean, if crew is supposedly that important to ship handling, doesn't it currently mean all NPC ships are running substandard atm?
Though imo it should be a 50/50 split between crew and marines, with the Asgard being biased to the higher ranks while Syn could be whatever rank.

Service Crew usually contribute very little to boarding defence, especially since their boarding skills are often quite low so any that do get included (not all do) act similar to 0-1 star marines. Ships which are meant to be difficult to board require a lot of highly skilled marines to combat the player.

This is one of the reasons why I have suggested merging service crew and marines into the same role. This way the NPCs can have the full benefit of service crew while not being vulnerable to the player boarding their assets. NPC service crew would inherit some of the stats of their marines and in the case of ships like Asgard most of the service crew would have high boarding skill levels.

[LameFox]

Time is.

You can choose to rush it if you want but it's far from forced on you.

[Omni-Orb]

Time is.

You can choose to rush it if you want but it's far from forced on you.

You are correct. It is one of many playstyles.

[Omni-Orb]

I guess a new speed run category was born

I guess you have seen my other posts then
Yes, this is the X4 'speedrun' foundation, so far.
It is the most legit efficient start I have conjured.
At least without glitching or exploiting bugs.

'From what I read in these posts I wasn't clear enough saying how lucky this start is in the variables that are random, and specific to seed.
I can do it faster, if I have the bit of information on how to specify seed, because I could have started the boarding in Terran space if I wasn't confused about where the Asgard was and did the important scouting for it more efficiently. It can be done 10-20 minutes quicker. It might not sound like much; however, stations take time to create and the quicker I can start boarding using the Asgard and then building as many stations as possible simultaneously for an economic cascade effect the quicker the terraforming will be completed.

The Asgard with Mk3 thrusters and a twister modification feels gracefully accurate, agile and quick. It is surely fun ship to fly, although so powerful that the game lacks any real opposition to it. An example of this is 'travel mode fly by' boarding, or destruction of other L and XL ships using the XL main battery beam weapon while in travel mode, 'fly by' style.