[2.20] Various out of sector boarding bugs.

[Imperial Good]

Trying to improve my macro management skills I decided to try boarding ships out of sector. The idea being that I select a victim like an SCA Behemoth Vanguard and then attack it with 6 Ospreys (TEL frigates) armed with Plasma Mk2 and holding 44 marines to flood its poor crew. Now of course some human interaction is needed to reveal it as SCA for diplomatic reasons, but a quick manual police scan with appropriate licences and a teleport can solve that.

This is a save that places one in and Osprey just in front of a freshly scanned SCA Marauder Behemoth Vanguard. This is an unmodified save working in release 2.20. It can be used to try recreating the below and also running other out of sector boarding simulations against that target.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qnnn14j8270y9 ... ml.gz?dl=0

Now one imagines the following will happen.

• Police scan the SCA Marauder Behemoth Vanguard. This victim kindly boosted away all their shield for us even, how thoughtful. (DONE in save)
• Teleport somewhere else so the battle occurs out of sector. For example I teleported to the TEL Warf in Profit Centre Alpha.
• Clear all orders from the 6 Ospreys.
• Order all 6 Ospreys to board the Behemoth Vanguard.
• Set all of them to Disable Target, or set a mix to disable target and disable engines. Send 40 total marines from the Osprey Vanguards which hold 10 each and an additional 4 from one of the Osprey Sentinels which hold 7 each. The total is 44 marines which is the maximum one can send on a operation to board a Behemoth Vanguard and should be a dead certain win due to vastly outnumbering the crew.
• Set boarding pod launch when target defences are very weak (all turrets killed). Set hull percentage to very strong (no hull damage) since that mechanic makes no difference to boarding results.
• The Ospreys will shoot out all the turrets from the SCA Marauder Behemoth Vanguard. The SCA Marauder Behemoth Vanguard should eventually be immobilized.
• Boarding pods should launch. As the Behemoth Vanguard has no engines the pods should easily land.
• After all pods land and hull cutting sequence is over, the ship is yours. Casualties are to be expected.

However things do not quite go to plan like this, badly.

Bug 1: If one explicitly hostiles it by shooting out one of its engines before teleporting away one can get the Ospreys into combat with it easily. However during the fight it will revert to using its disguise despite having been scanned and under attack.

Bug 2: Explicitly ordering the target to be disabled in any form does not work very well. Specifically they will not shoot out engines, will shoot off turrets and then proceed to blow up the ship (not just "disable" it). This applies to both the disable target boarding mode as well as the explicit attack command with shoot to disable flag checked.

Bug 3: When boarding mode is set to "maintain distance" the ships will interrupt their boarding command to mercilessly attack and destroy anything that attacks them, including the ship being boarded. If one deletes this automatic attack command it will be re-added when the ship is next hit.

Bug 4: Despite being very weak and all turrets stripped, the Behemoth Vanguard is still able to launch hits off. I am guessing this is from the Behemoth Main Battery guns it is equipped with which appear to be largely indestructible. However in sector these guns pose no threat at all to boarding operations as they are unlikely to ever hit something as close and small as a boarding pod. This is more a consistency issue with out of sector combat in general but worth mentioning here as it could potentially cause unexpected losses during pod stage.

Bug 5: If the Behemoth Vanguard is killed while boarding pods are in flight to it. All boarding pods self-destruct killing the marines onboard. I know they might not be able to live with their failures but this seems excessive and something the Split would even think twice about. One would expect all marines onboard the Behemoth Vanguard to die with the Behemoth Vanguard but ones on flight should return to their launching ships to live another day.

Bug 6: When a boarding operation is started one seems unable to update parameters anymore. All selections such as marine count, combat behaviour, launch requirements, etc are locked in and cannot be modified and so the Update Operation button is still disabled.

Doing this alternative sequence almost did work! It should not but it did, almost...

• Police scan the SCA Marauder Behemoth Vanguard. This victim kindly boosted away all their shield for us even, how thoughtful. (DONE in save)
• Teleport to my Nemesis Vanguard in Bright Promise.
• Clear all orders from the 6 Ospreys.
• Order all 6 Ospreys to board the Behemoth Vanguard.
• Set all of them to Maintain distance. Send 40 total marines from the Osprey Vanguards which hold 10 each and an additional 4 from one of the Osprey Sentinels which hold 7 each. The total is 44 marines which is the maximum one can send on a operation to board a Behemoth Vanguard and should be a dead certain win due to vastly outnumbering the crew.
• Set boarding pod launch when target defences are Very Strong (no turrets killed). Set hull percentage to very strong (no hull damage) since that mechanic makes no difference to boarding results.
• View happenings on map with SETA mode enabled.
• The Ospreys fly up to the Behemoth Vanguards and launch boarding pods before fleeing the area.
• Boarding pods land. Even though the Behemoth Vanguard has full engines.
• Boarding pods land safely, even though the Behemoth Vanguard does not like being boarded and went hostile. None were shot down.
• Boarding got soft locked with one of the Osprey Vanguards failing to launch its 10 marines.

