Why can we still not cancel a boarding mission??

[Salidorian]

I am starting to really get into boarding and I have a fleet with a Guppy, 4 fighters, a Rorqual and a Dolphin that I'm using for Boarding. I went to board a ZYA miner today, because Split need to die, in low attention and low and behold my 4 fighters didn't really attack the miner(because...reasons?) and it travel drove away. I get that ships in AI hands can be wonky. So cancel the boarding queue for the ships because I don't want my very expensive fleet flying into ZYA space and dying.... But now I cannot cancel the boarding mission... at all. Why is this still a bug in the game at this point?? And what's worse is the ZYA miner came back...and now my ships cannot start a boarding op on it again. So i have a mission I cannot complete because I cannot start the boarding nor can I cancel the mission so my ships can try again. So I have to blow up my boarding target to stop the mission or wait for it to die on its own. Not exactly shedding tears because my squids are hunting the Split scum off the water of the universe. Its just annoying.

In all of the bug fixes for 7.5 I was wondering if this could be looked at?

[jmrc]

If the marine pods were considered as "equipment" floating in space, those still outside the target could be recovered by any ship and become ready for redeployment. But the marines already inside the target would still continue with the mission, because they left the pods.

[Salidorian]

It has nothing to do with the boarding pods. Once you tell a ship(or ships, or fleet) to start a boarding operation two things happen. First is that those ships get a Boarding order and start the operation. Second you get a generic mission in your mission log for Boarding X. From that point on you cannot cancel the mission in the mission log. The option is greyed out. So no matter what happens during the operation as long as the target ship lives and not under the players control the boarding is still going on. You can cancel the Ships boarding orders to stop the ships from trying to board the current target but it doesn't fail the mission. It just sits there in your mission log staring at you, taunting you for your failure.

As a side effect of this you can no longer start the boarding order with those specific ships again on that specific target. I believe this is tied to the mission still tying the ships to a ghost boarding order to the target vessel, even if you cancel the ship side order yourself. The only way to get the Mission out of your logs are to have the target ship be destroyed or to actually try to take the ship with Marines and take it. But the second option is not viable if the target boosts and travel drives into enemy territory and you cannot risk your boarding fleet to chase it down. I also believe the symptom is the same in that if you go through the boarding process and fail to actually take the ship then you still have the mission and your ships are still locked even if you give them new Marines. You have to ferry in new Marines with new transport ships to start the boarding process again with the new hardware.

As I said, it's more of an annoyance because I have had to wait dozens of hours for the ship to fly back into my AO do I can just blow it up and be done with the stain of failure.

[stooper88]

... So no matter what happens during the operation as long as the target ship lives and not under the players control the boarding is still going on. You can cancel the Ships boarding orders to stop the ships from trying to board the current target but it doesn't fail the mission. It just sits there in your mission log staring at you, taunting you for your failure.

... The only way to get the Mission out of your logs are to have the target ship be destroyed or to actually try to take the ship with Marines and take it. But the second option is not viable if the target boosts and travel drives into enemy territory and you cannot risk your boarding fleet to chase it down. I also believe the symptom is the same in that if you go through the boarding process and fail to actually take the ship then you still have the mission and your ships are still locked even if you give them new Marines. You have to ferry in new Marines with new transport ships to start the boarding process again with the new hardware.

As I said, it's more of an annoyance because I have had to wait dozens of hours for the ship to fly back into my AO do I can just blow it up and be done with the stain of failure.

There is another "option" that can be used to "cancel" a boarding mission, although it's undoubtedly an unappealing one. The first point to clarify is if the boarding operation has started but NO PODS have yet to be launched from ANY ships, then removing all boarding orders from all participating ships will immediately fail the mission and end it. However, if **ANY** pods have launched at all but have not yet attached to the target, then destroying all of the in-flight pods will also cause the mission to immediately end with failure. If some pods have successfully attached to the target but some remaining launched pods are too far out of range to complete stage one (Approach) of boarding, then destroying the remaining pods will allow the operation to proceed to stage two (Infiltration).

That said, all of the above are clearly poor substitutes for a true "CANCEL" order, but it does allow the player to end and optionally restart a boarding operation. Personally, I have longed for a real cancel boarding option for different reasons. There are few things worse than having dozens (or even hundreds) of veteran and elite marines in the midst of the final (Assault) stage of boarding, only to have the target ship suddenly bombarded by an onslaught of heavy torpedoes appearing out of nowhere from some "allied" faction rushing in to provide aid. In such circumstances, there's nothing more desperately needed than an emergency evacuation order.

Another grievance is that the RNG frequently goes haywire and results in mobs of defending service crews cutting down scores of elite boarding marines (or other absurdly impossible battle outcomes). Aside from the immense frustration this causes, the irony is that the battle chatter will spew various calls to retreat such as "I don't think we can make it to the bridge. Requesting abort," and "I'm calling it! Get back to the pods!" During such debacles, how I've WISHED that I could just have my marines walk away and leave instead of losing them to such broken and unrealistic mechanics. It wouldn't be so upsetting if training marines wasn't so painfully sluggish (outside of the nonsensical terraforming avenue).

On a side note, whenever the player fails a boarding mission, it conversely counts as a mission success for the targeted ship. As such, the surviving defenders will be subject to experience training and may increase in their skills, in turn increasing the boarding resistance rating of the targeted ship.