[TC] Boarding mini-guide

[Cycrow]

First problem I encountered was that shield attack wing command has
same effect like attack ship command.

ok, here is the problem with the shield attack command, basically it needs you to think.

what the ships do, is attack the ship until the shields are down, wait for them to rise slightly before firing again. However, the problem is, that sometimes the ship will have fired alot of ships before the first one hits to knock down their shields. So the shields go down, the ship stops firing, but theres still alot of bullets in space and can cause hull damage. Obviously the more ships you have the worst it can be. The command is fairly clevel and the ships will reduce the amount it fires when shields get lower but its impossible to judge perfectly.

If you balance the wing properly to take out the ship with the correct weapons then it works better. Ie, terran ships are not a good idea for the command, considering the large amount of hull damage thier weapons do, it only takes a few stray hits to whipe out the hull

Second thing is to start boarding you need to select through so many
options and it could be easily done by just pressing one button.

this is simple to solve, as the boarding process will not start until you get the shields of the ship down. So you can command the ship before you even arrive at battle and get it ready. It will then fly on autopilot and wait for the shields to go down. Once down, the marines will launch

Problem with blue wing destroying boarding target I overcame by
uninstalling all lasers but one from each wingmen. Problem with starting
boarding I overcome by clicking all commands until boarding list and then
flying like that until I am in position to start boarding.

same problem as above, althou its a good idea to command your wing to standby once the marines start fighting

When I finally made it I found out about weird bug if you try to do
boarding during protect station mission. If you succeed in boarding script
will not recognize that ship changed owner and will expect from you to
destroy it. I said to my self well who cares I will abort the mission. But
when you do that ship ownership will revert back to previous owner
(pirates). You will need to board it once again. Luckily it will obey your
last command (for example “stand bay”) before you abort the mission, so
you don’t need to hunt it down but you will still lose some marines

sounds like the mission simply isn't checking that the owership has changed

Another thing I noticed is that if you want to transfer marines let’s say
from TP to your M6 then if one of those two doesn't have any marines on
it you will not get an option to do transfer.

this is just a quirk that was discovered, basically if either of the ships are full or have no space for new marines, then it wont display the transfer.

ie, if you have a ship full of marines that you want to transfer from one ship to another, it wont actually display because that ship doesn't have any more room for marines

Is it possible to check marine skill set before you hire him?

install the bioscanner and the skills will be displayed on the trade screen

also once you have hired them, pressing i will display the marine stats

What will help marines to stay alive, since they will probably need to
board few M6 before I can try something larger? After 3 successful
boarding only two managed to survive (somebody mentioned engineering
skill)

more experience, higher fighting skill.

engineering is for doing less damage to the ship.

but the better the fighters the easier it is for them and the less likly they die
also, it depends how many, and how good the marines are on your target ship, and be careful of internal sentry lasers, they can whipe out a few marines

[igorstef]

Thanks for quick replay.

ok, here is the problem with the shield attack command, basically it needs you to think.

what the ships do, is attack the ship until the shields are down, wait for them to rise slightly before firing again. However, the problem is, that sometimes the ship will have fired alot of ships before the first one hits to knock down their shields. So the shields go down, the ship stops firing, but theres still alot of bullets in space and can cause hull damage. Obviously the more ships you have the worst it can be. The command is fairly clevel and the ships will reduce the amount it fires when shields get lower but its impossible to judge perfectly.

If you balance the wing properly to take out the ship with the correct weapons then it works better. Ie, terran ships are not a good idea for the command, considering the large amount of hull damage thier weapons do, it only takes a few stray hits to whipe out the hull

Seam like problem is related more to ships trying to defend them self
because even when they have only one laser I was forced to remove
even that one during the battle to prevent them from firing even when
shields are down. Also stand by will not work because then they will be
sitting ducks during boarding process. I tried with “follow me” to get them
of the boarding target but they continued with attacking probably again
because trying retaliate to enemy fire.

this is simple to solve, as the boarding process will not start until you get the shields of the ship down. So you can command the ship before you even arrive at battle and get it ready. It will then fly on autopilot and wait for the shields to go down. Once down, the marines will launch

Yes I understand what you want to tell me, but I was flying TP in order to
avoid centaur fire as much as possible. If I start boarding before coming
close to Centaur autopilot will take over and TP will never get close to it.
So only solution was to select piracy->boarding->boarding target and
than fly to centaur with boarding list on the screen. Problem with this is
that you can not fire and sometimes you can not see clearly what is in
front of you. So if somehow instead of autopilot taking over we can just
send marines on command it will be easier since AI is not that good in
getting close to the target.

[moralar]

install the bioscanner and the skills will be displayed on the trade screen

The bioscanner allows me to see the overall star rating in the trade screen, but I can't seem to find the ratings breakdown for each individual skill (fighting/hacking/etc.) unless I purchase the marine. Is there a trick I'm missing?

[Nataku02]

thanks for info but you have All failed to answer the ULTIMATE QUESTION!
has ANYONE tried to capture the ALMIGHTY Brigantine!??? (the only ship i ever wanted more tha a heavy centaur who *shine* factor is on par)

[Goldfinch]

I've updated my original post with an actual guide, compiled from the collective knowledge posted in here and my experiments in game. It's not comprehensive but I hope it's helpful for anyone looking to learn how the boarding works.

