How to Board Xenon capital ships, TC 2.6 Vanilla (Updated)

[StarTroll]

Personnally I never had any problem with pod interception as long as the ship was heading straight towards me and above 8km. Only with TM I had problems and I still have to change to ID to take them, I just prepared a Carrack with full ID front and mix ID FFA top / bottom, completely dedicated to cripple ships.

[Gruber1232002]

Should I try burn him out with ID's?

I used to use Ion-d's in my early game especially against M6's The problem is that you only want 1 ship doing it, with no other friendlies nearby. If you send in Ion-d equipped fighters they'll strip each others shields and casualties will be untenable.

In the event that I need Ion-d's to soften an M6 I've resorted to using a Cerberus personally while having the M7M take care of the boarding. You don't want the AI using Ion-d's because they will fry your pods in flight, unless you instruct it to change weapons or leave once the components are damaged. In all, it adds layers of complication, increasing your chances of failure.

For M1/M2's or other hard targets I'd probably recommend using the standard M7M Hammer/Flail approach with 20 Marines. You could also activate SETA just before the pods impact to improve your chances vs the missile defense. That's not usually necessary if you are in the M7M and the target is following you. The nice thing about the M7M's is that you don't have to be facing the target to launch missiles. Put the target up on one of your side monitors so you can see what it's doing while you run away and pound it with missiles. As long as the shields are under control the pods should land no problem. Experimentation will reveal what works best for you, so give the Ion-d a try and see if you can make it work, then report back to the forum.

The xenon are a different matter because of the limitations of the Sirokos (pods only). Since I am firmly convinced that 21 marines make a difference to the success rate, the target facing you trick doesn't work so well. However I have found that once AI collision avoidance comes in to play pods seem to land no problem. But, you need a ship that can take some pain. I wouldn't try it in my Hyperion for example...

[StarTroll]

The SETA trick works well with single missiles (torps and pods) but messes up with multiple warhead missiles (flails) making them orbiting around the target a while instead or attacking it directly.
Usually it is around 640 % (at least on my rig) that ennemy turrets stp firing with the SETA activated. It does not stop main guns though.

[lordmuck]

The SETA trick works well with single missiles (torps and pods) but messes up with multiple warhead missiles (flails) making them orbiting around the target a while instead or attacking it directly.
Usually it is around 640 % (at least on my rig) that ennemy turrets stp firing with the SETA activated. It does not stop main guns though.

I use this when I think that the flails will do damage to the hull as they wont hit, so if your at 1% or something like that and have flails in the air hit seta let him charge for a some % and deactivate it, I did not try this with pods but I shall do this. The other problem of attacking pirate M1/M2 is there FAA/CFA can be shot froward too thus eliminating the pods, I know this is a Xenon cap thread just thought some might have something to say on them.

Very good thread anyway ... off to buy boarding pods try some last caps before I start my flail/hammer/EBC/Gauss/tempest(might add mosquitos)/E-cell closed loop complex for re-arming and re-fueling -.-" I might end up on anti-depressants due to reloading while making this

anyway thanks again, if you get some other tactics or things to add, it always makes a good read before I sleep

[StarTroll]

By the way how long is the RE time for Xenon ships, M6 and over ?
Mainly intersted in PX and Q.

[Gruber1232002]

By the way how long is the RE time for Xenon ships, M6 and over ?
Mainly intersted in PX and Q.

I looked once on Carlo's list in the stickies and I seem to remember it was a couple of hours. Not too bad. But given how plentiful xenon are I'm not sure I'd bother. I believe the Q cost more and took significantly longer to RE than the next highest which is the K. The PX iirc has the same resource requirement as a P, though it is a superior craft.

