Boarding: we go too long with ZERO feedback

[duf201]

During the boarding phase by the marines, try to hover and harass at a distance of 5 to 20 kilometers.

Sometimes, if there’s no response, try pulling back — there’s a higher chance you'll get a reaction from the marines.

[jlehtone]

As it's a fresh game, I only have total rookie Marines. A side effect of this it that you can be waiting AGES after Boarding Pods land for anything to happen at all. I've been stuck at the "Stage I - Approach: Complete" and "Stage II - Infiltration: In Progress" for well over 20 minutes at this point. Now, I know all I have to do is wait - *sigh* - but the totally and utter lack of feedback for this stage is painful. Can we have at least some feedback please? Some sort of timer perhaps, or regular voice updates from the Marines regarding their progress?

As this stand, this is lonely gameplay. No feedback at all.

When devs are desperately writing a hotfix for just released major update (or big mistake that took half of Internet down), should they rather post status updates or work on the problem? Marines naturally are not devs, but arent' these scenarios analogous?


What would be good feedback? Randomly alternating "Not there yet", "Its Done when its Done", and "Soon" that tell just as much as the radio comms from the fight phase, (i.e. nothing)?

Perhaps rather a progress bar, (with no ETA). Some randomness to it though, for there can always be "unexpected complications" (even though the actual implementation may be completely deterministic).

[Raptor34]

As it's a fresh game, I only have total rookie Marines. A side effect of this it that you can be waiting AGES after Boarding Pods land for anything to happen at all. I've been stuck at the "Stage I - Approach: Complete" and "Stage II - Infiltration: In Progress" for well over 20 minutes at this point. Now, I know all I have to do is wait - *sigh* - but the totally and utter lack of feedback for this stage is painful. Can we have at least some feedback please? Some sort of timer perhaps, or regular voice updates from the Marines regarding their progress?

As this stand, this is lonely gameplay. No feedback at all.

When devs are desperately writing a hotfix for just released major update (or big mistake that took half of Internet down), should they rather post status updates or work on the problem? Marines naturally are not devs, but arent' these scenarios analogous?


What would be good feedback? Randomly alternating "Not there yet", "Its Done when its Done", and "Soon" that tell just as much as the radio comms from the fight phase, (i.e. nothing)?

Perhaps rather a progress bar, (with no ETA). Some randomness to it though, for there can always be "unexpected complications" (even though the actual implementation may be completely deterministic).

Not really, you can assume that most ships are standard, build to spec, consequence of the method of building imo where everything is standardized, which is why weapon components is used for everything from the lowly pulse laser to destroyer main guns or exotic weapons like ions, thermal disintegrators or burst rays.
So marines should know things, or more like their onboard computers, would know that I've cut through 1 meter of hull, there is normally 1 meter left. Or I've taken 10 decks in a 18 deck ship. Of course there should be complications, adhoc modifications and all that that throws the timeline off a bit, but in general I should roughly be able to tell what their expected rate of progress should be.
I'm not invading a Xenon ship for instance where it's a total black box.

[Tamina]

The current state of waiting without feedback is.. meh.. but even with a progressbar that is far from being fun.

I think Stage 2 should be redesigned. Like if it is a fixed delay instead and depending on the status of the hull when breaching, either your or the enemies marines get a boost for Stage 3. Could make it interesting to play risk vs reward.

In general I think boarding would benefit from a devs visit. My ships always destroy the target when I am not in sector and I kind of wish they would attack other ships, towers, drones when their primary goal is met.

though the comms sometimes don't make sense with "retreat / argh!! / back to the pods" voice comms when the Marines are totally owning the target.

The comms are an audiofeedback of the progress. If you hear "AAAAARGH", chances are you have just lost 20 marines in the last RNG. "We are advancing" is when your marines have dealt a major blow to the enemy.
The numbers update about 1 second after the comms.

I think this is pretty neat as I do not need to have the screen open all the time.

[Tilen]

I never board.

It carries with it reputation loss. The action is susceptible to being compromised via the boarding target being destroyed by its enemies (even your own ships). It is much too hard to acquire decent marines. The ships that are worth boarding, sort of, like the XEN H, are nigh impossible to board until your power level makes the ship obsolete.

[Scoob]

The current state of waiting without feedback is.. meh.. but even with a progressbar that is far from being fun.

I think Stage 2 should be redesigned. Like if it is a fixed delay instead and depending on the status of the hull when breaching, either your or the enemies marines get a boost for Stage 3. Could make it interesting to play risk vs reward.

