Boarding I

[BrigandPhantos77]

Just a suggestion, and this is based on whether or not you want to stay friendly with Duke's or not. But if you hit up Lasting Vengeance, you can get quite a few Zeus out of there and training with Fight. You might successfully bag a few missile frigates as well. The Zeus respawns at a decent frequency. I use a Kraken and bring in a freighter every once in a while to refill my missiles. The Zeus will spawn with 6? nemesis. And once in a while you will have to deal with system defenders as well. Each Nemesis only takes 3 waves of Flail to pop. Once you got the Zeus full attention, I launch enough Barrage to reduce it's shield, then launch 4/5 boarding pods at it. Usually at the 18 - 14km range. I keep a couple repair ships in Heaven's Assertion (South Gate) and jump the Zeus out once they turn green. I don't usually lose any marines. Most I ever lost was like 2. And that was due to really bad luck.

I keep a pair of repair drone carriers and an Ozias with the supplies I need with them. By the time I finish scooping up loot, the Zeus has usually respawned already. You can multiply your flails and hammer heavy torpedoes through the shipyard and military base in Ceo's Sprite.

Suggest RE the first, then sell or scrap the rest. Or keep them, but they aren't my favorite Carrier.

[Sovereign01]

I've gotten everything I wanted out of Dukes and they hate me now so their rep won't be a problem. I've currently got 9 marines that are ready to begin their combat training, it's been my experience that I need at least 12 before I can board a capital ship without taking losses. After reloading my game a Valhalla did indeed spawn, in the Moon sector. I figure that I should acquire the blueprints and stations I need to manufacture Terran missiles before I forever ruin my reputation with them when I capture this thing, and with the rate with which marines train it won't be soon anyway. I've also got plans for a commonwealth missile complex oven-ready that I should kick off before that, as well as for Terran missiles. In games gone by I would have used Savage Spur but what with the Yaki also hating me I'm not sure any complex I place there would be entirely safe!

[BrigandPhantos77]

I've gotten everything I wanted out of Dukes and they hate me now so their rep won't be a problem. I've currently got 9 marines that are ready to begin their combat training, it's been my experience that I need at least 12 before I can board a capital ship without taking losses. After reloading my game a Valhalla did indeed spawn, in the Moon sector. I figure that I should acquire the blueprints and stations I need to manufacture Terran missiles before I forever ruin my reputation with them when I capture this thing, and with the rate with which marines train it won't be soon anyway. I've also got plans for a commonwealth missile complex oven-ready that I should kick off before that, as well as for Terran missiles. In games gone by I would have used Savage Spur but what with the Yaki also hating me I'm not sure any complex I place there would be entirely safe!

You can always "steal-it".

Yaki hate me too. They probably took exception to how I acquired my Shuri. Yea that's it. Had nothing to do with all the other stuff I popped, or the Disruptor Missile Fab I destroyed. lol.... It was just the one ship. Had nothing to do with the Ryu or Hoshi either. Or the Kariudo.

[Sovereign01]

I've gotten everything I wanted out of Dukes and they hate me now so their rep won't be a problem. I've currently got 9 marines that are ready to begin their combat training, it's been my experience that I need at least 12 before I can board a capital ship without taking losses. After reloading my game a Valhalla did indeed spawn, in the Moon sector. I figure that I should acquire the blueprints and stations I need to manufacture Terran missiles before I forever ruin my reputation with them when I capture this thing, and with the rate with which marines train it won't be soon anyway. I've also got plans for a commonwealth missile complex oven-ready that I should kick off before that, as well as for Terran missiles. In games gone by I would have used Savage Spur but what with the Yaki also hating me I'm not sure any complex I place there would be entirely safe!

You can always "steal-it".

Yaki hate me too. They probably took exception to how I acquired my Shuri. Yea that's it. Had nothing to do with all the other stuff I popped, or the Disruptor Missile Fab I destroyed. lol.... It was just the one ship. Had nothing to do with the Ryu or Hoshi either. Or the Kariudo.

I have boarded most of the available Yaki ships, they were very useful for training my marines so far, however taking more would just be stealing duplicate ships Marine number 10 just finished his training so my plans may have to be brought forward:

• Build commonwealth missile complex while I have the required notoriety with all the races
• Boost Terran rep by one level so only Ghoul and Wraith missile factories need stealing, build Terran missile complex
• Steal & arm Valhalla

At some point I'll need to steal plans for the Yaki Disruptor missile factory since I'm not getting it any other way.