I do have a question that hopefully someone (probably Cycrow if anyone) can answer. Will marines perform multiple specific roles in one boarding attempt? For instance, I checked the stats of some of my marines before and after boarding a Centaur, and of the 3 surviving marines, one of the 2 that hacked the ship was actually my worst hacker. My best hacker was also my best mechanic, so is it the case that him being used for the entry meant he was then not able to be used for the hacking?

[VincentTH]

I found that the best TP for boarding is the Angel, sold at Queen's Retribution. It has 4x25MJ shield and Iron Disruptor in its front turret.

I keep 2 TPs for training. I put the 10 marines with highest Fighting experience in the Angel, and a backup team of 10 on another TP.

TMs are the best target for marine boarding practice. I found 1 in Nopileos Memorial, and one in the Unknown sector west of Maelstrom.

here is my cycle:

(1) Attempt a boarding at either TM.
(2) If I lose some marine, resupply the Angel from the backup team and train them (again).
(3) Replenish the backup team from Pirate stations. If any new recruit have high fighting skill, I will specifically train them and use them to re-supply the Angel (or M6).

[Codename46]

Has anybody tried boarding using a TL?

[Goldfinch]

Has anybody tried boarding using a TL?

I'm not sure if TLs can, or even if capitals other than M7Ms can. I kind of assumed bigger ships can but it would be good to have confirmation. As for why you'd want to use a TL, I'm not too sure. Too slow and unmaneuverable while having only slightly more shielding than an M6.

[igorstef]

I have Tiger (split M7) and it can't be used for boarding. So I think only TP,
M6 and M7M ships can be used for boarding.

[GCU Grey Area]

Heavy Centaur works well for boarding ops, particularly the prototype version (~50% faster than the standard model). It's compatible with a couple of types of shield stripping weapons (Ion D's/Pulse Generators), though I have also fitted mine with a pair of Plasma Burst Generators for crowd control & initial bombardment of the primary target, switching to Ions only as soon as shields go down, to keep them that way while causing minimal damage to the hull. Only carries 5 marines though, so I may have to borrow a few more from the Argon military to deal with larger targets such as M1s & M2s, though it has been fine so far against the smaller capital ships & TLs.

[Sandalpocalypse]

...you've taken on m7s and TLs with 5 marines? They must be badass.

Hmm, I guess if you cherry pick targets with no marines or defense systems you're alright. Just have to have enough Mechanical and Hack skill.

[GCU Grey Area]

...you've taken on m7s and TLs with 5 marines? They must be badass.

Hmm, I guess if you cherry pick targets with no marines or defense systems you're alright. Just have to have enough Mechanical and Hack skill.

The ones currently on board all have 4 stars as a general rating, with 5 stars mech & 3-5 on the other 2 trainable skills. Shouldn't be long now though before the rest of the mob is fully trained (I just got impatient waiting for the ones I'm using to finish).

[Graxster]

And last thing is you may want to check if script works correct when you
are choosing who will board and who will stay on ship

I have to agree there. I just got to the plot part where you can practice, and they give you 10 marines. If you go to the Combat > Piracy > Board Ship menu and choose who is going to board the other ship, this selection of marines is totally ignored both if you then launch your marines manually, or if you let the autopilot do it.

When you go to that menu, their names all have a "Stay on board?" after them, when you click them they now have "Get ready for boarding?", so logic says that these you select are the ones who are going to be in the boarding party. In practice, that never works. The game launches random marines from your cargo hold. On autopilot, it launched all 10 marines, even though it was a small ship and could only take 5 marines tops. So the boarding script is definitely not working properly.

-Grax

[calanorn]

i tried caturing a xenon Q earlier used an M7M with boarding pods sent 20 marines in waves of five all of them had 5 stars or 4 stars in pretty much everything. all boarding pods made it to the Q and then got slaughtered tried it around 8 times now with no luck.

[brekehan]

6 attempts with my M3 and my hydra following with marines. For some reason my hydra decides to attack and blow up the ship when I give it the board command. Even though the shields of the target are already down.

[igorstef]

i tried caturing a xenon Q earlier used an M7M with boarding pods sent 20 marines in waves of five all of them had 5 stars or 4 stars in pretty much everything. all boarding pods made it to the Q and then got slaughtered tried it around 8 times now with no luck.

Did you scan it first to check if it has internal sentry lasers or hull polarization device or bunch of nasty marines.

[calanorn]

Well ive tried about 50 times now all perfect boardings 4 pods so 20 marines all make it they clear to level 3 then die every time. scanned xennon ship no defenses that i can see yet it fails at level 3 every time maybe they just cant be captured or something.

[igorstef]

Your marines also have 4-5 stars in fighting all 20 of them? Also can you try
to board without boarding pods just to make sure they all get on it in same time.

[calanorn]

yep all are 4 or 5 star ive not tried without the pods could take a bit more manovering in that size ship il give it a go though and let ya know how it goes.

[Goldfinch]

6 attempts with my M3 and my hydra following with marines. For some reason my hydra decides to attack and blow up the ship when I give it the board command. Even though the shields of the target are already down.

Try flying the Hydra yourself, leave the M3 out of it. It's a lot easier to board if you pilot manually. Get up close and in front of your target before launching marines, as they will drop behind your ship and latch onto the target. If you issue the boarding command from too far away the autopilot will take over, and it's not very good.