Bug 7: With the above "suicidal" boarding list one of the Osprey Vanguards refused to launch its 10 marines. Possibly due to shield being too high at the time? Nothing is communicated why this should happen and hence why it is being considered a bug. It kept following the Behemoth Vanguard, just not launching pods. I tried everything to get it to launch its marines, the result was a chase across the sector and no launched pods.

Bug 8: Boarding pods should be treated as a high priority kill target. It appeared to me as if the Behemoth completely ignored them and only got annoyed when they landed. Despite being annoyed it still did not bother shooting back at any of the pods still in flight allowing them all to land.

Finally I managed to board it doing the following...

• Police scan the SCA Marauder Behemoth Vanguard. This victim kindly boosted away all their shield for us even, how thoughtful. (DONE in save)
• Teleport to my Nemesis Vanguard in Bright Promise.
• Clear all orders from the 6 Ospreys.
• Order all 6 Ospreys to board the Behemoth Vanguard.
• Set all of them to Disable Target. Send 40 total marines from the Osprey Vanguards which hold 10 each and an additional 4 from one of the Osprey Sentinels which hold 7 each. The total is 44 marines which is the maximum one can send on a operation to board a Behemoth Vanguard and should be a dead certain win due to vastly outnumbering the crew.
• Set boarding pod launch when target defences are Very Strong (no turrets killed). Set hull percentage to very strong (no hull damage) since that mechanic makes no difference to boarding results.
• View happenings on map with SETA mode enabled.
• The Ospreys fly up to the Behemoth Vanguards and launch boarding pods while shooting it.
• Boarding pods land. Even though the Behemoth Vanguard has full engines.
• Boarding pods land safely. Even though the Behemoth Vanguard was hostile none were shot down, likely since most turrets were destroyed by then.
• Before the Behemoth Vanguard is destroyed by Bug 2 and after all pods are launched, cancel the boarding order for all Ospreys so they break off and not kill the Behemoth Vanguard.
• After all pods land and hull cutting sequence is over, combat begins. The ship is yours soon after. Casualties are to be expected. In this case 12 brave marines.

Bug 9: At the stage of cancelling the boarding operation (to save the Behemoth Vanguard from destruction) before boarding combat began the boarding attack strength reported in the boarding manager is incorrect. It was reporting stupidly low values as if only 4 or 10 marines were alive on board. With such values there would be 0 chance to win. However it was also reporting 0 casualties and saying 44/44 attackers. Judging by how 32/44 attackers survived, I would say the boarding attack strength number was the incorrect one and not the casualty counter or the number of attackers at the time. 12 casualties is reasonable considering the number of defenders and their skill levels. Possibly it was counting the marines still cutting the hull or maybe only the marines who have cut the hull, but either is not useful since hull cutting always succeeds for now (hull cutting death is not implemented).

I do apologize if all this is a mess. However there certainly are some issues when it comes to boarding when out of sector. Especially Bug 2 is a big problem as they will end up killing their boarding target unless micro managed by the player. Possibly allow one to put a safety hull percentage after which boarding ships and friendly ships (player owned or with high reputation) would avoid damaging the hull when possible. Additionally being able to destroy engines and shield elements out of sector would be useful since it would make landing the boarding pods a lot easier.

In sector with the player's help one can mitigate a lot of these issues more easily. For example one can personally focus down the engines and all turrets allowing boarding pods to land very easily. Bug 4 is also not an issue as I have never seen a Behemoth Vanguard fire those guns at boarding pods in sector. However there is no reason why an excessively large group of ships, like 6 frigates or maybe even more, should not effortlessly board a single weak ship, like this SCA Marauder Behemoth Vanguard, out of sector without requiring multiple reloads, luck and much baby sitting.

[Staberind]

Behemoths main guns are target-able is, as well as engines.
an I I decided to mess about with zapped both of mine very quickly, then got distracted by a lasertower, when that had vanished, it came back to me and melted everything else.
if they are targetable by the AI, IS, I'd imagine they are the same OOS, I don't know if we have the ability to choose what our fleets target oos.

[Imperial Good]

Behemoths main guns are target-able is, as well as engines.

Fly up to one and scan it and cycle hard points (requires targeting software). They do not appear to be a valid hardpoint target. It will allow you to cycle between all engines, all turrets and all shields but not the Behemoth Main Batteries. This could be another bug of course. In any case they do not appear to stripped out of sector efficiently, like shields and engines.