How to Board Xenon capital ships, TC 2.6 Vanilla (Updated)

sleepy_head · Post by **sleepy_head** » Sun, 16. May 10, 00:53

Gruber1232002 wrote:
lordmuck wrote:Sec so let me get this cleared up say I sent 21 marines out, at for example deck 3 im down to 3 marines. If I have more marines on my M7M say another 10 and launch them would they then help the other 3 if they survive until the 10 get to the target ? would they start at deck 3? (never tried it)
Yes, they would join the fight at deck 3, IF your marines were still alive at the time.

In a boarding op, the computer compares your fight value to the ship's fight value. I assume a random modifier is rolled for each fight value a couple of times per deck. If the adjusted fight values are similar, you lose some marines, and the ship loses some marines. If the ship's adjusted fight value is much higher than yours, only you lose marines, whereas is your adjusted fight value is much higher only the ship loses marines.

Xenon work differently than other ships. Since the xenon don't have marines they can't lose any. If you have similar adjusted fight values, you lose marines. If you have much lower fight values, you lose a lot of marines. Your adjusted fight value has to be much higher on every roll to keep your marines alive. As soon as you lose a marine you are almost guaranteed to lose more in a hurry because your adjusted fight value drops. The lower it gets the faster your guys die. As I understand it and as Catra mentioned, it goes like this.

M1/2/7
Deck 1, 1600 fight points, 80%
Deck 2, 1500 fight points, 75%
Deck 3, 1400 fight points, 70%
Deck 4, 1300 fight points, 65%
Deck 5, 1200 fight points, 60%

M6

Deck 1, 400, 80%
Deck 2, 375, 75%
Deck 3, 350, 70%

After many many experiments, and as you have noticed yourself, your adjusted fight value can't get into the much higher than xenon value range using only 2000 points, (20 maxed marines). You need 2100 points (21 maxed marines) just to be able to reach the survival range vs xenon. That is why in my experience, most of the reloads occur on decks 1 and 2. I have no idea how the # of successful boarding ops affects anything. I think mine have 10-20 successful ops in their stats because I rotated marines in my training program. KLF07 feels that it makes a difference so there's probably something to it.

When boarding a xenon M6, you need 600 points, (6 maxed marines)

In short, you need every last point you can get when you board the xenon. Sleepy-head used 1995 points out of a possible 2100. I've never been able to do it using 2000, so I'm not surprised.

I'll just point out that if you had 3 marines left on deck 3, you are rolling an adjusted 300 vs an adjusted 1400. Your guys will last a whole 3 seconds, so in reality the next wave would never make it in time, and they would start from 'cutting hull'.

KLF07 has done it with 2 M7M's. It sounds reasonable to me, but I would worry about the weird glitches where only 1 M7M launches, and the other takes its time. The M7M's would also have to be similar distances from the target, or half the group wont arrive on time. I have never tried it that way, so if you try it I would ask KLF07 for advice.

Happy xenon pirateing...

Thanks for the clarification. All that makes sense except one thing was vastly different in my experience. This had to do with Xenon M6.

Oddly enough, my first xenon capture (not counting fighters) was a PX. Back then I had crap marines. I am sure no one was at 100, I hired them at 3 stars and up so they were probably between 3 to 5 stars but none at 100. If my memory is correct, I got that PX with 6 marines, saving/reloading on each deck, without losses and it was maybe 45 minutes of reloading. I don't know if it was freak luck. But if the numbers worked the way you stated, no amount of luck would help 6 mid level fighting marines.

So I don't know why the capping of my PX went that way. But the rest of all your numbers and speculations are likely dead on. It is just down right impossible to clear Deck 1 without losses with "only" 20 marines each with 100 fighting.

One thing I want to know, lets say I do get a Siroko and send in 21 marines, how many hours of reload am I looking at if I want no losses on a Q?

One other, OTHER thing : after having done numerous numerous ooodles of reloads, I'm finding that each reload seems to add to the length of time it takes for a subsequent reload, almost like a memory leak (but not exactly of course). You guys experience this as well?

Gruber1232002 · Post by **Gruber1232002** » Sun, 16. May 10, 04:43

sleepy_head wrote: ...no amount of luck would help 6 mid level fighting marines.

So I don't know why the capping of my PX went that way.

how many hours of reload am I looking at if I want no losses on a Q?

One other, OTHER thing : after having done numerous numerous ooodles of reloads, I'm finding that each reload seems to add to the length of time it takes for a subsequent reload, almost like a memory leak (but not exactly of course). You guys experience this as well?

Look at the numbers.

