I am currently playing AP.
This might be the x-th thread about boarding, but I really need a step-by-step guide how to do it.
I know, blast the target's shields away and keep them down, launch marines, collect boarded ship. That's the basics.
But I really need to know:
What are you flying and with what loadout? Are you flying the M7M? Or are you flying something else and telling your nearby M7M to launch marines? What are your settings? How do you prevent the pod from being shot down?
I am usually flying an M7 or M6 when getting around or attacking cap ships, but I have never boarded a ship - ever!
Boarding for dummies
Moderator: Moderators for English X Forum
-
tikanderoga
- Posts: 409
- Joined: Sun, 28. Dec 03, 02:38
Boarding for dummies
If you got a monopoly on an operating system, and you make tons of money by supporting it, why fix it?
The easiest way:
Cobra with 20 marines maxed, pods, a mountain of flails and hammers. Use the missiles in barrages for the shields, it will need practice to know how many for different targets.
Once the shields are down send the pods, there will be 5 marines in your vessel's pods and 4 if it is a remote launch (Needed for Xenon, OTAS Sirokos, advantage 30 marines cons only pods).
Mix a few flails with your pods for protection flooding with targets the defense of your prey, once the marines inside, keep your distance and wait, if the target is faster you can use a turbo or jump to other gate in the same sector.
To have prepared a carrier with multiple worthless naves only for the jump drives and software will be great also, a Gupy is perfect for that.
I have multiple complexes of missiles only for this, and training marines by the hundred I also buy Pods all the time, you can not manufacture them.
I use a transport for keep the level of the three missiles: hammers, flails (As much as possible of these two) and mosquito (50 of them). Like 300 to 500 energy cells, like 10 pods, It could be only 4 if you refill more times.
Cobra with 20 marines maxed, pods, a mountain of flails and hammers. Use the missiles in barrages for the shields, it will need practice to know how many for different targets.
Once the shields are down send the pods, there will be 5 marines in your vessel's pods and 4 if it is a remote launch (Needed for Xenon, OTAS Sirokos, advantage 30 marines cons only pods).
Mix a few flails with your pods for protection flooding with targets the defense of your prey, once the marines inside, keep your distance and wait, if the target is faster you can use a turbo or jump to other gate in the same sector.
To have prepared a carrier with multiple worthless naves only for the jump drives and software will be great also, a Gupy is perfect for that.
I have multiple complexes of missiles only for this, and training marines by the hundred I also buy Pods all the time, you can not manufacture them.
I use a transport for keep the level of the three missiles: hammers, flails (As much as possible of these two) and mosquito (50 of them). Like 300 to 500 energy cells, like 10 pods, It could be only 4 if you refill more times.
Last edited by Erqco on Sun, 28. Sep 14, 16:54, edited 1 time in total.
That's a good rundown if you want to fly the M7M yourself. If you're flying around in your usual M6/M7 and don't feel like switching ships if a target of opportunity comes up, then:
- Have a M7M parked somewhere you can find it easily on your property menu. Sectors with names starting with an "A" are susually good, since they'll be at the top of the list.
Make sure it has Jumpdrive, autojump "on", plenty of jumpfuel, fight software 1&2, nav software, boarding pods, marines. - Keep a big stack of Wasps on your personal ship for late-stage shield suppression and turret distraction as your marines are flying in.
- When you happen to run across something that looks good, Comm the M7M and have it jump to your sector.
- If you give your M7M the "board ship" command, then it will wait until the target's shields are low enough before firing off marines.
The "board ship" command should only ever be used when you are not flying the M7M personally. - Cut down the target's shields. Position yourself more-or-less in between the target and your M7M.
- If you're not using Wasps yet by the time your M7M launches marines, start using them instead of whatever else you've been using to knock shields down. That will provide plenty of protection for your pods.
Note that Xenon (and Khaak) are the most difficult of all to capture, you will need all your marines at least 4* (preferably 5*) in fighting to stand any chance. I've tried it with 4* and 3* and they all die !
Spacewalk boarding an M6 from a defend station mission is a good way to give them fight experience but remember an M6 can only hold 5 marines. I use a Boa with 4xMedusa's (or Perseus Sentinel's) to suppress shields and fly my Medusa. Once satisfied that the shields are staying down i fly over to my TP which only has 5 good marines in it and change ship. Then fly the TP back to the M6 and cut across his path very close. Remember the save game is your friend.
Soon as i'm sure the conditions are right and i'm right in his path i use the Launch marines command from the additional commands menu, if all goes well just fly out of range of his guns and match speed... and wait.
Once you've done that a few times your marines will get better and better fight skills (as long as they don't die !).
Point to note: if the ships suppressing the shields are taking hull damage DO NOT pull them away because if they get hit after you give them the command they will turn around in self defence mode and kill your target ! You just have to hope they survive and repair afterwards.
