[TC] Boarding mini-guide

[fullmetal66]

watching your marines float helplessly through space and get machine-gunned is something that should make any commander wince.

Two solutions for that:

1. use Ion Ds to fry all the guns on the target before sending in the marines (note: requires patience, as it can take quite a while to completely disarm a ship)

2. use fighter drones to distract the enemy turrets

I generally go for option 2 (it's usually much quicker) unless the target is armed with PSGs - they have such a wide area of effect that marines can still get slaughtered even if the target is aiming at the drones.

has anyone tried this?
DO Ion Ds really disarm the ship?

Yes they do. Tried it on a Xenon Q with an Heavy Centaur Prototype. Didn't kill it in the water but stopped it firing.

[GCU Grey Area]

DO Ion Ds really disarm the ship?

Also destroys most of a ship's installed equipment. Exceptions are any built-in components (which seem to be immune) & 1 of the ship's shields (which one is left seems to be random if the ship has mis-matched shield generators). Destruction of equipment also includes cargo bay life support (handy if the ship you're boarding was full of marines). Theoretically should also destroy internal defence mechanisms (e.g. sentry lasers etc) as they aren't built-in, though I still need to find a ship with them installed to check this.

[pjknibbs]

It can take a while to destroy all the guns, though--you're not going to be firing for 5 seconds and suddenly they're all gone!

[radionotme]

Destruction of equipment also includes cargo bay life support (handy if the ship you're boarding was full of marines)

Does this mean that all your marines will die the instant they successfully take over the ship?

[GCU Grey Area]

Destruction of equipment also includes cargo bay life support (handy if the ship you're boarding was full of marines)

Does this mean that all your marines will die the instant they successfully take over the ship?

No - your marines will install their own life support system when they board - destroying the original one just means there are no live enemy marines for them to have to shoot.

[GCU Grey Area]

Just had sonething rather odd occur during a boarding op & was wondering if anything similar had happened to anyone else. Target was a Centaur spawned as an escort for a corporate assassination mission & remained behind after the primary target was destroyed, so decided it was a good opportunity to add it to my fleet.

Boarding op went as standard until the final deck. At this point, just as my marines were starting the hack the Centaur's computer, noticed a bloke in a spacesuit had jumped out of an airlock. Picked him up & he definitely wasn't one of mine. Pretty good stats too: 5-star fighter/engineer/hacker, though only 1-star in mechanics so he'll need a bit of training, apart from that significantly better than some of the cannon fodder I sent in.

[ryeeson]

Just had sonething rather odd occur during a boarding op & was wondering if anything similar had happened to anyone else. Target was a Centaur spawned as an escort for a corporate assassination mission & remained behind after the primary target was destroyed, so decided it was a good opportunity to add it to my fleet.

Boarding op went as standard until the final deck. At this point, just as my marines were starting the hack the Centaur's computer, noticed a bloke in a spacesuit had jumped out of an airlock. Picked him up & he definitely wasn't one of mine. Pretty good stats too: 5-star fighter/engineer/hacker, though only 1-star in mechanics so he'll need a bit of training, apart from that significantly better than some of the cannon fodder I sent in.

Yes, they did jump out when they lose the battle. I picked 7 of them when i boarded the Akuma. Yes, Good Stat

[ecniv]

Hi

I have been having a problem boarding a TL paranid. I tried three time yesterday over three hours.

First two attempts I accidentally rammed it. The third attempt I got a first batch of marines landed but couldn't get through. So I got some more marines with training in. These couldn't land on the TL at all. After thirty minutes of marines chasing I gave up. Scooped them up and went in close. Crunch. Arrgh. TL rammed and destroyed.

I even found a spot to make the tl slow to 20ms. They still couldn't catch it.

Do I need to dump them, get the tl to chase me away. Strip it sheilds. Then make it go slow with the marines coming in from further out?

[googlemeier]

How are the pods launched?????????????????????

I have a Minotaur, 2 Pods, 10 fully trained Marines.

Right in front of me is a Brigantine, Shields are down.

Distance 20 km. Marked as target.

How the heck do you launch the Pod?