2100 vs 1600 on an M1/2/7 is a ratio of 1.3125
To get the same ratio on a PX you would only need 525 fight points, or an average of 87.5 fight skill per marine.

I think we can all agree that 20 marines doesn't cut it, that's 2000 vs 1600, or a ratio of 1.25

1.25 for an M6 would be 500 fight points. That's what I had when I failed to board my first PX. For 6 marines it's an average or 83.3 fight skill. Once you get to deck 2, you would only need and average fight skill of 80 per marine (ratio of ~1.3) to have decent survival odds. Perhaps if I had the patience to reload for 45 mins I could have grabbed one too, but I'll never know.

What I am sure of is that capping a P was super easy with 6 maxed marines.

GUESS ALERT:
This is total guess work, but I have a feeling that the range of the random modifier is ship dependent. I can't think of another reason that there is such a discrepancy between required reloads between ships. If you go back into my original post you will note that it appears to be much easier to board a K than a J. I boarded another J last night and it took around 15 reloads, on average 8-10 more than a K. I use the same boarding team for my xenon work, which should eliminate most of the other variables.

Obviously I don't have much data yet, but as I proceed the averages should become more meaningful. Perhaps KLF07 can give us some insight on the range of difficulty between ships?

If you go back to my original post you will see that on average it took me 10 reloads per Q.

As for your other other thing, I have no idea, all my reloads take ages no matter what, which is a powerful motivator to figure out how to do things right the first time.

KLF07 · Post by **KLF07** » Mon, 17. May 10, 12:00

Hi
So, I completed my post, and one more remark.
Game contains a random, after few bording ops just build or do somethin else

Best regards

zazie · Post by **zazie** » Mon, 17. May 10, 12:18

I have read several times in this and other threads that you need 21 or 6 Marines. But I have never found an explanation how to proceed.

How does it work to get 21 Marines into a TL ? Why not 22 ?

The only info I took from a post here was to launch 5 Marines from the first and 16 from the second M7M. Is THAT the 'magical trigger' ?

And how does it work for 6 Marines: Do you need two ships able to launch Entering Pods ? 3 and 3 Marines in it ?

Thanks for explanation or a link.

KLF07 · Post by **KLF07** » Mon, 17. May 10, 12:55

zazie wrote:I have read several times in this and other threads that you need 21 or 6 Marines. But I have never found an explanation how to proceed.

How does it work to get 21 Marines into a TL ? Why not 22 ?

The only info I took from a post here was to launch 5 Marines from the first and 16 from the second M7M. Is THAT the 'magical trigger' ?

And how does it work for 6 Marines: Do you need two ships able to launch Entering Pods ? 3 and 3 Marines in it ?

Thanks for explanation or a link.

21 - max capacity of capital ship, if send more marines - all above 21 - lost in space.
Use command "piracy.." to send 6 like 3+3 from 1 M7M
'magical trigger' is marines fighting experience 100, and 40+ success boarding ops.

Good luck

Murija · Post by **Murija** » Mon, 17. May 10, 19:18

am i rite when i say that boarding is not worth it?
amount of money you spend for training and equipment you need to board any ship is more than you spend to buy ship you want, maybe even better ship than you can cap [not to mention repairs].
imo boarding is obsolete. except for fun.
since i love to torture myself i also tried capping some ships,
you guys say 6 maxed for m6, i tried more non maxed marines, also no m7m, so i spacewalk. i decided to spend all marines i have on pirate Centaur... i had 70 non-maxed marines, and i got annoyed by training msgs, so i decided to cap or let them die.
Centaur had 3 marines in defence, not a single star.
i sent 5 from my Vidar, ones that i just bought. They killed 1 marine on pirate ship and died.
i started spamming my 5 star marines from Scabbard-s and Express-es.
2nd wave.. 10x5 stars...all got in... they died killed noone.
3th wave... 10x5 stars some 4 starts... all got in... died killed noone.
4th wave ... same
5th wave ... same
6th wave ... same
in that process i saved/reload many times to see can i get better results...
all marines are lowest 2 stars in fight, some had 5, but really few (3-4)
all together = annoying and obsolete.
boarding abandoned until m7m

