You thought you're playing something different this time, but it's me, AP vanilla!

[fireanddream]

So, I decided to install AP vanilla back once again. Heard that somewhere before.

The thing that's good this time is that, I've somehow put more than one year between today and the day I uninstalled AP to save some space. So a lot of memory loss here and there, which is good.

Read the changelog.

Patch 3.3

Fix memory leak - yay
Borderless window mode - yay
Fix return ship exploit where claimed ship remains player owned - NoOOOoOOoo

Does that mean what I think it means?

Damn no free M7M for me then. Shall I do a painful spacewalk boarding or do some legit business. Also please tell me we can still steal well trained marines from Rrf M7Ms.

Already forgot a lot of the setups. I remember reducing the damages of both M8 missiles to 1/10 of their original values, no idea how. Wrote a script that gives me a Shift+L hotkey to launch all marines, no idea how.

[Alan Phipps]

They fixed a bug where a ship could *keep being* player-owned after being returned for a reward. Nothing to stop a returned big ship being boarded straight after the player has returned it for a reward to the vicinity of a destination station that cannot dock big ships though.

As far as I know, experienced marines will still occasionally bail from RRF big ships that are about to die, if that helps.

[fireanddream]

They fixed a bug where a ship could *keep being* player-owned after being returned for a reward. Nothing to stop a returned big ship being boarded straight after the player has returned it for a reward to the vicinity of a destination station that cannot dock big ships though.

As far as I know, experienced marines will still occasionally bail from RRF big ships that are about to die, if that helps.

Thanks!

Nope I somehow get them to fire boarding pods at me (by dropping my shields) after exhausting the M7Ms' other missiles, one out of five will die to a mosquito but it's still 16 almost max trained marines for nothing. Awesome!

[RAVEN.myst]

When I play as a pure pirate, once my main boarding party is sufficiently skilled, I don't try to kill off the target's marines (by destroying the CLSS), and at some point (I think it may be as early as after the first deck), if my marines won then they evict the "previous occupants". I'm not sure whether this is an every-time thing, or happens just sometimes - I haven't done it in quite some time (but I'm due for a pure pirate game soon, so I'll get to refresh myself on the specifics.) I also can't remember whether I did this with ships larger than corvettes, and whether it was only with spacewalk boarding (may have been - again, my recollections are pretty vague...)

[Alan Phipps]

I'm pretty sure the 'evicted' defending marines when successfully boarding was removed in one of the game updates to the X3TC base gamefiles used by X3AP. I think in X3AP only RRF ships can source 'free' marines now.

[RAVEN.myst]

I'm pretty sure the 'evicted' defending marines when successfully boarding was removed in one of the game updates to the X3TC base gamefiles used by X3AP. I think in X3AP only RRF ships can source 'free' marines now.

I only evicted marines during a phase when I was playing exclusively X3AP, no X3TC - that much my memory's not hazy about But I haven't done it in some time (my playstyle hasn't left room for boarding for quite a while), so it will at least be entertaining getting to the bottom of this. Who knows, maybe it was a bug or something - my X3AP once got corrupted in some way (missiles stopped hitting, an uncommon thing but not unheard of, except that whereas it normally clears up after a while, this time it didn't, and no generic missions were being offered, ever) so I had to reinstall - for all I know, it may have been around the same time that I "recruited" dozens of marines from various M6s... (My pirate character will be sad if he/she's no longer able to impress/convert meat to bolster my acquisitions department...)

[jlehtone]

What is this "eviction"?


'Return Stolen Ship' and 'Defend Station' missions generate ships with marines in them. When the boarding team reaches the CPU, the defenders bail out. Sadly, the ship turrets love to shoot at the traitors. Alas, getting big ships in these missions needs some reputation. Furthermore, most of those pirate mercs are green.

The "Military" ships have well trained marines. The RRF probably too, but I have mutual shoot to kill agreement with the RRF.

[RAVEN.myst]

What is this "eviction"?

It's how I refer to exactly what you described - the defenders going for a space-swim after being defeated (only I wasn't sure at what point it happened.) Good to know that I haven't completely lost ALL my marbles... thanks

[Timsup2nothin]

I know that in one game I picked up some space wandering Argon marines in a war sector. I wasn't boarding anything, and have no idea how they got lost from their ship, but they joined my side when I scooped them up. If I could figure out how that happened I'd certainly try to duplicate the event.

[fireanddream]

I know that in one game I picked up some space wandering Argon marines in a war sector. I wasn't boarding anything, and have no idea how they got lost from their ship, but they joined my side when I scooped them up. If I could figure out how that happened I'd certainly try to duplicate the event.

Most likely there was an M7M with no missiles other than boarding pods, and one of its targets had below 10% shield. We could do the same by following an RRF M7M everywhere until it exhausts its energy cells and offensive missiles, drop your shields, then provoke it periodically with mosquitoes. It will fire boarding pods at you.

[Timsup2nothin]

I know that in one game I picked up some space wandering Argon marines in a war sector. I wasn't boarding anything, and have no idea how they got lost from their ship, but they joined my side when I scooped them up. If I could figure out how that happened I'd certainly try to duplicate the event.

Most likely there was an M7M with no missiles other than boarding pods, and one of its targets had below 10% shield. We could do the same by following an RRF M7M everywhere until it exhausts its energy cells and offensive missiles, drop your shields, then provoke it periodically with mosquitoes. It will fire boarding pods at you.

So it got down to where all it had was boarding pods, and it tried to use them on a Terran ship...and the marines couldn't make it through the hull or otherwise failed so wound up swimming. That makes sense.

Perhaps following M7Ms around in war sectors would be a worthwhile project. I remember being surprised at hearing the boarding sound effects, so it isn't like you would have to keep a particularly close eye on things.