For Carlo's list click here.
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=253704

[lordmuck]

I cant cap the Xenons M7, I have tried and tried Load after load for roughly 2 hours.
I was in xenon sector 598, with my cobra only. I enterd the sector and flew behind the gate I came thus moving away from center and was followed by 4 M7s at roughly 25k away they are only a little faster but still I was far enough to board ALL of them if M7s carried 60 marines lol.
Anyway I needed some minor adjustments to make with the distance and timing of flails to keep shields 1%-4% and spamming out 4 boarding pods =20 marines, sometimes the wipe on deck 1 but always wipe on deck 3 they are all 5* in everything. Always saved on entering the ship 20 marines Deck 1, saved on 17 marines entering Deck 2. Deck 2 I can end up losing 9 marines (reload) and so on .. yet 10 marines on Deck 3 they just die. I have scanned the ship also and nothing is on it that can kill them, no Internal lasers, nothing on the hull, no firewalls. they can even wipe on deck 2 ....

Baaaah.

[Gruber1232002]

I cant cap the Xenons M7, I have tried and tried Load after load for roughly 2 hours....my cobra only...... 20 marines
Baaaah.

21 maxed marines - Not 20, not 5*, I mean MAXED, as in 100 in everything including fight skill and I mean 21 of them. You will need the 5% boost from the extra marine.

I sympathize with your plight having been there myself, but I tried to make the rules very clear for everyone to follow.

My Sirokos is the only capital ship I've ever bought. I have stolen everything else from M0/1/2's to TL's, to M6's. I buy freighters, fighters and transports only. Capturing ships is my livelihood, it's what I do for fun. I couldn't begin to tell you how to set up a trade network, or even how a UT works because I've never had one. But finally, even I had to bend over and accept the fact that you can't get away with robbing the xenon without 21 marines, and the only effective way to do that is to use a Sirokos, (which you can't steal, unfortunately ) Unless you want to spend 10-15 maxed marines per ship, which is pretty expensive.

If you really can't get a Sirokos then you will need two M7Ms. Again, I'm not kidding. You will also need a heavy hitting ship to fly in, HCP, Hyperion, Tiger, etc. Order both M7M's to board, THEN take the shields down with your personal ship and pray that the 21 marines all get there at the same time. Good luck and let me know how it goes.

[lordmuck]

Gaaah 21 wouldnt that then be 2 M7Ms 1 with 1 only marine ? the other with 20. Hmm I'll see what I can do for "obtaining" a Sirokos and sorry for my ignorance and hard headedness for trying to use 20 marines I really did not think that 1 extra would make such a difference. Well the project of capping Xenon is on hold until I create my ammo/missile complex

(gonna look like noodles but .. as long as it works).

So I suppose useing the Cobra (me) attacking shields, have the siro follow me at roughly 10% I'll send out the order of board he launches his 20, I launch my 1 and keep fingers crossed.

I did notice that sometimes 5-10 would be still cutting hull while the others have started fighting on Deck 1 I guess they dont all use the same hole?, but they do all start at the same time on Deck 2.

Anyway thanks m8.

EDIT 2 : OMG dude the Siro can hold 30 marines

[Infekted]

The fact the Sirokos can hold 30 marines is the only reason you'd ever want one

[lordmuck]

True Its THE capping M7M decent speed also.

I took longer trying to spot one than capping it rofl. still cant cap a Q capped there carrier 1st try 18 marines left from 21 although empty just a JD and lucky E-cells to jump it out. I had my orca that is being used to train marines (a script) jump in and fill me up 21 marines all full trained yet more than 10 attempts I couldn't cap the Q (reliving some frustration here lol) I shall try once I have filled the TL again and build boarding pods (phq script for adding blueprints at a price). Most happy with this M7M everything seems more easy to cap now.

Could you recommend a ship that can last quite long in the AI hands to strip shields off M7's until the marines enter the hull? not a M7M though
(still need the flail complex and Im too lazy to shop)

[StarTroll]

thank for the RE list, I knew that the Q was the most expensive of the Xenon fleet, just need to get info on their shipyard, but it's in case I get to board one but can't seem to dor more that 1 (still have to try), it sure would ne bad to stop my TLS fleet production.