Gruber1232002 · Post by **Gruber1232002** » Tue, 18. May 10, 02:12

Murija wrote:am i rite when i say that boarding is not worth it?
amount of money you spend for training and equipment you need to board any ship is more than you spend to buy ship you want, maybe even better ship than you can cap [not to mention repairs].
imo boarding is obsolete. except for fun.
since i love to torture myself i also tried capping some ships,
you guys say 6 maxed for m6, i tried more non maxed marines, also no m7m, so i spacewalk. i decided to spend all marines i have on pirate Centaur... i had 70 non-maxed marines, and i got annoyed by training msgs, so i decided to cap or let them die.
Centaur had 3 marines in defence, not a single star.
i sent 5 from my Vidar, ones that i just bought. They killed 1 marine on pirate ship and died.
i started spamming my 5 star marines from Scabbard-s and Express-es.
2nd wave.. 10x5 stars...all got in... they died killed noone.
3th wave... 10x5 stars some 4 starts... all got in... died killed noone.
4th wave ... same
5th wave ... same
6th wave ... same
in that process i saved/reload many times to see can i get better results...
all marines are lowest 2 stars in fight, some had 5, but really few (3-4)
all together = annoying and obsolete.
boarding abandoned until m7m

No you are not right.

Spacewalk boarding sucks for all of us. But it's like a rite of passage. Once you nab an M7M it's different. And marines are an investment. Spend 1.5 million (each), and ~4 days on 21 marines. Total cost ~30-40 million and 4 days. Take care of them, train them up with a boarding program and you will never lose them on anything other than Xenon.
That's expensive, I agree, but consider that now you can steal capital ships worth 80-100 million per op and never lose a marine. That's a return on investment that's hard to beat, because you could quite conceivably board 75 million worth of ships every hour, easy in fact. For an initial investment of ~40 million it would be hard to build a factory complex that can compete.

One word of advice, try to only board defenseless ships with 20 marines if you can. 20 rookie marines can easily take an undefended large ship. M6's are much tougher to take. Once your marines have decent fight skill, (50), you can start to relax about ship defenses.

And of course, perhaps it's just not for you. I'm the patient kind who lives for the major victories down the road. Perhaps you prefer a quicker fix. Just something to consider.

dbrowdy · Post by **dbrowdy** » Tue, 18. May 10, 03:03

Gruber1232002 wrote: One word of advice, try to only board defenseless ships with 20 marines if you can. 20 rookie marines can easily take an undefended large ship. M6's are much tougher to take. Once your marines have decent fight skill, (50), you can start to relax about ship defenses.

This involves using 2x TP, correct? That sounds way harder than dropping 6 marines on a M6 from a TP...any tips on accomplishing it?

Gruber1232002 · Post by **Gruber1232002** » Tue, 18. May 10, 06:18

dbrowdy wrote: This involves using 2x TP, correct? That sounds way harder than dropping 6 marines on a M6 from a TP...any tips on accomplishing it?

I would approach it as follows:

Find a hospital ship/casino TL. They have no weapons which is huge plus, and they have large collision detection radii coupled with slow speed. A mammoth sounds good, I like Montalaar personally because there is usually 1 Titan, few escorts, and on average 2 defenseless mammoths.

Pick the mammoth with 1GJ of shielding.

Move the TP's into the target's path, then order them to board. Save.
Make sure the Titan is far away, then launch a firestorm torpedo. That'll take care of the shields in one hit.

Nip at the shields to keep them down, and hope your TP's launch. If necessary, fly in its path to make it stop and turn. If your marines are flying in, it's toast when it stops to turn.

As soon as it's stolen, transfer a jumpdrive and energy and jump it out. Then apologize to the Titan and everything should go back to 'like it never happened'.

Rinse and repeat.

Alternatively, you could go for the gold and try to steal an M7M. It will be hard, and you need to find one in pirate space so that you don't have sector ships swarming you because it will take a while. You will probably need Ion-d's to remove marines/defenses. Try to go for an unturreted M7M. You may have to remove escorts too, so the rep damage will be significant. You might also need to smack it up a bit to lower its speed so your guys can catch it. Otherwise use the fly in front of it trick. Admittedly, the last time I tried it, I had to manually launch from both TP's, since they didn't want to get around to launching, then herd the M7M in a circle until all the marines were in a cluster, then make it stop and turn. Took ages, and I lost a whole lot of rep doing it.

Once you have it though, It's a whole new ball game.

I'll play around with the TL's when I get a chance and report back, but it'll be at least a week.

Gruber1232002 · Post by **Gruber1232002** » Mon, 24. May 10, 23:31

EPIC FAIL.