As for capitals, the advice above is all good but you will need to practise it. Try just the missile technique without the boarding intention. Practise getting the shields down and keeping them down. Once you've cracked it return to an earlier save and introduce the boarding bit.
Spacewalk boarding an M6 from a defend station mission is a good way to give them fight experience but remember an M6 can only hold 5 marines. I use a Boa with 4xMedusa's (or Perseus Sentinel's) to suppress shields and fly my Medusa. Once satisfied that the shields are staying down i fly over to my TP which only has 5 good marines in it and change ship. Then fly the TP back to the M6 and cut across his path very close. Remember the save game is your friend.
Soon as i'm sure the conditions are right and i'm right in his path i use the Launch marines command from the additional commands menu, if all goes well just fly out of range of his guns and match speed... and wait.
Once you've done that a few times your marines will get better and better fight skills (as long as they don't die !).
Point to note: if the ships suppressing the shields are taking hull damage DO NOT pull them away because if they get hit after you give them the command they will turn around in self defence mode and kill your target ! You just have to hope they survive and repair afterwards.
As for capitals, the advice above is all good but you will need to practise it. Try just the missile technique without the boarding intention. Practise getting the shields down and keeping them down. Once you've cracked it return to an earlier save and introduce the boarding bit.
AMD FX-8350 Eight-Core 4.0GHz Processor
ASrock Extreme 3 R2.0 Motherboard
8Gb memory
2 x AMD HD7770 Graphics (Crossfire not enabled)
Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit SP2
ASrock Extreme 3 R2.0 Motherboard
8Gb memory
2 x AMD HD7770 Graphics (Crossfire not enabled)
Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit SP2
-
riceygringo
- Posts: 90
- Joined: Thu, 26. Sep 13, 12:50
He's playing AP, M6s hold 8 marines, at high fight skill levels (90+) it's enough to board TLs.TycHouse wrote:Note that Xenon (and Khaak) are the most difficult of all to capture, you will need all your marines at least 4* (preferably 5*) in fighting to stand any chance. I've tried it with 4* and 3* and they all die !
Spacewalk boarding an M6 from a defend station mission is a good way to give them fight experience but remember an M6 can only hold 5 marines. I use a Boa with 4xMedusa's (or Perseus Sentinel's) to suppress shields and fly my Medusa. Once satisfied that the shields are staying down i fly over to my TP which only has 5 good marines in it and change ship. Then fly the TP back to the M6 and cut across his path very close. Remember the save game is your friend.
Soon as i'm sure the conditions are right and i'm right in his path i use the Launch marines command from the additional commands menu, if all goes well just fly out of range of his guns and match speed... and wait.
Once you've done that a few times your marines will get better and better fight skills (as long as they don't die !).
Point to note: if the ships suppressing the shields are taking hull damage DO NOT pull them away because if they get hit after you give them the command they will turn around in self defence mode and kill your target ! You just have to hope they survive and repair afterwards.
As for capitals, the advice above is all good but you will need to practise it. Try just the missile technique without the boarding intention. Practise getting the shields down and keeping them down. Once you've cracked it return to an earlier save and introduce the boarding bit.
As for boarding, the easiest target to start with is Terran Atmospheric Lifters, they don't fire back and are usually flying ~100 km away from the center of the sector so you won't be harassed by RRF ships. Although you do need Boarding Pods and high engineering skill for boarding (at least 70 engineering). Make sure you scan the beforehand for hull polarizing devices.
I play X3TC. I have a Cobra (well, several, but that's another story) with flails, HHTs and BPs, but also mkII fighter drones. I use the drones to shield attack the prospect and supplement with flails and or HHTs as necessary. It's somewhat painstaking to use the drones because each one needs to be individually programmed to shield attack but I've gotten used to it: I typically use 25 mkIIs for an M7 and maybe also for at. lifters. The Agamemnon I just capped cost me about 50 fighter drones as he was packing phased shockwave generators.
Atmo Lifters are not the easiest to board. You need elite marines or they'll just die on the ship. Perhaps the civilian TLs in CW space? They're supposed to be unarmed and I doubt their morale is very high.
One thing to remember about the Cobra, at full tunings, you're faster than most ships M7 and larger. With a Turbo Booster and plenty of cells, you can keep your distance from your target.
After my first few M7 caps, I developed what I call the "distant" method for capping large ships, applicable to anything M7 or bigger and marines of all skill levels.
Requirements
1x Cobra (I've never used any other M7M in AP or TC)
20x marines (If their skill level is low, choose your targets with care)
100 or more Flails (that's per capture target)
32 or more Hammers (specifics below)
4x boarding pods (per target)
1000 energy cells
Transporter Device
Jumpdrive
Turbo Booster
Personally, I pack my Cobra with 32 pods, 400 Flails and 150 Hammers and go capturing until I run to about 100 Flails then resupply.