[Gruber1232002]

Could you recommend a ship that can last quite long in the AI hands to strip shields off M7's until the marines enter the hull? not a M7M though

Honestly, I can't recommend involving the AI in the removal of shields at all. I've tried fighters for M6's, M7's for large capital ships and fighter drones MKI&II for both. I like to cap my targets at 100% hull. The AI can't do that effectively in my experience. Either the shields will go up and fry the marines, or there will be significant hull damage or even worse such as destruction of the target or AI ship.

That's why I take care of the shields and let the AI fire the pods. Sometimes the AI screws that up too though. I imagine, (if I absolutely had to use the AI), that a cloud of fighters with PBE's would work the best if ordered to attacks shields of... target.

But, I've never tried it since I gave up that approach before I had PBE capable fighters or PBE's.

Try to keep things simple, the fewer ships/drones etc you have to worry about, the better.

[StarTroll]

And bigger the target, the more guns it has, so expect quite a number of losses, it might not even work if they die before your marines effectively breach the hull.

[Gruber1232002]

My latest 'wild' K had 16 PSP's left on board. So far the spawned K's have been empty. Seems like it's more lucrative to go for the 'wild' ships especially since you can't sell them for much. Not that I'd want to, but maybe I'll trim the fleet some day

[KLF07]

I have a fleet .. 11K 5J 19Q and aprox 20 each P and PX.
The "key of xenon" is "maxedmarines" fight experience - the namber of success boarding ops(aprox more then 40 each marine).
P, PX - 6 marines
K, J, Q - 21 ONLY!
Also, before "obtaining" the Sirokos, I'v launch my board team from 2 M7Ms like 16+5.
no casualties
deck save
1-6 reload per ops

Good luck.

ADD
more practice your board team to decrease reloads from 15 to 1 per ops.
difficulty of big xenon is the same in reload aspect, generally K - easy - low speed.
The MAIN reload is "one moment" ("fighting" all 21) all your board team entry to 1st deck of ship

ADD 2

The description of a method of capture of the big ships by means of two rocket frigates.
Step by step
1. It is necessary for you to have two rocket frigates
One - main, completely armed with rockets and boarding podes, bears 5 marines
The second - conducted, without rockets also has 4 boarding podes, bears 16 marines
2. To find object of attack
To take mission on protection from Xenon intrusions or to spend investigation in xenon sectors for search wild
xenon
3. To replace the ship with the main rocket frigate
4. The command conducted "to follow me"
5. A jump in sector
6. To remove shields of the purpose rockets and to clean from a card the unnecessary purposes
7. To move in a direction to the purpose with the small speed, the conducted frigate follows you behind
8. To be switched to podes
9. A command conducted "rocket squall on my purpose"
10. To start up one pod
11. To start up following 2-3 barrage missailes
12. To save game
13. To support purpose shield on a minimum, without damaging the hull
14. Podes have achieved the object. To save game
Further to operate as you have got used

[sleepy_head]

Okay Gruber, help me out here :

I don't have OTAS rank 10 yet, so I used a Cobra. My experience with the Xenons yesterday :

20 marines, with 100 in Hacking, Mechanics and Engineering. 1 of the 20 marines has 98 on fighting, 3 have 99, 16 are maxed at 100 fighting. So essentially I have very very close to 100 on all stats on all 20 marines. I boarded a Xenon Q, successfully entered the hull. Saved the game. 4 hours later, the number of times I was able to capture the ship WITHOUT cheating by saving on each deck (I was willing to accept even killing 19 marines just for this experiment)? Zero. That's right, 20 marines, on a Xenon ship that has no Hull Polarization, no Interal Sentry Laser, no Advanced Firewall, all marines with max on all skills and virtually max on fighting, four hours of reloads resulted in zilch. I have a save game right after they entered the hull. If anyone want to do some reloads for me and see how many hours it will take to do this without losses I'll be happy to send it to you lol

So, is having 5 more total points on fighting, plus one additional marine from the Sirokos going to make much difference? Out of the four hours, I saw 19 marines surviving after deck 1 was cleared...FOUR times. Thats it. Its more common to lose 3 or 4 or 5. As soon as the first few are lost, the rest went downhill quickly.

