Question on boarding of ship

[Utsuho Reiuji]

I finally managed to get a assassination mission against ATF and the target spawned in an Aegir which I wanted to cap. I managed to take down its shields and destroyed most of its equipment, including the cargo life support system killing the on board marines. When my marines board (via spacewalk) the Aegir however they cannot cut through the hull. They have to abort and some of them die instantly. I am keeping the shields at 0% and my Marines all have 3+ stars in engineering, what am I doing wrong?

[atroces]

Are your marines trained well? Does the aegir have ship equipment like hull or lasers? did you damage the hull too much?

[Deianeira]

Terran/ATF M7 need 180 'Mechanical' skill to spacewalk board, so two 5-star mechanics per team of five marines. Try it with boarding pods or train them to almost max.

[Utsuho Reiuji]

Terran/ATF M7 need 180 'Mechanical' skill to spacewalk board, so two 5-star mechanics per team of five marines. Try it with boarding pods or train them to almost max.

Damn, I trained them in engineering thinking that was required for hull cutting. Is there a guide on proper boarding that also lists those values for ships?

[Midnightknight]

You have some help on the official wiki

Might not be totally accurate due to changes made in FL, but must work correctly most of the time. I haven't noted any major difference so far, ships can hold a bit more marines but that's all.

[Xe-131]

Alongside what other people have already said, watch out for ships with Hull Polarising Devices in their installed equipment - you'll have a harder time breaking through those, and will likely have to damage the target ship's hull quite a bit before your marines can get through.

[FankX]

I boarded a lot of ships so far, my recommened setup is:
- Sirokos (Jumpengine, Bioscanner, Piracy Command Software, as much Boarding Pods you can handle [trust me you need it])
- Your Capital Killer of your choice, I picked Shrike [explained later why] (Jumpengine)
- 2+ Ships (M5,M4,M3) of your choice (Jumpengine)
- 15+ Mariens with at least 2 stars in each category.

Step by step timeline:
1. Get you CapKiller ready, dock your M5,M4,M3 ships on it. And locate your Shiroko somewhere to beeing ready to jump on your location if needed.
2. Save
3. Go to the location where you want to board a ship.
4. Save
5. Attack the ship and lower the shield to 0, depening on how fast you are able to drop the shields. Call your Shiroko to drop on your location, so its close to you when the ships are around 0%.
6. Save
7. Shields are close to 0%. Now tell your Shiroko to board your ship, use 10 Marines.
- Now save all the time when a floor is cleared.
8. call 5+ marines on the 2+ floor, be sure you keep the shields low until then. And jump your Shirokos to a save location, you can pick up marines later.
9. Once they are close to central computer, move your capkiller close to the ship you are boarding.
10. When you successfully boarded the ship, save.
11. Transfer your jumpengine and 200+ energy cells and tell it to jump to a save location.
12. Now transfer a jumpengine from one of your docked ships to your ship and jump to a save location.

This is my tactic, feel free to adjust it to your needs.

I prefer to be able to jump at anytime, because sometimes i board in enemy sectors, which means while i board, a lot of other enemies are close to me too.
So i can safely secure my boarded ship while the fight is still ongoing, and leave the fight too.

And i only use Boarding pods, because the enemy ships i boarded are mostly too fast so, the marines were not be able to catch up with the ship i wanted to board in time.

DON'T TOUCH XENON, until you have managed to find a solid strategy to board.
Xenon are by far the hardest emeny to board.

And yea as mentioned above, be sure you have strong marines because some installed components makes boarding way harder.

I hope that helps you a little, my whole tacticts were based on viewtopic.php?t=270108 and improved after a lot of steps.

EDIT: I think i went a little bit offtopic here, but still want to leave it.

[FankX]

You have some help on the official wiki

Might not be totally accurate due to changes made in FL, but must work correctly most of the time. I haven't noted any major difference so far, ships can hold a bit more marines but that's all.

Really nice one, was looking for something for quite a while now.
Thanks

[Deianeira]

Saving between decks is pointless since X3APs later patches, as the outcome is determined when the marines start cutting the hull. Also reinforcements are only useful on Xenon ships or ships with good marines (RRF, kill missions), where you suffer losses.

[atroces]

12. Now transfer a jumpengine from one of your docked ships to your ship and jump to a save location.

Transfer a jump drive installation kit, some ecells, and then activate the kit on the ship.

[FankX]

12. Now transfer a jumpengine from one of your docked ships to your ship and jump to a save location.

Transfer a jump drive installation kit, some ecells, and then activate the kit on the ship.

Man, shit, this is mind blowing....
Never thought about that, wow this ... holy ....
You made my day/week/month.
I knew about this all the time, but never thought about it this way.