[Sovereign01]

Update: looking through the Yaki ships left, I'm missing their M7D (Kariudo) which as one of the special ships might not actually spawn, puts a dampener on plans to acquire their entire fleet if that's the case. But that's very much a side project.

Got my CW missile plex up and gotten 5 more beacons, using agents got the plans for the Wraith factory and got my Terran rep high enough to order their missile factories so that's what I'm going to do next, as well as grab more beacons of course. Got 16 marines that are ready to go boarding now, we'll see if it's enough for that Valhalla I've spotted!

[Jimmy C]

Update: looking through the Yaki ships left, I'm missing their M7D (Kariudo) which as one of the special ships might not actually spawn, puts a dampener on plans to acquire their entire fleet if that's the case.

Eliminate of their M7s, capture works too, and eventually a Kariudo will spawn. That's how I got two.

[Sovereign01]

Update: looking through the Yaki ships left, I'm missing their M7D (Kariudo) which as one of the special ships might not actually spawn, puts a dampener on plans to acquire their entire fleet if that's the case.

Eliminate of their M7s, capture works too, and eventually a Kariudo will spawn. That's how I got two.

Things have been moving forward very quickly- I got my Terran missile complex up and running and grabbed the extra beacons that made available before turning my attention to the next part of my plan. By this point no fewer than 11 marines had finished their training, bringing my available total to 21.

Now I had a Valhalla to board. Found the one that had spawned by the Moon had gone all the way to Jupiter, when I jumped in I found it just 20 km from the beacon and wasn't moving, so using my tuned Pteranodon I attacked it from the stern and then hid below it to protect against fire from its escorts while the pods launched from the Sirokos (which I then ordered to retreat) reached the target and the marines did their thing. They ended up taking the ship easily, the hard part was getting away with the Valhalla since it's too big to use jump gates so had to send it to one of the systems I'd placed a jump beacon in. I then had to place another beacon by the hub before sending my Aran to pick up the Valhalla since it wouldn't jump in without it, and bring it in so my repair drones could get to work. They'll be at it for quite a while even with 2 M7Ds active. The boarding action got two of my marines up to 100 combat (sent to the hub) and another one finished training so now the Sirokos has an even 20 marines.

The expected slaughter of my adv. satellites hasn't happened (yet) apart from one taken out by an escort of the Valhalla, despite my Terran rep dropping to renegade as a result of the boarding, we'll see what happens.

Now I'm going to visit the Yaki and clean house

[Sovereign01]

UPDATE: I reloaded to before I boarded the Valhalla when I realised a couple of things- that there were still many Terran ships I haven't bought yet while I had the notoriety, as well as the special ships. And because the Valhalla had parked itself in Jupiter it's not as though it's going anywhere. So I decided to raise my notoriety a bit first so I can buy more of the ships and reduce the number of Terran/ATF I have to board beyond the Valhalla (which I'll get first). With the cap on Terran rep thanks to my commonwealth rep I know I'll have to board the M1s and M2s regardless but if I can at least get the M7s it'll mean 3 fewer ships I'll need to board, which still leaves 6 others in addition to the Valhalla.

As it happens, the marines that have finished their training are coming in thick and fast now, I'm up to 37 so far which works out to an average of maxing 4 marines per ship.

EDIT: Make that 39, and it looks like Planetary Senator is as high as I'm going to get. Time to formulate my plan of attack

[Sovereign01]

UPDATE: Boosting my rep as high as I could before boarding had another positive effect when I took the Valhalla. I still lost many ranks, but my rep was still positive at the end of it so the Terrans weren't instantly hostile so my plans are going to alternate between recruiting/sending agents to replenish my notoriety between boardings. The boarding itself was pretty much the same as before, the Valhalla being escorted by 3 Skirnirs and again attacked from behind. I used the max of 26 marines to board it and picked the last one up with the Pteranodon. Took more damage than I'd like but that was merely inconvenient, and got 3 of them up to max rank in the process. I currently have almost 40 marines in the Sirokos ready to board, before leaving the outpost to do boarding I transfer the excess marines to the TP I've been using to ferry newly-trained ones from my barracks so I'm not messing around when ordering the boarding itself. First was the Valhalla, a Kyoto will be next. Although a second Valhalla did spawn by the moon when I boarded the first...

