[7.50 (553255)] Boarding Process and Fake Information – Frustrating Gameplay Feedback

[Skar]

Version: X4: Foundations – Version: 7.50 (553255)
Modifications: No mods used

Problem Description:
1. Basic Frustration with Boarding
Boarding (piracy) is increasingly frustrating. While it works in principle, the information available—either in-game or online—is often contradictory or misleading. Many user reports are apparently based on bugs or modifications, resulting in claims of success that cannot be replicated in the standard game. This leads to confusion and disappointment when trying to achieve similar results—and failing.
Especially at the beginning, the weaknesses of the boarding system become clear. The process takes a long time, which is generally acceptable—after all, anything can happen in the universe during that time, including attacks by police or enemy factions. However, the effort is often not justified compared to the risk. A thoughtful tier system (e.g., weak → strong) becomes irrelevant due to external influences such as NPC attacks, since the target ship is often destroyed quickly.
Based on current recommendations, the following approach seems to be the most successful:
1. Destroy all turrets.
2. Start the boarding process with phase 1 set to "very weak" and phase 2 set to "very strong."
3. Leave the hull undamaged.
4. Wait.
Feedback:
The tier system is hardly worthwhile under real game conditions. In addition, crucial information is missing—e.g., a reliable success indicator during scanning. The displayed probabilities change dynamically but are not transparent or comprehensible. A “very low risk” can suddenly turn into a complete failure.
Suggestion:
Display information during scanning about who you're up against—e.g., a crew list. Perhaps a hacking mechanism could be introduced to access ship data beforehand. If we assume 100 attempts with deployed marines, couldn’t a success rate be calculated?
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2. What Can Actually Be Boarded?
An official list of all boardable ships is missing. Currently, there is too much contradictory information in forums and videos. The boarding methods (e.g., EMP, marines, alternative mechanics) are also presented unclearly or inconsistently.
The discussion around Xenon ships is a prime example: it is repeatedly claimed that Xenon ships can be boarded—e.g., a Xenon I—only to find out that the success chance is actually 0%.
Questions:
• Is the timeline ship Xenon H the only boardable Xenon ship?
• Can you build a fleet out of it?
Currently, players quickly invest 1–2 hours into a boarding attempt—often in vain, because it's unclear what is possible and what tactics work.
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3. Tactical Problems with Boarding Fleets
With the right weapon choices, it is possible to build ships that only target surface elements (e.g., turrets, engines) and cause minimal hull damage.
But there are two major problems:
1. Outside the sector, the AI fleet doesn't seem to function properly. It doesn't fire, doesn't destroy systems—nothing happens. Only when the player arrives in the sector does the action begin.
2. Even within the sector, the fleet does not reliably target the correct components. Turrets are targeted well, but engines are hardly hit (estimated: 70% hits on turrets, 10% on engines). The fleet AI seems to have issues with movement adjustment or target selection. Inappropriate selection of ship main weapons that players themselves couldn't choose? Where do they fire when all turrets are already destroyed?
Proposed Solution:
Either improve target prioritization or coordination. Currently, instead of using 10 ships, you need 50 to have any chance of success—which shouldn't be necessary. The pilots can’t be that bad if they hit turrets well but suddenly can’t target engines.
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4. Multiple Boarding Operations – Faulty Processing
Issuing multiple boarding orders simultaneously is technically possible but does not function correctly. In my case, the second boarding operation was prioritized, even though it was initiated later. The first boarding process was significantly delayed.
Observation:
• The first target was able to fly far away, even though the boarding phase should have been active already.
• Phase 3 of the first operation only completed after the second boarding had concluded.
Assumption:
Boarding operations are not processed cleanly in parallel.

Consider this as feedback.
Do you want the savegame with the conditions? With a specialized fleet involved in two entangled boarding actions.

[Skar]

It would be helpful to add troops to an ongoing Enter operation.
It would be helpful: If all guns are destroyed by the Enter target. The Sector Police and Military recognize that an Enter Operation is underway. And the NPCs retreat for the time being.

[CBJ]

Moved to the main forum, where gameplay suggestions belong.

[adeine]

1. Basic Frustration with Boarding

The time boarding takes is heavily dependent on hull percentage; this is what makes hands-off boarding take so long. For piracy this is still the optimal approach as the temporary rep loss expires after a while and the ship flips back to neutral/friendly despite being actively boarded (which yes, is a little silly) and you never lose any rep permanently. It also means you can board ships flying in/to safe areas where they are unlikely to be destroyed by another AI faction.

I've found the success estimate to be fairly conservative, though sometimes you can get unlucky as there is a fair bit of random chance. This is only really a 'problem' with the H, as you are limited to a small number of marines and its boarding resistance resets after every attempt so unlike non-Xenon ships you cannot whittle crew down via successive boarding attempts. Personally I think it's a fun challenge, and the only instance of boarding currently that requires some preparation.

The main frustration I see with boarding is that pods still like to get stuck in the ship launching them, bug out, not attach or path properly. This is frustrating especially when ships manage to get away as a result, and a few remaining boarding pods slowly try to chase them across the known universe (sometimes progressively glitching out as this goes on) with no way to progress or even cancel the operation other than destroying the target.

I do agree that boarding as a game mechanic still isn't very fleshed out. There've been a number of great suggestions of how to improve it over the years, but sadly piracy style gameplay just hasn't been a focus.

