3.0 - Boarding now broken?

[Araknis]

Sorry to disagree but I have no problem to the existing control for boarding....You adapt to circumstances.
Do not carry drones so no need for mini game hacking.
After 2 to 3 boardings no need to destroy drone launch pad.
Use a Heavy Sul as carrier for cargo and construct drones for transfer...Whether I need construct drones for repair or not I am not sure but just like to play along with the theory/function.
There are plenty of warnings about destruction of marines.

Yes...It can be a little frustrating waiting for marines to land on target ship, but it does keep you alert for possible dangers that may arise.... you cannot have an attempt at a realistic simulation and expect instant/ish simplified actions.

So you should be excited when you try to cap a ship and your pods die by the random neutral police/patrol that passes by and decides to shoot your target and your pods that just sit in space along with it.
Or when a station shoots the ship and you try to board from a side that its out of the station fire.
Ninja capping is out of the picture with 3.20 and rushing to cap a ship and coordinate the boarding op in a way to do it under friendly or enemy fire was the real thrill.
Now your marines will take their time circle the ship 10 times and then if they like it, land.
GG

[birdtable]

@ Araknis ..... I do agree that friendly fire towards a ship / marines while being boarded is frustrating ,, as is the destruction of a bailed fighter well after bailing...but that in my opinion is a seperate issue to boarding.
We all enjoy different aspects of the game and I still maintain adaptation to circumstances is the key ... not every possible target needs to be interacted with .... only when conditions allow.

[birdtable]

@ Sparky ..
Nothing wrong with bouncing drunks .... unless of course they bounce to often and interfere with sober judgement.

[Araknis]

@ Araknis ..... I do agree that friendly fire towards a ship / marines while being boarded is frustrating ,, as is the destruction of a bailed fighter well after bailing...but that in my opinion is a seperate issue to boarding.
We all enjoy different aspects of the game and I still maintain adaption to circumstances is the key ... not every possible target needs to be interacted with .... only when conditions allow.

But that my friend is the whole point, my ONLY issue with boarding atm, is the pod pathing.
Simply because we do not know and no dev cares to tell us if this change is intentional or some glitch that came up with the recent update.

In fact i find boarding way to easy for my taste and i would welcome an upgrade in difficulty, but ofc this is just me.
The various unexpected elements are welcome since i have to adjust my approach, and if i decide the target cant be boarded in time, its ok with me, i ll just destroy it for the rep gain.

If you were in your car, and had 2 roads ahead of you, would you ever take the one that the traffic is going the opposite direction of yours?
I think not, so why my pods should go where turret fire is? Especially when i have cleared a safe area for them to land.
I was laughing yesterday when i was capping a Fulmekron which is enormous.
I cleared all the top side, then ofc hacked because....pathing.
Launched the pods from the top side and more than half of them after circling the ship 2-3 times and after a good 1 minute or more of doing pirouettes in space they landed in the down side of the ship where all the turrets where untouched.
I dont mind hacking, i like it, it adds to the process, its the erratic pathing i hate.

[Ognjen85]

@Araknis:

I think that pod pathing has become an issue in 3.0 because we use more pods now. Prior this version I haven't used more than 30 pods and now you simply need to use 50 of them (otherwise you are too week to win). Pods have been stupid even before, but they were reaching target ship sooner. Probably increase of needed pods has made NPC pathing issue more obvious.

At least this is how it seems to me, I repeat I never used 50 pods until version 3.0 so I cannot know for sure.

[Araknis]

@Araknis:

I think that pod pathing has become an issue in 3.0 because we use more pods now. Prior this version I haven't used more than 30 pods and now you simply need to use 50 of them (otherwise you are too week to win). Pods have been stupid even before, but they were reaching target ship sooner. Probably increase of needed pods has made NPC pathing issue more obvious.

At least this is how it seems to me, I repeat I never used 50 pods until version 3.0 so I cannot know for sure.

I use 50 pods since i begun playing, its a 3.20 symptom.

[pref]

As far as i understood, it was a design decision (yippie).
There was even a beta test post regarding it iirc. Vincent might know more as i remember he wrote that one.

Definitely 3.2 introduced it.

[Araknis]

As far as i understood, it was a design decision (yippie).
There was even a beta test post regarding it iirc. Vincent might know more as i remember he wrote that one.

Definitely 3.2 introduced it.

If its a design decision, i ll stop crying about it.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

IIRC, the Devs didn't reply to that thread(s) so I am hopefully it is a bug that they will look at soon/in due course. Although since boarding still technically works, I guess they may have other priorities at the moment.

[birdtable]

I suppose technically they should all land at docking port and should circle until area cleared for all pods to land..... bouncing does not look good unless of course you are a Mars Rover.....

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

lol

I think I shall start call "boarding" "Beagleing" instead

[Snafu_X3]

Sorry to disagree but I have no problem to the existing control for boarding....You adapt to circumstances.
Do not carry drones so no need for mini game hacking.
After 2 to 3 boardings no need to destroy drone launch pad.

Unless you destroy all surface elements prior to boarding, the (max 5-stage) 'minigame' will tell you via Yisha to destroy (or hack, if you're carrying a trojan) some of those elements, including the drone bay. It seems to be random chance whether that includes the drone bay or not

If you don't complete these stages within a certain (unseen) individual time limit you're guaranteed a loss of 15-25% of your boarding party, progressively reducing its BA value for the remainder of the boarding op

/That's/ what I was talking about; nothing to do with the hacking minigame (which I dislike, but is irrelevant here)

[Assailer]

Just clear all the turrets, then go for a coffee while marines figure out the pod controls


"Can you fly her?" asked Ford pleasantly.
"No, can you?"
"No."
"Fine," said Zaphod, relaxing. "We'll do it together."
"I can't either," said the poor marine, who felt it was time he began to do something useful.

[pref]

Vincent had a nice solution for this - just disable the turrets before boarding (take them down to 10% hull or something like that).

This way you still have a high chance to not have to destroy the drone bay when Yisha starts to order you around. And the turrets will not fire on the pods either if you are quick.
This helps a lot if you want the drones by all means (which i usually did).

[birdtable]

My main complaint with boarding/bailing is where there is no available tactic/strategy ..
Bailing Fighters .... It should not be possible for any fighter or station defence to commence firing after ship has bailed .... "commence".. not already firing.
Boarding.... Once you commit with order to "board" then that ship should become totally neutral to weapon fire from friends ...... Up until the command "board" is issued then all is fair game.
As regard to Yisha she should only have 2 available statements.
1. Yes it is safe to board.
2. No it is not safe to board.

Either way it should be your choice when to board not Yisha's and you pay the consequences of that decision.
The deliberate intention to play a mini game is poor show on Ego's behalf.
I admit I use the Boarding Options mod to remove any mini game interference..... I can well understand the frustration of playing vanilla.