The factories I've built to manufacture the Terran hardware are still being upgraded, which includes the one for the Point Singularity Projector. It's produced 8 so far out of 32 that I need for the Valhalla. The 5 I got from a destroyed Xenon K are a headstart in that regard, however.

[BrigandPhantos77]

UPDATE: Boosting my rep as high as I could before boarding had another positive effect when I took the Valhalla. I still lost many ranks, but my rep was still positive at the end of it so the Terrans weren't instantly hostile so my plans are going to alternate between recruiting/sending agents to replenish my notoriety between boardings. The boarding itself was pretty much the same as before, the Valhalla being escorted by 3 Skirnirs and again attacked from behind. I used the max of 26 marines to board it and picked the last one up with the Pteranodon. Took more damage than I'd like but that was merely inconvenient, and got 3 of them up to max rank in the process. I currently have almost 40 marines in the Sirokos ready to board, before leaving the outpost to do boarding I transfer the excess marines to the TP I've been using to ferry newly-trained ones from my barracks so I'm not messing around when ordering the boarding itself. First was the Valhalla, a Kyoto will be next. Although a second Valhalla did spawn by the moon when I boarded the first...

The factories I've built to manufacture the Terran hardware are still being upgraded, which includes the one for the Point Singularity Projector. It's produced 8 so far out of 32 that I need for the Valhalla. The 5 I got from a destroyed Xenon K are a headstart in that regard, however.

I remember you saying you captured a J previously. How many marines did you need for success?

I finally took the risk of a Q and got it. I used all Split marines, as I didn't care about there loss. I'll use more split for future Xenon captures.

[BrigandPhantos77]

UPDATE: I reloaded to before I boarded the Valhalla when I realised a couple of things- that there were still many Terran ships I haven't bought yet while I had the notoriety, as well as the special ships. And because the Valhalla had parked itself in Jupiter it's not as though it's going anywhere. So I decided to raise my notoriety a bit first so I can buy more of the ships and reduce the number of Terran/ATF I have to board beyond the Valhalla (which I'll get first). With the cap on Terran rep thanks to my commonwealth rep I know I'll have to board the M1s and M2s regardless but if I can at least get the M7s it'll mean 3 fewer ships I'll need to board, which still leaves 6 others in addition to the Valhalla.

As it happens, the marines that have finished their training are coming in thick and fast now, I'm up to 37 so far which works out to an average of maxing 4 marines per ship.

EDIT: Make that 39, and it looks like Planetary Senator is as high as I'm going to get. Time to formulate my plan of attack

I'm still procrastinating opening there space. I lose rep with them at a rate of about 10% per sector crossed. Doing too much trade with the commonwealth. Actually making an income of 5 to 6 million about every 5 to 10 minutes in game. Might have to disable factories to do anything with the Terrans.

First plan is to park a Colossus in either Mercury or Saturn, then buy out all the fighters I can for RE. Not looking forward to the rep drops all around when I bump there's.

[Sovereign01]

UPDATE: Boosting my rep as high as I could before boarding had another positive effect when I took the Valhalla. I still lost many ranks, but my rep was still positive at the end of it so the Terrans weren't instantly hostile so my plans are going to alternate between recruiting/sending agents to replenish my notoriety between boardings. The boarding itself was pretty much the same as before, the Valhalla being escorted by 3 Skirnirs and again attacked from behind. I used the max of 26 marines to board it and picked the last one up with the Pteranodon. Took more damage than I'd like but that was merely inconvenient, and got 3 of them up to max rank in the process. I currently have almost 40 marines in the Sirokos ready to board, before leaving the outpost to do boarding I transfer the excess marines to the TP I've been using to ferry newly-trained ones from my barracks so I'm not messing around when ordering the boarding itself. First was the Valhalla, a Kyoto will be next. Although a second Valhalla did spawn by the moon when I boarded the first...

The factories I've built to manufacture the Terran hardware are still being upgraded, which includes the one for the Point Singularity Projector. It's produced 8 so far out of 32 that I need for the Valhalla. The 5 I got from a destroyed Xenon K are a headstart in that regard, however.

I remember you saying you captured a J previously. How many marines did you need for success?

I finally took the risk of a Q and got it. I used all Split marines, as I didn't care about there loss. I'll use more split for future Xenon captures.

