[TC] Why does training marines take such a ridiculous amount of time?

[Dycor]

Off topic; It cost millions of Dollars to make and program a game nowadays, What do you want from a game you can buy for $10.00 at Gamestop now. Lucky are we, that we keep getting upgrades and bonus packs for free. Other publishers would have given up a long time ago, As you know, if you do own other games. I just bough 12 more games in the last 3 days, why.? because I love PC games.

[sleepy_head]

Utterly off topic as you said. If you want to explain why boarding as it stands right now is so good, then by all means state your position. That is something anyone, regardless of what side they are on, can respect. Stick to topic. I have zero interest in going off on a tangent.

[Dycor]

The topic here is not about boarding, but about Marine training.

[Xander Cade]

In case you didn't know, Transporter boarding is exactly what was used in XTM so it's a concept well known to the dev's but they have obviously decided against it. Interestingly, the interface in X3TC isn't that much better than the one in XTM either.

[sleepy_head]

The topic here is not about boarding, but about Marine training.

And the *purpose* of training marines is to....

I thought so.

[sleepy_head]

Interestingly, the interface in X3TC isn't that much better than the one in XTM either.

Sadly the text menu interface is nearly identical to X-BTF so many years ago. The interface is really a big obstacle to boarding, one that it doesn't seem the they have spent much time trying to make friendly.

[Xander Cade]

The topic here is not about boarding, but about Marine training.

How can you separate the two?

You spend a week training your Marines until they are, in theory at least, the elite of the elite. And then they randomly die.

It's too early for me to cap anything bigger than an M8 in my current game, but the last thing capped in my last game was a Hercules. The first three times I tried, despite having Drones, Fighters and an M6 supposedly drawing fire from the Herc's turrets, I had to reload because every single one of the twenty 5-star Marines, 18 of which also had 100% Fighting skill, got shot down. In the end I had to piggy-back the Hercules and ride it like a bucking bull, at 100m, just so that the Marines I had invested so much time and money in didn't die before they reached the hull.

[Dycor]

The topics are related.

Just like in any war, somebody will die. If you don't want them dead, Then, all you have to do is re-load till you get it right.

[Playbahnosh]

There is a boarding script package that adds just about all of these improvements to the boarding action described in this thread. After installing it, you can buy a Boarding Transporter Extension from some equipment docks, it costs around 40 mil and it allows you to just transport the marines on board after you took down the shields. That essentially skips the dreaded boarding pod/spacewalk/hullcutting part, and it is a large enough investment, that you will think twice before buying it. I never tried it personally (I never even boarded anything, I don't really know why I installed that script in the first place, lol), mainly because of the sheer ridiculousness of it all.

I mean, spend millions of credits and real life days to train the marines and then...just throw them out the airlock? In the heat of battle, flaks and plasma fire gently caressing their ass-hairs in the EVA suit, while playing catch with a ninety-thousand metric ton space ship? How on Earth did that ever make sense to anyone in the dev team? It's madness!

Meanwhile, the game world already has a perfectly functioning transporter device, that can transport people! Sure, make it hard to board ships, put all our flying prowess and brains to the test. Let's make it, so for you to be able to transport the marines, you have to fly extremely close to the other ship, and make the transport last long, say 1 seconds for every marine you wanna transport over, and also take down your shields. The bigger the ship you wanna cap, the more marines you'll need to transport, and the longer you'd need to ride the tail fins of the other ship all the while your ass flapping in the breeze without shields. THAT would make sense and it would be challenging, the difficulty exponentially rising the bigger the ships you wanna cap.

But as it stands now, boarding is totally impossible for regular players, who don't wanna spend hours reloading the same savegame and hoping that the boarding will succeed by some random chance the 100th time.

[Dycor]

This has turn into a boarding topic, Somewhere I posted how to board ships, a list of thing to do for a succesful boarding.

Here's a tip:"Save" Try to scan the ship first, if possible. Stay out of range of the biggest weapons when you send in your Marines. Let the ship that you want to cap, follow you. Keep a distance of 8-10 Km between ships. Send your Marines in when shields are at 4%, Try to Keep shields below 3% while they are boarding. Once all in, "Save". Then wait...

And yes, Pod do explode on impact with the ships, only an effect of releasing the Marines. Use a M7M, for M6 up to Capitals, M8 down to M5 you can zap them out.

[NUKLEAR-SLUG]

Ho-hum, the usual sky is falling hyperbole..

Just to clarify a few misconceptions.


1. Yes, boarding is more difficult since 2.5 patch. You will require more marines. You will require more equipment.

2. No, just because you have x amount of fully trained marines on staff you do not have the god given entitlement to take ownership of that NPC ship. You want it? Fight for it.

3. Yes, you will lose marines, a lot of them. Accept that fact right now and move on. Plan accordingly and have reserves.

4. No, you don't need 5-star trained marines. 3-star is ample for 90+ percent of boarding operations and costs little in time or money.

5. Yes, if you want that ship you will have to gamble the money and time you've spent training marines against the potential reward of a successful capture.

6. Yes, sometimes you'll gamble and win. Good for you, enjoy your prize. Sometimes you'll gamble and lose. Don't be a cry baby about it. Suck it up, learn from your mistake, do better next time.

7. No, you don't need to try and juggle taking down the shields and launching pods at the same time. Equipment. Use it. Get some fighters/Drones to help lower the shields while you fire pods. Get someone to fire the pods while you sort the shields. Either works.

8. Yes, you can command remote boarding. TP's work fine, use more than you need. M7M works better, use Piracy command or barrage.