So even though it's a hard target, I don't have one yet so I tried to snag an elephant Arena last night using two TP's. I had forgotten how irritating spacewalking was. I sent both TP's ahead into the path of the target, stripped the shields, shot it up to remove the hull polarizer. Then I ordered both TP's to board while carefully controlling the shields. There were three possible outcomes,

1) Both TP's fly back towards the elephant and drop marines behind it. The marines can't catch up. I'm not flying anything big enough to divert the Arena. Abort

2) Only 1 TP drops marines, 5 of them get on board, 5 don't. Ship captured?? I guess it pays to be using elite marines, but that's still a failure in my book since the op didn't go according to plan. Abort

3) Neither TP drops marines. They turn to approach target, veer away and stop. No marines, target passes by. Abort.

The Launch all marines option didn't seem to work either since the TP's would 'forget' what they were doing...??

Granted, last time I successfully TP spacewalked something I had fighter support and did it myself, but surely the AI can manage to just drop some marines in the path of the target. It seems like the whole mechanism would work better if the TP's just dropped the marines instead of trying to line them up first. Sort of like ejecting a ware, then getting an order window for the marines... eg. board ship....

I'll give it another shot tonight, but I'm bringing a J loaded with a bunch of L/M's armed to the teeth with PBE's to attack shields. I may bust out my Angel too since I seem to remember it's pretty quick. I think I should also gather up my freshest marines so that I don't get the elite bias, but most of them are max trained in everything except fight skill so it wont quite match the average early boarder.

I'll update, even though this has nothing to do with my original post....

Gruber1232002 · Post by **Gruber1232002** » Tue, 25. May 10, 20:56

@dbrowdy,

SUCCESS. Here's the update.

Since it doesn't flow with snagging xenon I made it a new post.

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... 62#3282362

Gruber1232002 · Post by **Gruber1232002** » Fri, 28. May 10, 18:05

So I've been doing a bunch of assassination missions to pass the time while waiting for microchips and I figured my pirate rep could use a little boost. So I did a little tour looking for build and transport missions in the pirate sectors.

Low and behold, a XI mission in acquisition repository. Perfect, best of both worlds. Do a little stealing and boost my pirate rep substantially.

In the process I noticed some interesting things. As we know from the contributions to the knowledge pool, (I think it was Carlo) the more assets you have in the sector for each combat round, the more xenon get thrown at you. Needless to say, by the time I'd boarded my 4th K things were starting to get a bit hairy. I almost lost the J I subsequently nabbed because of a deluge of P's accompanied by 2 K's and another J that spawned nearby. So I chickened out a bit and started sending the K's and J out bit by bit as time allowed. Things are a bit more manageable now but after a couple of hours the mission is still going strong. Here are the numbers,

K, 7 reloads
K, 5 reloads
K, 6 reloads
K, 8 reloads
J, 6 reloads
J, 8 reloads

It appears that a critical component of success during deck 1 is the simultaneous arrival of pods. That means you really need to try to land your pods on the wide flat side of the target so that they 'arrive' together. If the pods land on the narrow side, it seems (this is a guess) that the AI treats it like two groups that do not enter at the same time during the first combat roll.

It also appears that the Sirokos will fail to launch all marines if it is oriented 'poorly'. If I tell it to follow the target, wait 15 seconds or so and then order it to board, all the marines are launched. I need to do more testing before I can definitively say that this is the case, but I have a strong suspicion.

The J's were stuffed with fighters so I sold them for ~45 million each, rather than build up a fleet of empty carriers.

In additional news, reloading a couple of times right before 'getting' the ship occasionally netted 24 gauss cannons or 24 PPC's. Generally though, it seems wild xenon have weapons and shields left on board far more often, as in 1-2 reloads for a full complement. Wild xenon also have more exotic weaponry like PSP's etc, which I have yet to see on the spawned variety. I'll update the averages shortly.

sleepy_head · Post by **sleepy_head** » Fri, 28. May 10, 19:36

Gruber1232002 wrote:Perfect, best of both worlds. Do a little stealing and boost my pirate rep substantially.

Don't know if this is still happening in 2.6, but in 2.5, killing Xenon ships in pirate sectors in a xenon invasion/patrol mission will not give you additional pirate rep. You only get one point for mission completion. Dumb huh?

It appears that a critical component of success during deck 1 is the simultaneous arrival of pods.

This is such a stupid flaw in the boarding process that does not have to be that way. Whatever happened to "wait til the team all gets here before starting combat"? As long as there are still pods cutting hull the ones ready should never charge in in the first place. Its shoddy AI that goes Leeerrrroyyyy Jenkins and its responsible for a lot of pointless long reloads.

Post by **Nanook** » Fri, 28. May 10, 21:21

sleepy_head wrote:
Gruber1232002 wrote:Perfect, best of both worlds. Do a little stealing and boost my pirate rep substantially.
Don't know if this is still happening in 2.6, but in 2.5, killing Xenon ships in pirate sectors in a xenon invasion/patrol mission will not give you additional pirate rep. You only get one point for mission completion. Dumb huh?