Piracy - board ship - greyed out.
Launch missiles - no Pods.
Eject Marines? Not really.

I didn't find anything in the manual and nothing in the forum as well - are you geniuses? How did you find out? Is the manual behind the Pods' door?

[BigVern]

Must admit I'm struggling with boarding at present.

Got 5 marines left over from the Terran mission plus 5 more I bought. Got them up to 2 star Mechanical but having lured a Teladi TL to the Unknown Sector east of PTNI, they get halfway through the hull every time then abort.

I tried a boarding pod in my Nemesis but as per the previous post it doesn't show up as a missile and no indication how to launch it. The marines must be inside it as the individual names don't appear on the Piracy menu.

If only certain ships can use pods that's a bit limiting gameplay wise. If I could afford an M7M, I wouldn't be trying to blag a TL!

I know from previous comments that TL's are tough but if the only way to board is with 10 marines all trained to 5 star Mech/Eng/Hack it will be cheaper to just buy the bloomin' ship. It takes 3 or 4 training sessions at 20k credits apiece to advance a star i.e. around 400,000 credits per "skill" so that's around 4 million for a gang of ten. 12 million in total with the other skills maxed plus the cost of hull repairs it's not worth it, particularly with the drop in rep that comes too. If you get all the marines back you might eventually break even but too much hassle TBH.

[pjknibbs]

2 star Mechanical? Not surprising you can't get a TL with that--you need at least one marine with 4 stars to be able to get through a TL's hull. Only M7Ms can use boarding pods, yes.

As for the expense of training marines, well, first of all, even if you DID need a fully trained squad of 10 to get a TL (you don't) and you lost all of them while boarding it (you wouldn't) then you're still making a profit from the deal considering what you can sell a TL for. If you make sure you spend the real training money on marines who already have some fighting skill when you buy them then you're far less likely to lose an expensively trained troop, and you can take a TL with 5 reasonable marines no problem--it's just that 4 star Mechanical you need to crack to get through the hull.

[ecniv]

Yup you are right. I managed to get an Ares last night but needed three star mech skills to get in. Of the five marines that tried I think two didn't make it. However the ares came with a jumpdrive and cells.

So I will get some marine up to four for floating attack.

Would I still need mech skills if they are on a pod?

[BigVern]

2 star Mechanical? Not surprising you can't get a TL with that--you need at least one marine with 4 stars to be able to get through a TL's hull. Only M7Ms can use boarding pods, yes.

I'll continue sending them back in for Mech training then! Some are already at 3 stars so hopefully not too much longer.

Anyone want to buy a slightly soiled Boarding Pod then!

[Col. Blackwolf]

Keep the boarding pod for later. They seem to add some to the mech stat of the boarding marines, allowing, for example, 3-star mechanical marines to board a TL. It'll be useful later on if you start going after M1/M2's.

And as pjknibbs said, you generally won't lose too many marines taking a TL, as long as it doesn't have internal defenses and marines on board. I took the same Albatross you're after (seriously, just fly over to that unknown sector, I'm not going to hijack you, honest ) with a squad of 7 marines, 2 trained to 4 star mech, 2 3 star hackers, and I only lost the one who had no stars in fighting. Sadly I had neglected to train up their engineering, so they trashed the TL pretty badly (43% hull damage and nothing left aboard but the JD).

If you're looking to cap for maximum cash, engineering is a must, apparently.

[googlemeier]

Problem solved - a few posts above - you can launch M7M missiles remotely but you you have to be at the helm to fire the pods.
Where is the manual again?

Brigatine is mine, was fairly easy. Much easier than in XTM.

[ecniv]

I have the Ares paranid m7m. Two boarding pods I can get a hold of. Spare marines at the same time.

Choices of target are
- Deimos that keeps chasing me in the pirate sector. It's captain keeps jumping after I have sunk it's sheilds.
- currently passing through said pirate sector is an oddessyus. Plus support craft. Unfortunately I don't think I am prepared enough to get it. Yet.

I might whittle some of it's escorts though.

And do more pirating.

I am finding that two two star marines can take a tm without dying. Whereas sending five ends up with at least one dead.

Random I guess.