9. Yes, you'll have to spend some money. Don't be a penny-pincher. Boarding pods are cheap, M2 class destroyers are not. Spend enough to do the job. M7M can be commanded to barrage a target with pods. One barrage will fire a minimum 8 pod salvo of which half will be manned. The four empty ones act as decoys.

[StarTroll]

9. Yes, you'll have to spend some money. Don't be a penny-pincher. Boarding pods are cheap, M2 class destroyers are not. Spend enough to do the job. M7M can be commanded to barrage a target with pods. One barrage will fire a minimum 8 pod salvo of which half will be manned. The four empty ones act as decoys.

The problem is not the pods prices, it is their avaiability, tou ONLY get 2 pods pet Military outpost, and they take a long time to refill, I ended up doing a cloning of pods while buying Flacon Haulers + Vanguards In CEO's Sprite to have enough of those.

[Kryten]

The problem is not the pods prices, it is their avaiability, tou ONLY get 2 pods pet Military outpost, and they take a long time to refill, I ended up doing a cloning of pods while buying Flacon Haulers + Vanguards In CEO's Sprite to have enough of those.

I have an equiptment dock with four CaGs trading, Boarding pods are on the menu, I have a freighter also set to sell the boarding pods at a price no one will pay, the result is an automated process of collecting and storing boarding pods, I never have to actively look for them

[Catra]

they dont take that long to refill(and quite the number of military outposts to buy from).

i use a pirate kestrel for pod collection using the remote best buys command, it has yet to give me a report of nowhere to buy, ive collected ~200 pods this way.

[StarTroll]

Then another fact that makes buying them a mess, you can't be ennemy with everyone, or you get no pod.

[Berserkenstein]

Well I have 1,596 boarding pods, I think I can be enemies with everyone for some time. I think that Military Outpost in the Kha'ak sector is a Pirate station, I keep getting pirate missions from there.

[Cursed Ghost]

here is what I would do for the boarding opp

first I would remove the cap on number of troops ships can carry so that ships can carry as many troops as there is cargo capacity so a TP with 1000 cargo space would be able to carry around 100 marines after you deduct cargo space for shields guns and e-cells for jumping

next I would replace space walks and boarding pods with beaming if a transporter device is equipped this however WOULD NOT ALLOW YOU TO BEAM INTO THE SHIP

you would still have to cut through the hull
the shield would still have to be below 10%
internal defences would still need to removed
turrets would still need to be taken out or distracted

this would simply replace the current delivery methods which it has to be said are pathetic and badly implemented

In order for all your troops arrive at the target at the same time the beaming range would be shortened to 1km for smaller ships and 1.5 to 2km for bigger ships this should be long enough that your ship isn't going to crash into the target once delivery is complete but close enough that you still need to take out the turrets to stop your ship getting attacked and blown up

next I would drastically reduce the time it takes to train troops about an hour real time is quiet long enough however I would leave the cost as it is

doing so would fix a whole slew of r******* AI issues making boarding opps more fun and less frustrating however it would remain a challenging gamble

to be fair I'm OK with boarding opps being expensive and risky and difficult considering the amount of profit you can make and I'm totally fine with losses caused during the fighting phase my issue is with the time it takes to train troops and replace losses and actually getting my troops to the target

I mean if I haven't trained my troops enough and they cant get through the hull or they can't hack the computer or the ship is to damaged and they have to abort that's fine because that's my fault for not training them enough

however if my troops don't get to the ship because they wont launch or only some of them launch or they can't catch the ship because they cant keep up that is faulty game mechanics and it needs to be fixed

[sleepy_head]

this would simply replace the current delivery methods which it has to be said are pathetic and badly implemented

Agreed 100%. It is always puzzling that, if you bump into another ship at 50 or 100 m/s you end up taking lots of shield damage, or killing the target or yourself. But several marines can be strapped into these boarding pods and slammed headlong into the hull of an enemy at nearly 500m/s and they are just fine. Like I said, the concept and implementation of these pods are absurd. There are numerous other ways to do this better, and many have been suggested by a great many people.

On the 1km range thing on the transporter device, that might be too short as some big ships are large enough that even at 1km it would be at, or very near, collison distance. And this is simply assuming that the enemy ship is sitting still, which they never do of course.

[Cursed Ghost]

On the 1km range thing on the transporter device, that might be too short as some big ships are large enough that even at 1km it would be at, or very near, collison distance. And this is simply assuming that the enemy ship is sitting still, which they never do of course.

you make a fair point and it might be the the distance would need to be set higher to give your delivery ship time to turn away after completing delivery if it's under AI control this would require a bit of testing but you get the point I'm getting at though

what I'd like to know is what is Ego planing to do about this given the number of complaints and do they have any idea when it will be made available

[sleepy_head]

what I'd like to know is what is Ego planing to do about this given the number of complaints and do they have any idea when it will be made available

I have spoken with a number of 2.5 beta testers in great depths. Even before the devs went on this crusade to make boarding harder, riskier and costlier, numerous people had raised concerns during beta. Unfortunately it seemed that the people who think "harder and more tedious = better" have the devs ears. I don't expect any future x3tc patches will significantly address any of the concerns we have here, not the interface, not the difficulty, not the risks. This is because people had already gone through this dance, and in great length during the 2.5 beta. These concerns were either ignored, or in some cases outright silenced. The text menu game interface is essentially the exact same awkward beast as X-BTF almost 10 years ago. I don't see the devs suddenly changing that now. And I definitely don't see them making boarding EASIER, if anything it will get harder, riskier, more expensive, and more time consuming and painful.