Not really. The pirates are a bunch of unorganized yahoos who could care less about who you kill, as long as it's not them. Unlike the Yaki, who are very organized and control their own sectors with an iron fist.

It appears that a critical component of success during deck 1 is the simultaneous arrival of pods.
This is such a stupid flaw in the boarding process that does not have to be that way. Whatever happened to "wait til the team all gets here before starting combat"? As long as there are still pods cutting hull the ones ready should never charge in in the first place. Its shoddy AI that goes Leeerrrroyyyy Jenkins and its responsible for a lot of pointless long reloads.

Again, not really. You think the defenders are just going to sit idly by while the various groups of attackers are waiting around for everyone to be ready? I'd guess this simulates the attackers immediately being set upon by the local defenders, while their buddies are still trying to get in the hull. After all, expecting multiple pods to land on the exact same section of hull is a little bit unrealistic.

sleepy_head · Post by **sleepy_head** » Sat, 29. May 10, 01:42

Nanook wrote: Again, not really. You think the defenders are just going to sit idly by while the various groups of attackers are waiting around for everyone to be ready?

What are the defenders going to do, cut open the hull of their own ship to get at the boarders who are waiting outside for other incoming pods to make contact before starting??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkCNJRfSZBU

Yes, its the equivalent of a group of soldiers trying to storm a house or bunker, and the first guy who reaches the place decides to charge in before waiting for everyone to be in position. It is THAT stupid and no amount of excuse making can make it otherwise.

Post by **Nanook** » Sat, 29. May 10, 02:01

sleepy_head wrote:
Nanook wrote: Again, not really. You think the defenders are just going to sit idly by while the various groups of attackers are waiting around for everyone to be ready?
What are the defenders going to do, cut open the hull of their own ship to get at the boarders who are waiting outside for other incoming pods to make contact before starting?? ....

No, they're going to fire out the hole the first boarders just created in the hull. What, you expect the first group of marines to not even start cutting until they're all landed? I don't think that's the way even real marines would do things.

Yes, its the equivalent of a group of soldiers trying to storm a house or bunker, and the first guy who reaches the place decides to charge in before waiting for everyone to be in position. It is THAT stupid and no amount of excuse making can make it otherwise.

No, it's not. Boarding pod placement simply isn't that exact. Pods get fired at different distances and times, and the target ship is moving around. The different pods could be on opposite sides of the ship. There's no way a group of marines is going to wait around to see if and when another pod makes it to the ship, let alone manages to cut through the hull. I say again, not even real marines would do that.

It's not like storming a bunker, it's more akin to attacking an entire base via parachute.

sleepy_head · Post by **sleepy_head** » Sat, 29. May 10, 02:20

Nanook wrote: No, they're going to fire out the hole the first boarders just created in the hull.

Except that is NOT how the game works. Combat never ever starts until after the hull is breached and the marines are fully inside. There is no such thing as "firing out the hole", and pulling that out of one's posterior to justify the bad AI is not going to fly.

There's no way a group of marines is going to wait around to see if and when another pod makes it to the ship

Oh really? So I guess the simple actions below would be beyond the intelligence of these marines :

Team 1 : "Team 1 ready to start cutting hull."
Team 2 : "Team 2 needs 8 more seconds to reach targetl."
Team 3 : "Team 3 ready to go too."
Team 4 : "Team 4 still enroute, 5 seconds til contact."

Team 1 : "Leader here. Wait for my signal. Don't start cutting hull until Team 2 and 4 is ready."

Nah, space age marines don't have fancy things called "radio".

Catra · Post by **Catra** » Sat, 29. May 10, 02:35

Oh really?

seeing as thats what happens.
ya really.

So I guess the simple actions below would be beyond the intelligence of these marines :

so i guess you know what the pods are equipped with? plz, tell us what else they got

sleepy_head · Post by **sleepy_head** » Sat, 29. May 10, 03:06

Catra wrote: so i guess you know what the pods are equipped with? plz, tell us what else they got

so i guess you know what the pods aren't equipped with? plz, tell us what else they don't got

Catra · Post by **Catra** » Sat, 29. May 10, 03:29

sleepy_head wrote:
Catra wrote: so i guess you know what the pods are equipped with? plz, tell us what else they got
so i guess you know what the pods aren't equipped with? plz, tell us what else they don't got

obviously not a comm device since they only communicate when theyre inside.