2. What Can Actually Be Boarded?

The H is the only boardable Xenon capital ship at the moment, and you can board as many of them as you like. All regular non-Xenon capital ships can be boarded, with the exception of ships that are part of certain plots and missions (which doesn't make a lot of sense).

EMP doesn't really have anything to do with boarding. The reason you might have seen it mentioned is that there was an oversight in earlier versions of the game which allowed you to 'claim' ships via EMP bombs, including Xenon capital ships. This was never intended and as a result led to some buggy behaviour. It's been fixed for a long time time now.

4. Multiple Boarding Operations – Faulty Processing

I can't say I've seen this, and I frequently have multiple boarding operations going in the early game without any issue. By prioritised, do you mean mission guidance/objective indicators? You can select which mission is marked as active from the mission menu. It doesn't impact boarding progress in any way and you can have as many boarding missions active in parallel as you like.

What happened was likely that your first target had more hull, making the hull breaching phase take a lot longer than your second target.

[BitByte]

I comment this based on game version 7.10hf3.
When 7.x was released there came many changes to boarding.
Before 7.x boarding was much more affected by hull integrity and if you had highly skilled marines going through the hull took much longer. For example if hull integrity was 100% and boarding crew is 4-5 stars marines it took from 15-45 minutes. Now if you do same it will takes 3-5 minutes.
Similar time was possible with old version when target hull integrity was near 20%.

Another thing what changed in 7.x was how local authority behaves when player is boarding. If you start boarding e.g. in Profit Center Alpha against Scale Plate Pact Heron E then Teladi & Ministry does not care about the ship. BUT this is sometimes time critical - if local authority have already took ship as target and sent the fleet to destroy the ship then it's too late.

Because of this you have to change how to operate when boarding.
- Scan the ship (make sure you have police scanner installed to your ship) and you can see (in most of cases) target ship configuration including crew (yes you see crew list in ship information screen).
- Start boariding as soon as possible and depending skill level (stars) of your marines set levels based on target ship weapons. If target ship have missile weapons (and missiles) and something else than plasma then set 1. stage target level to "very weak". If target ship crew is very skilled or your own crew is low skilled then set 2. stage to "medium" (means ship hull needs be 50% until marines start go through). If you have skilled crew then you can set 2. stage to "Very Strong" (100%)
- Destroy turrets and engines. Marines will be launched when you reach the turret amount set for 1. stage.
- In case you set hull level to "Medium" and need get crew bail from target ship shoot shields down (don't destroy shield generators!) and hull to 60%. Then wait shields get up to 12-20% and shoot then down again. From time to time damage hull to keep it around 60%. Depending how much crew you need get out this can take plenty of time but it will payoff especially at the begining of the game as you have inexperienced marines so getting skill for them is important.
- When enough crew have bailed then shoot ship hull to <50% to start 2. stage.
- Wait or move on to another target.

Looking the shown number of skill points does not tell much. Like said pay much more attention to stars of marines.

About multiple boardings - like any other boarding there's multiple factors which affect the tme of boarding operation.
If your crew is less skilled and/or there's more crew in 1st target than in 2nd target then it's possible 2nd boarding is completed before the 1st one.
But so far I haven't seen anything which would look as bug even I have had lots of simultanious boarding operations ongoing. But all of them I can explain as my marines were less skilled in 1st target than 2nd and 3rd target.

[dtpsprt]

The topic is unfortunately too big to actually discuss in the forum. Take a look in my just published Boarding Guide on Steam.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 3480538120

[thedavid]

I played X4 for a long time and never did any boarding initially.

I had to do a boarding tutorial as part of the Curs plot that is part of the Tides DLC. That pretty much got me interested in boarding. (even though I STILL don't like Ace)

So now I do boarding all the time.

NO, I do not do OOS boarding or FLY BY boarding. I do not board my ally's ships.

I do all my boarding in person.

Yasur fighter. Hyperion full of marines.

Yasur has two beams, one ion, one burst ray. I scan the ship. I use the burst ray to take out the surface elements. I use the ion to drop the residual shields. I use the beams to damage the hull down to 75%. I use the ion to shoot the ship down to 74% and then just keep shooting it. The ion can't really damage the shields faster than the repair drones can fix it. I keep an eye on the engines and turrets. If one of them gets fixed, I burst ray it.

Eventually all of the crew of the ship will bail leaving only the pilot. Then I tell my Hyperion to board with as many marines as will fit, most skilled first.

Now, sometimes I don't wait until all of the crew have bailed. Sometimes I send in the marines early. But I always drop a save. As some others know, I can not tolerate any casualties among my employees. I keep everyone safe. So if one of my marines dies during the boarding I will restart. However, as my marines have been getting more and more skilled I can start boarding operations earlier and earlier.

Generally, regardless of marine skill level, you don't want to board a ship that has a full crew. Even half crew can take a long time and you risk losing people. You need to get the crew down to at most a quarter and then send in your guys to overwhelm them.

I've actually timed this. I don't remember exactly what the times were since I was only doing it for my own benefit but I've found that targeting a ship that has a full crew and boarding it OOS will take MORE TIME than just doing it in person and shooting it with an ion until the crew bails all the way down to the captain. So I always do it that way. It saves time, it saves lives, and it is guaranteed to always work. You will always get the ship. There is no possibility of failure.