Dirty trick for capital ship boarding, mines

[goduranus]

Found a dirty trick for boarding friendly L ship in early game. Basically, buy 10 basic dumb mines for you basic starting ship, and drop them one at a time around an L ship as it is waiting to jump through a gate. Since mines don't cause aggro or cause reputation loss, the faction being targeted won't go hostile and the ship won't shoot back.

Every time you lay a mine, boost away, and the mine will detonate and disable the L ship's shields and turrets. As soon as all the turrets are gone, get one or two M transporters loaded with marines for about 500k each and board it. The L ship will go hostiles when your boarding pods land but it's got no more turrets to shoot you back and the L ship is easily yours, no reputation loss

From the basic Argon start, you can get your first L ship in as little as 2 hours!

[chew-ie]

Nice find! Indeed, that's X. Creativity is key

..until someone uses it as an exploit and the devs do something about it

[lordmuck]

This was around since before 1.6 I believe. Suprised its still in

[Scoob]

You know, I've played with mines, but not recently, and they never ever went BOOM for me. I'd get a ship to chase me, drop mines....nothing. I'd dump mine right on top of a hostile ship as I zoomed past it....nothing. Time and time again I'd drop mines - trying different types - and they'd simply never go boom. I guess I must have been experiencing a bug.

My original tactic for capturing large ships was using Dumb fire missiles on a Frigate or Corvette, launched from outside the target's turrets range. I'd take out their engines and turrets at a distance before moving in. I then started playing around getting up close and personal in a Corvette - usually a Nemesis with Bolts - and neuter the ship that way. More risky, but more skill involved too.

I might go back and try mines again, it'll be interesting to see if my original planned tactic using them works - sounds like it will.

Note: I usually target SCA ships.

Scoob.

[pref]

You know, I've played with mines, but not recently, and they never ever went BOOM for me. I'd get a ship to chase me, drop mines....nothing. I'd dump mine right on top of a hostile ship as I zoomed past it....nothing.

I used it in dogfight when i wanted no rep loss against an enemy, was funny but needed a couple attempts to pull off.
Felt real good when that S ship evaporated while i flew away casual-like.. like in blue harvest

The type of mine does matter, think you needed the one without FF..? Not sure was long ago.

Note that the dropped mine has your speed initially, and is not dragged along so if there is high speed involved in any way take that into account.

[Scoob]

Just about to have a play with Mines now....ran into two bugs while doing so, so just posted about those.

Urgh! This doesn't work reliably for me. Sometimes the mines inherit my velocity, sometimes they don't. They also appear to be doing VERY low damage. I've hit, accurately, multiple times and just one turret has been taken out, the Engines are still fine - full shields - as are all other surface elements. The only thing this seems to do is be very efficient at taking out the main shields - just bringing them down, not killing the generator. I'm going to practise some more, but my mines - at least the ones that inherited my ships velocity - have hit pretty accurately.


Scoob.

[pref]

The only thing that felt a bit buggy is that occasionally i'd get a rep loss for the kill.
So it's not consistent, but i liked that - interpreted it as if the opponents were sometimes smart and realized what happened.

[Raevyan]

You‘ll get rep loss when you kill repair drones with the mines.

[pref]

Think i got rep loss against smaller ships as well. Would be weird if the engine could get the kill's source for a drone but not for a ship anyway..?
But possible, was some time ago.

[Raevyan]

Once you get to 20+ rep the loss for „normally“ disarm and board a destroyer isn’t that bad. You just need to do a couple of missions to mitigate the rep loss. Or just hunt the pirate destroyers.