Still almost ready to take another nemesis (heavy pref)

[WhiteStar1]

What's the boarding hot key? I'll be using pods do the marines automatically put themselves in the pods?

[SpaceSquirrel]

I just bought my first M7M, the Split Cobra(the fastest M7M = 98 m/s). I tried outfitting it with Flails and Hammer Heavy Torpedos, Pods, Marines etc. and went to Maelstrom to try to capture a bigger ship than the usual TM's I've been capturing with my Heavy Centaur.

I had to try a few times before getting the hang of it, I think. I personally don't see the advantage of Flails and Heavy Torpedos. They are both very expensive $40,000. It would take about 100 Flails to lower the shilelds of a pirate M7. Heavy Torpedos are too slow and seem to get shot down.

So what I personally did, everybody seems to have their own method. I used my M7 and about 15 drones to get rid of the 8 escort ships that usually accompany the M7. I fire a couple of times at the M7 to get its attention, which it then chases me. For some reason, also in Maelstrom, when I attack one M7 then half the pirates in that sector all chase me, including any M1,M2's. I had to clear out the sector first with my M2, before capping a single M7?

Anyways, after I got it down to one M7 chasing me and constantly pressing the TAB button, because the pirates fire some kind of Ion or Flak weapon that immediately slows my ship down.

I head towards my M7M, change ships with that. Then start sending Fighter drones to attack the M7.
Enough to lower it's shields. You can tell an individual drone to attack shields but not a group of drones, I don't understand that one?

Maybe 40 drones I send, you have balance the number between how many will die and how fast its draining the shields with how many will be left over once the shields reach 5%.

So once the shields are down to about 9% and I'm sitting in my M7M about 20km away. I fire a pod.

By the time the pod gets there the shield should be at about 3%. After they attach themselves. I command all drones in sector to 'follow me'. Then wait a few seconds then command all drones in sector to attack target. By this time the marines should have atleast broken thru the hull and entered the ship. Which means telling the all drones then to follow me. If the marines are successful you've captured the ship.

I found this method cheaper than using missles. I was able to capture a Pirate Carrack M7. Unfortuntely it didn't have any shields or weapons onboard when I captured it for some reason, even thought the hull was 100%? I think next time, I'll try using my M2 to lower the shields and then I won't need drones or missles.

[GCU Grey Area]

Personally, if I need to use pods (I generally try to avoid it, but some ships' hulls are just too tough without pods), I give the target ship a thorough Ion-D frying to get rid of weapons, CBLS, etc, so I can fly the M7M to point blank range & there's nothing left to intercept missiles & pods.

[palm911]

well this missiles can be usefull (and actually fun to use)

here ae a few key rules i use to capture ships with pods

1. dont buy things you can produce. (i use 15 hammers and 45 flais to capture M2 (TYr)
2. you need a VIDAR or equivalent M6 , loaded with Matter andti matter launchers. in the front guns, you will also want to put as many M/AM warheads and enought energy for jumping operations.
3. keep distance (3km should be enough for you to avoid capital guns , fire guns until tyr is about 10 % of shields.
4. jump to cobra or any M7m. (keep cobra near the opposite gate where the fight is taking place. (i use small sectors)
5. from a distance of 10km. launch 5-6 hammers at the target use your change missile hotkey and launch 10-15 flails. then switch to Boarding pods launch 4 of then then switch to flails lunch 10 more. (missiles ammount should always match the target shields. (less shield , use less missles (requires practice)

in this way i can get any ship in the game, withoug getting much hits. and i have never went below 80% of any given ship.

DO nOT UNDER ANY CIRCUNSTANCES get to 1k or 2k from your prey, specially if the ship has much more fire power than you do. keep always 3km mark for M/ma launchers.

DO NOT USE hyperion for capturing ships (weapon range 2.2- 2.4km) will drani the weapon energy and you will have to be there a long time before getting the job done.

my preffered ship is the vidar. (with M/AM ) good range, excelent turning, ok speed (faster than any other M2) , ok profile. (and not energy dependant if you use M/am warheads. and the weapons itself do a lot of damage .

carefull this weapons does a LOT OF hull damage. as anything it requires practice.