X3AP The Boreas is [NOT] bleh

[NewtSoup]

Trying to set up effective rep grinding in grand exchange using a fleet of OOS ships.

I thought a boreas would be a great choice. Nope. It dies very fast when a J pops in.
I does reasonably well against P/PX/Q but they can put it into hull.

It's looking like a Boron M2 (or two or three ) might be a bettter choice to build on. 33% extra shield and hull.
for OOS combat I'm just going for biggest bang so it's outfit with PPCs and FAAs

The other thing I've noticed is that "Emergency Jump" is not working on my Boreas. It's set to 25% shield but it never jumps. It stays and dies. I'm guessing that's the fight command I and II doing it's thing but they're part of the ship.

Ultimately I seem to have spent about 125 million on a white elephant. It might be ok as a personal ship.

I've done a lot of searching and not found much useful info - anyone got any good suggestions for a protection fleet in Grand Exchange that can survive a wing of J P PX and a handful of fighters?

[RainerPrem]

Trying to set up effective rep grinding in grand exchange using a fleet of OOS ships.

I thought a boreas would be a great choice. Nope. It dies very fast when a J pops in.
I does reasonably well against P/PX/Q but they can put it into hull.

It's looking like a Boron M2 (or two or three ) might be a bettter choice to build on. 33% extra shield and hull.
for OOS combat I'm just going for biggest bang so it's outfit with PPCs and FAAs

The other thing I've noticed is that "Emergency Jump" is not working on my Boreas. It's set to 25% shield but it never jumps. It stays and dies. I'm guessing that's the fight command I and II doing it's thing but they're part of the ship.

Ultimately I seem to have spent about 125 million on a white elephant. It might be ok as a personal ship.

I've done a lot of searching and not found much useful info - anyone got any good suggestions for a protection fleet in Grand Exchange that can survive a wing of J P PX and a handful of fighters?

I have no idea what you did, but the Boreas is the by far best destroyer available. At least as a player ship.

Did you outfit it with all PIKs and Flaks? As soon as your shields are going down, you can turbo out of the problem. Normally you can just walk away from a K or J and let your aft PIKs do the work. They have far more reach walking away than pursuing.

BTW: I never spent money for buying a Boreas. There is always one in Aladna's Hill waiting to be boarded.

[NewtSoup]

Hey, thanks for getting back to me.

I think to start with I was just running bad luck on the OOS Combat RNG

I've just watched it clear a fleet of a Q four Ls and four Ms

I don't fly it myself, it's for guarding the north gate in grand exchange to build rep with teladi and keep the sector safer for my trade ships.

If I J comes in I do jump it to another gate in the system and wait for the rapid response to arrive.

It's outfit with PPC on all turrets that will take it and FAA on the other 3 turrets. I think it's Front Dorsal and Venral that will take the PPC and it's Rear Left and Riht that take the, I might have got the turrets mixed up a bit in my memory but anyhoo it's working as hoped at the moment.

To help with J's I'm about to add a few Skiron to it's wing [CIG and HEPT] and perhaps another Boreas. I don't mind buying the ships. I am going for full achievements so I'm not boarding an Argon ship as I'm at 98% Protector of the Federation. Don't want to take the hit when I'm so close. I am almost at 2 billion credits too so I'm pushing for that achievement as well. Once I get there I'm going to dump a lot of money into my own fleet and probably some flail missile production so that I can try for X-Treme Combat rank in Xenon sectors. If I clear a Xenon Sector then I'm going to try and hold it with my fleet.

[RainerPrem]

The penalty for boarding ships in X3TC is minimal. As long as you have some engineers in your marines, you can get away with less than 50% of one level. It's worse in X3AP, but even there you can fix the loss with some "difficult" or "very difficult" missions.

OTOH, if you have 2 billion, you urgently need to spend them before you get the integer overflow.

I am going for full achievements so I'm not boarding an Argon ship as I'm at 98% Protector of the Federation. Don't want to take the hit when I'm so close. I am almost at 2 billion credits too so I'm pushing for that achievement as well. Once I get there I'm going to dump a lot of money into my own fleet and probably some flail missile production so that I can try for X-Treme Combat rank in Xenon sectors. If I clear a Xenon Sector then I'm going to try and hold it with my fleet.

[NewtSoup]

I've been reading boarding guides for the Q and even the best one I've read is confusing.

It says :

Save at every stage when you complete it without losing too many marines. You need at least 15 Marines at the end of stage 4 to breach the core.

But then it also says saving and reloading can change the outcome of any stage except the core.

So does that mean you don't save at the end of stage 4 and just reload the end of stage 3 save and repeat stage 4 and the core until you win or is it saying that if you fail the core then that's it for that particular Q.

Other anecdotes say that the success result of the core is rolled on when boarding starts.

So there is no clear opinion on what to do.

Maybe it's:
Save before starting the boarding.
Save at every stage and if the core fails go back to before starting boarding.

I'm currently collecting marines with at least 3* in fighting to put into training.

20 years of reunion, terran conflict and albion prelude and I'm still learning.

Secondly I think I will use the Boreas as a personal ship from time to time and add a Megalodon for OOS gate blockade in Grand Exchange. It's weapon regen is ingored in OOS and it has more shield hull and firepower than the boreas. if needed I can dock it at the shipyard for shield replenish in a hurry

[RainerPrem]

I've been reading boarding guides for the Q and even the best one I've read is confusing.

It says :

Save at every stage when you complete it without losing too many marines. You need at least 15 Marines at the end of stage 4 to breach the core.

But then it also says saving and reloading can change the outcome of any stage except the core.

Disclaimer: I never tried boarding a Q.

But yes: The loss of marines on each deck is determined just after completing the previous deck, and before the next voice message comes. Saving at that point can change the outcome - slightly. But you also need a certain amount of superior power to minimize losses.

Note that in X3AP the outcomes are determined at the breach of the hull and NOT on every deck.