This leads me to conclude that having 21 marines instead of 20 is "required" to cap a Q.

[Catra]

you still need more than that, the sirokos is ideal because you can send in reinforcements from 1 ship(the reinforcements will use the ships current defense value instead of its default, xenon lose 5% defense per deck cleared, (nonstacking(?, gotta check)so it gets easier the more closer you get to your objective).

and yes, those few points and extra marine make a huge difference.

[lordmuck]

Sec so let me get this cleared up say I sent 21 marines out, at for example deck 3 im down to 3 marines. If I have more marines on my M7M say another 10 and launch them would they then help the other 3 if they survive until the 10 get to the target ? would they start at deck 3? (never tried it)

[Gruber1232002]

Sec so let me get this cleared up say I sent 21 marines out, at for example deck 3 im down to 3 marines. If I have more marines on my M7M say another 10 and launch them would they then help the other 3 if they survive until the 10 get to the target ? would they start at deck 3? (never tried it)

Yes, they would join the fight at deck 3, IF your marines were still alive at the time.


In a boarding op, the computer compares your fight value to the ship's fight value. I assume a random modifier is rolled for each fight value a couple of times per deck. If the adjusted fight values are similar, you lose some marines, and the ship loses some marines. If the ship's adjusted fight value is much higher than yours, only you lose marines, whereas is your adjusted fight value is much higher only the ship loses marines.

Xenon work differently than other ships. Since the xenon don't have marines they can't lose any. If you have similar adjusted fight values, you lose marines. If you have much lower fight values, you lose a lot of marines. Your adjusted fight value has to be much higher on every roll to keep your marines alive. As soon as you lose a marine you are almost guaranteed to lose more in a hurry because your adjusted fight value drops. The lower it gets the faster your guys die. As I understand it and as Catra mentioned, it goes like this.

M1/2/7
Deck 1, 1600 fight points, 80%
Deck 2, 1500 fight points, 75%
Deck 3, 1400 fight points, 70%
Deck 4, 1300 fight points, 65%
Deck 5, 1200 fight points, 60%

M6

Deck 1, 400, 80%
Deck 2, 375, 75%
Deck 3, 350, 70%

After many many experiments, and as you have noticed yourself, your adjusted fight value can't get into the much higher than xenon value range using only 2000 points, (20 maxed marines). You need 2100 points (21 maxed marines) just to be able to reach the survival range vs xenon. That is why in my experience, most of the reloads occur on decks 1 and 2. I have no idea how the # of successful boarding ops affects anything. I think mine have 10-20 successful ops in their stats because I rotated marines in my training program. KLF07 feels that it makes a difference so there's probably something to it.

When boarding a xenon M6, you need 600 points, (6 maxed marines)

In short, you need every last point you can get when you board the xenon. Sleepy-head used 1995 points out of a possible 2100. I've never been able to do it using 2000, so I'm not surprised.

I'll just point out that if you had 3 marines left on deck 3, you are rolling an adjusted 300 vs an adjusted 1400. Your guys will last a whole 3 seconds, so in reality the next wave would never make it in time, and they would start from 'cutting hull'.

KLF07 has done it with 2 M7M's. It sounds reasonable to me, but I would worry about the weird glitches where only 1 M7M launches, and the other takes its time. The M7M's would also have to be similar distances from the target, or half the group wont arrive on time. I have never tried it that way, so if you try it I would ask KLF07 for advice.

Happy xenon pirateing...