It was an I- after many reloads I managed to capture it with 26 maxed marines, losing 7. For that particular boarding I used my Aquilo to clear out the rest of the Xenon from the sector, being careful to leave the I intact before bringing in the Sirokos.

[Sovereign01]

UPDATE: I reloaded to before I boarded the Valhalla when I realised a couple of things- that there were still many Terran ships I haven't bought yet while I had the notoriety, as well as the special ships. And because the Valhalla had parked itself in Jupiter it's not as though it's going anywhere. So I decided to raise my notoriety a bit first so I can buy more of the ships and reduce the number of Terran/ATF I have to board beyond the Valhalla (which I'll get first). With the cap on Terran rep thanks to my commonwealth rep I know I'll have to board the M1s and M2s regardless but if I can at least get the M7s it'll mean 3 fewer ships I'll need to board, which still leaves 6 others in addition to the Valhalla.

As it happens, the marines that have finished their training are coming in thick and fast now, I'm up to 37 so far which works out to an average of maxing 4 marines per ship.

EDIT: Make that 39, and it looks like Planetary Senator is as high as I'm going to get. Time to formulate my plan of attack

I'm still procrastinating opening there space. I lose rep with them at a rate of about 10% per sector crossed. Doing too much trade with the commonwealth. Actually making an income of 5 to 6 million about every 5 to 10 minutes in game. Might have to disable factories to do anything with the Terrans.

First plan is to park a Colossus in either Mercury or Saturn, then buy out all the fighters I can for RE. Not looking forward to the rep drops all around when I bump there's.

When I reloaded my game, buying all the ships I could for REing was exactly what I did, including 3 out of the 4 special ships, the cap on notoriety meaning I couldn't buy the M7D, but I did spy one flying around Asteroid Belt so I can get it that way. While I was doing that I did visit the Yaki and picked up their M7D, also managed to get one of the Adv Fujins to bail using PBEs so I got all their special ships, and much later between other captures I boarded a Hoshi.

I found that positive Terran Rep was actually a necessity instead of a convenience for boarding because without it you cannot actually use their beacons to jump in meaning you bring your own if you don't want to use the gates, so a series of agents boosting rep and gathering influence was mandatory- all my boarding so far has been via jump beacon in the same sector as the target.

I went after a Kyoto next, luckily its escorts were nonexistent so the actual boarding was a piece of cake and I sent it straight to the HQ for kitting out, the shortage of PSPs means it won't be seeing any action for a while. Both times I used the Pteranodon to suppress its shields.

Next target was a Skirnir, the only ones to be found were guarding the Valhalla that spawned to replace the one I 'borrowed' Only attempted boarding one when it wandered a bit too far away from the ship it was escorting since the others were quite trigger happy, getting the marines aboard (it can take 28) was almost impossible because I couldn't get my Sirokos in front of it since its weapons can only fire aft, eventually got lucky in that my pods avoided getting shot down. Using the Hammer volley trick on the Skirnir didn't work because the Hammers would either fail to knock out the shields or destroy the ship entirely, in the end I was able to use Wraiths to get the job done.

Most recently was an Odin (no Wodens present), on the ship the Hammer trick did work and I was able to use the Kogarasu Maru to distract it from my pods so I was able to board it, send over the JD kit and ecells and managed to GTFO with my prize. I'm hoping that like the Tyr/Valhalla, the Woden will appear once the Odin disappears. So far its replacement was another Odin. And like the Skirnir with the Valhalla, the only Aegirs to appear have been escorting Odins. Boarding one of those is not going to be easy.

[DanKara]

[...] the only Aegirs to appear have been escorting Odins. Boarding one of those is not going to be easy.

AEGIRs spawn in Station-Defense-Missions, that have ATF as enemy. Easy to pick ...

[Sovereign01]

[...] the only Aegirs to appear have been escorting Odins. Boarding one of those is not going to be easy.

AEGIRs spawn in Station-Defense-Missions, that have ATF as enemy. Easy to pick ...

I wasn't aware they were a possible enemy, do they appear as such in sectors bordering theirs or can any one do? I'm at a rank where station defence missions spawn a couple of frigates as well as smaller ships. Just yesterday I had 2 such missions going at the same time in a Teladi sector (both with agents as reward), enemies being Pirates and Yaki. Hilariously, when a Carrack met an Akurei, they attacked each other!

[DanKara]

do they appear as such in sectors bordering theirs or can any one do?