In general I think boarding would benefit from a devs visit. My ships always destroy the target when I am not in sector and I kind of wish they would attack other ships, towers, drones when their primary goal is met.

The comms are an audiofeedback of the progress. If you hear "AAAAARGH", chances are you have just lost 20 marines in the last RNG. "We are advancing" is when your marines have dealt a major blow to the enemy.
The numbers update about 1 second after the comms.

I think this is pretty neat as I do not need to have the screen open all the time.

I think a progress bar would be the minimum level of feedback to reassure players that boarding hasn't broken.

Regarding getting through the hull, I always envisioned the Boarding Pods (which we should have to BUY separately in my view, with different grades available) punching through the hull, which would totally eliminate the need for that stage.

Comms is crazy though, I've heard "Aargh!" when my overwhelming Marine force is facing off against the remaining crew, with my boarding power 10 - 20x that of the defenders. I've had "back to the pods" (which they cannot do, so it's a spurious comms) moments before the ship has become mine. Generally it's ok, and the comms make sense - especially when boarding and resistance are more closely matched - but occasionally there are these seemingly spurious messages that don't make sense. I often imagine that "Argh!" was Jerry bumping his head on a bulkhead door again, he's taller than your average Marine lol.

I think a dev pass of boarding would be great, the key things for me would be:

- More feedback and more accurate feedback.
- Improvements to approach - I often have pods that sit there, visibly colliding with the target but not attaching. I sometimes have to go OOS for them to work.
- Boarding Pods have to be bought, and have different stats based on race: Speed, Armour, Shields, Capacity that sort of thing (wishlist!)

For me now though, I just want a little bit more feedback on getting through the hull. A timer, a progress bar or voice comms, I don't care. I'm hands-on with boarding, so voice updates would be fine, but for others perhaps a progress bar on each stage would be better. Hell, why not both?

Note: I have had boarding operations just break, however, I have to wait 20+ minutes (previously over an hour potentially) before I know it's actually broken and I reload. Waste of time.

Note 2: I don't fly-by board, the target will be neutered - no engines or turrets - and the hull will have taken significant damage. Yet despite all that prep work, I'm still sat there for 20 minutes plus, wondering if / when things will progress.

I never board.

It carries with it reputation loss. The action is susceptible to being compromised via the boarding target being destroyed by its enemies (even your own ships). It is much too hard to acquire decent marines. The ships that are worth boarding, sort of, like the XEN H, are nigh impossible to board until your power level makes the ship obsolete.

No reputation loss vs. SCA. No reputation loss when the opposing faction is already -30. I board enemy ships. Target being destroyed is a pain. Usually, if you have Marines aboard, ships belonging to factions that like you will break off. Doesn't always happen, indeed, I have a bug report submitted on the subject currently for the v8.0 beta.

[jlehtone]

Note: I have had boarding operations just break, however, I have to wait 20+ minutes (previously over an hour potentially) before I know it's actually broken and I reload. Waste of time.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 3120616748 shows math for boarding.
According to it absolute maximum for breach is 23 min 20 sec, and absolute minimum 48 sec.

That is for game version 7.0 and later. Before 7.0 the math was different.

[thedavid]

I used to try to bootstrap boarding by using level 0 marines. The only way to be successful was to take out all surface elements, blast the hull until all the crew bailed and only the pilot was left, pray the Ministry of Finance didn't destroy your target, and only then send in your marines to take an hour and a half cutting through the hull.

Doing it this way requires boarding a lot of ships before your marines level up.

So for my current character I went from defense station to defense station hiring marines with a minimum 3 stars in boarding. Each one was 2.5 o 3 million credits to hire. I got 60 of them. I can now board any ship I want. The marines immediately cut through the hull. I don't need to drop the hull or get the crew to bail. I just have to destroy the turrets to keep the marines safe in transit. The marines cut through the crew and so far I've had zero casualties on my side.

[Alan Phipps]

To me, the only real point in having a further boarding mid-op progress indication of any sort would be if there were a (one-time and short-lived) player decision point mechanism that allowed something similar to:

a. Continue the op even though the overall signs are not that great, and live with the final outcome.
b. Abort the op now and get a moderately good percentage of currently surviving marines safely back to your ship to either help try the op again or for future ops elsewhere.

[LameFox]

Sometimes it's also just nice to have a confirmation things are still working, even if you can't interact much with them. Like the difference between a progress bar that looks exactly the same for 30 minutes and one that's not going any faster but still tells you tiny individual things it's getting done.