Can happen anywhere, I think.
Non-Criminals and even XEN as enemies in such mission are not as common. Missions against Non-Criminials never reward agents, therefore I rarely did those ... so my memory might be wrong on their appearance frequency (long time agent huntress here )

[Sovereign01]

do they appear as such in sectors bordering theirs or can any one do?

Can happen anywhere, I think.
Non-Criminals and even XEN as enemies in such mission are not as common. Missions against Non-Criminials never reward agents, therefore I rarely did those ... so my memory might be wrong on their appearance frequency (long time agent huntress here )

I might have to get my Aegir that way, the new Odin had 4 of them spawn as escorts- I guess I should have grabbed one of the escorts of the last one instead as they were more spread out and didn't have any Valis. This time however, there were over a dozen of them in sector. While my Aquilo proved it was more than capable of laying waste to all of them, it didn't get me anything good so I reloaded to try something else!

[BrigandPhantos77]

do they appear as such in sectors bordering theirs or can any one do?

Can happen anywhere, I think.
Non-Criminals and even XEN as enemies in such mission are not as common. Missions against Non-Criminials never reward agents, therefore I rarely did those ... so my memory might be wrong on their appearance frequency (long time agent huntress here )

I might have to get my Aegir that way, the new Odin had 4 of them spawn as escorts- I guess I should have grabbed one of the escorts of the last one instead as they were more spread out and didn't have any Valis. This time however, there were over a dozen of them in sector. While my Aquilo proved it was more than capable of laying waste to all of them, it didn't get me anything good so I reloaded to try something else!

Funny thing about the Terran's, on my very first playthrough I had to face the Terran's in the starting area on a patrol mission before unlocking the Hub. I got one of there M4s that way. Couldn't use it of course, no weapons. But it was nice to get to RE right away. And it added them as discovered race right off the bat.

So to answer your previous question, I'd say they can appear with any mission giver.

As to boarding other Xenon Capital ships, just set up the same way I did for the Q? Same amount of Marines?

[DanKara]

[...] and didn't have any Valis. This time however, there were over a dozen of them in sector. [...]

Aren't the VALI's part of a different 'battlegroup'? I think they will leave that place eventually.

Have you ever used the MARU for boarding (with 'launch all marines' hotkeyed)? Simply approach the slowest AEGIR (maybe damage its hull to make it even slower). Start the boarding process and 'flee' - but stay within weapon reach of the other three AEGIR's (else all ships will regroup with their leader) to draw them appart. Shortly before the end of the boarding process you should be back at your boarded AEGIR so you can transfer stuff an jump both ships out.
I have never tried or needed: I think in 'classic'-control mode it is still possible to navigate the playership (to avoid incomming fire) while navigating some menus. In addition I've read somewhere that the 'jump device transfer glitch" can be modified/used in a way that both ships jump in the same jump sequence. Hmm ... maybe worth trying with the next VALHALLA to circumvent its jump-restrictions...

[Sovereign01]

[...] and didn't have any Valis. This time however, there were over a dozen of them in sector. [...]

Aren't the VALI's part of a different 'battlegroup'? I think they will leave that place eventually.

Have you ever used the MARU for boarding (with 'launch all marines' hotkeyed)? Simply approach the slowest AEGIR (maybe damage its hull to make it even slower). Start the boarding process and 'flee' - but stay within weapon reach of the other three AEGIR's (else all ships will regroup with their leader) to draw them appart. Shortly before the end of the boarding process you should be back at your boarded AEGIR so you can transfer stuff an jump both ships out.
I have never tried or needed: I think in 'classic'-control mode it is still possible to navigate the playership (to avoid incomming fire) while navigating some menus. In addition I've read somewhere that the 'jump device transfer glitch" can be modified/used in a way that both ships jump in the same jump sequence. Hmm ... maybe worth trying with the next VALHALLA to circumvent its jump-restrictions...

They had different names, I think 4 of them were with the Aegirs and the other 8 were part of a different group. It was difficult to tell as they were all concentrated in the same part of the sector. I'll check the next Odin carrier group that appears and see what ships accompany it. I managed to grab the Terran Maccana so that's one more ship checked off the list then while my agents are restoring my rep and influence I'm claiming the various engine tuning and rudder optimisations, got a Kyoto going for some tunings. Amed with the dozen PSPs off the Odin so it's far from defenceless. I hope if I keep blowing up Odins a Woden will appear