[Raptor34]

Sometimes it's also just nice to have a confirmation things are still working, even if you can't interact much with them. Like the difference between a progress bar that looks exactly the same for 30 minutes and one that's not going any faster but still tells you tiny individual things it's getting done.

This. Who else remember Windows and 99% progress bars that take ****** hours to move?
And it's not like X4 is the perfectly crafted game with no bugs, same as Windows lmao. Give us feedback so we can tell the difference between bug and WAI.

[blackphoenixx]

And SCA is ideal for boarding ships at the beginning of the game.
Until the first Cobra, you can steal, repair, and sell (cloacked) Minotaur Raiders, which easily fetch 1-3 million each.
But there are also other ships that fetch significantly more money.

My usual go-to is to buy 2 cheap Hermes Vanguards from the ALI wharf in TS3, send one of them to VIG to buy and transfer marines and use the other in Nopelious Fortune 2 to board Paranid and Teladi L miners.
A Chthonios E sells for a couple mil easily - assuming you don't just use it yourself to make money - and since their crew numbers are so low you rarely lose any marines, so it's a decent early marine training method too.

Danger level is basically zero except for the rare singular Khaak or Xenon fighter (bring a few laser towers and you're good).
Most of them have no turrets beside mining lasers either and if you pick a decent blindspot you can get your boarding pods on target without a single shot being fired. And then you just fly away and do something else for half an hour.

[Scoob]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 3120616748 shows math for boarding.
According to it absolute maximum for breach is 23 min 20 sec, and absolute minimum 48 sec.

That is for game version 7.0 and later. Before 7.0 the math was different.

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out.

I appear to be consistently experiencing the higher end of the range, always over 20 minutes thus far. Sure, this is with pretty fresh Marines and it seems the total number of Marines makes zero difference. At least one boarding attempt took well over that 23 minutes max, does that suggest something went wrong? Should I have reloaded at 23 minutes and 21 seconds as it wasn't progressing as it should? Well, no, but a progress indicator of some description would have reassured me.

To me, the only real point in having a further boarding mid-op progress indication of any sort would be if there were a (one-time and short-lived) player decision point mechanism that allowed something similar to:

a. Continue the op even though the overall signs are not that great, and live with the final outcome.
b. Abort the op now and get a moderately good percentage of currently surviving marines safely back to your ship to either help try the op again or for future ops elsewhere.

I think that's a good idea, an option to abort if required or press on. Marines say "back to the pods" when losing badly - and sometimes at random when they're winning lol - but they can't actually do that. Add to that, the ability to send MORE Marines if any are still available. It's possible to send a 10x strength force to take a ship, but a bit of bad RNG luck turns the tide. At that point, sending over the 10 spare Marines you have - because you were over-capacity during the original operation - would be great.

Sometimes it's also just nice to have a confirmation things are still working, even if you can't interact much with them. Like the difference between a progress bar that looks exactly the same for 30 minutes and one that's not going any faster but still tells you tiny individual things it's getting done.

Yeah, that's a big part of it. I have had boarding break down on the Infiltration stage and simply not progress for hours. I've wandered off and done other things and it's never completed. If I could still see a bar moving, a progress counter incrementing or something I'd at least know it was working.

This. Who else remember Windows and 99% progress bars that take ****** hours to move?
And it's not like X4 is the perfectly crafted game with no bugs, same as Windows lmao. Give us feedback so we can tell the difference between bug and WAI.

Sigh, yes. That final 1% taking longer than the preceding 99% - or checking back the next day and it's still not done lol. Even now, I see Windows update download something (0 -100%) then show as downloading it again, then installing it (0 - 100%) and doing that again too. Dunno why.

So many times a Bug report starts with a question of how is something supposed to work. It was such a question that revealed a bug in the boarding code meaning experienced Marines took longer to get through a hull than total rookies. That issue is fixed now, with rookies being slower, but sometimes a boarding operation will blow well past the 23 minutes high-end estimate for infiltration. Perhaps it'll eventually work, perhaps it won't. I reloaded "stuck" boarding operations - with the save made mid-infiltration - and they've then resolved just fine, whereas they were stuck when playing live.

Even if boarding worked perfectly every time, it'd still be nice to have a time estimate / progress indicator. It just seems like a really obvious, but missing, feature to me. Plus it would have solved a LOT of boarding headaches over the last seven years as I'd have known it'd broken down.