The method
1. Place your Cobra at least 10-15km from your target.
2. Get the target hostile to you and chasing you. If the target is already hostile to you, go to the next step. Otherwise, you can either set the race of the target to Foe for your ship then missile it (from the M7M) or fly closer in a ship with lasers and start shooting it. Once it goes hostile, run back to your Cobra and transfer to it and order your other ship to tag along.
3. Point your Cobra away from your target and run. Choose a direction away from any other ships, stations and planets to avoid complications. Try to maintain a distance of 10-13km from your target until the boarding is complete, use the Booster if it gets unconfortably close.
4. Before you begin boarding, you might want to consider destroying any escorts accompanying the target. Use Flails on fighters, add Hammers for M6 and M8's.
Be aware that this could crash your reputation with the target's race. Try not to overkill, because leftover Hammers and Flails will autonmatically retarget, including onto your boarding target.
Also be aware that capturing one ship will knock your reputation down 4 ranks from maximum. Capturing two without recovering reputation in between will knock it down to -2 from max.
Personally, I don't care what the Yaki think of me and it's easy enough to get the Pirates to be not-hostile to me again. If you don't want to destroy the escorts, there's some extra steps you'll need at the end of the boarding.
5. The first step of the actual boarding operation is to see how many Flails you need to knock 1% off the target's shields. Launch 2 Flails 2 seconds apart. This is usually enough for an M7.
The important thing here is to switch your view to Target View on the boarding target. Select the boarding target, then press F3, now you can swing your camera around the target and zoom in and out. You can now watch as your missiles hit the target, or miss and come back around to hit again, or get shot down. Keep track of how much damage the shields are taking and how many missiles are still flying around before you launch more.
If you're not playing DiD, now would be a good time to save.
6. Launch 3-5 Flails at 2 second intervals at the target.
7. If the target is an M7, rapid fire (press L as quickly as you can, not the Barrage command) 6-10 Hammers. If the target is an M2 or M1, fire a single Barrage from the Additional Commands menu, followed by 6-12 Hammers via rapid fire.
8. Fire another 5 Flails at 2 sec intervals to distract the target's turrets.
This should be enough to lower the shields to less than 20% without touching the hull. With Target View, you can see how many Hammers hit and how many were shot down. If too many were shot down or too much hull damage resulted, consider reloading and changing the number of Hammers appropriately.
Now would be a good time to save again.
9. Once the shields are below 20%, it's too risky to use Hammers to lower the shields further. Based on your estimates from step 5, launch enough flails at 2 second intervals to lower the shields to 3%.
10. Once you have enough missiles launched, go to additional commands and then to Launch All Marines. WAIT at the window where it lets you select the boarding target. If you're on target view of your boarding target, it should be selected at this point. Get ready to press Enter to launch the boarding, but wait just a bit more.
11. Keep your eye on the target's shield level. Once the shields fall to 4%, and there are only 2 or so Flails en route, now press enter.
If there are more Flails still flying, hold off! Wait for them to hit and assess the damage. Decide if you want to reload or go ahead with the boarding.
12. Immediately after launching the marines, launch another 2 Flails at 2 second intervals, followed by 3 at 4 second intervals. This should distract the turrets enough for everyone to board and then suppress the shields without causing further hull damage, for your marines to get through the hull.
13. If the shields recover to 2% before your marines enter the ship, launch a Flail.
You can track your marines through the Property Menu (R) on the Personnel tab. Marines doing a boarding op are on the top. At this point, their status would be "Cutting Hull" Save a game any time between now and when it changes to "fighting"
On AP, once their status reaches "Fighting (Deck1)" their fate is decided and any further save and reloading will make no difference. Reload if you consider losses to be unacceptable.
14. Once the marines start clearing the decks, it's safe to switch away from target view. I recommend going to ship view (F2) at this point and look backwards towards the target. Use this and the sector map to keep an eye out for complications.
15. When the marines announce they have reached the core, prepare to save once more for the last time on the boarding. If you are inexperienced with this part, just save as soon as they announce "hacking the core" or equivalent. Reload should they get repelled by the final measures. Eventually, you'll come to recognize the last lines of the process (it's different for each race) Then, you can save at that point. But it's only a few seconds from there until the ship is turned over to you and you must save before then, or it's too late.
16. The final loot on the ship is randomly determined. If you are dissatisfied with it, use this last save to reroll the dice for better loot.
17. Once you are satisfied with the loot, get the M7M close to the ship and recover your marines.
18. In the event you choose not to destroy the escorts, you must reload to get shields and jumpdrives. Then, you need to get to the ship, transfer ecells over and jump it out before it suffers critical damage.
That's the default process. There are two further complications I will elaborate below.
First, cap ships spawned from missions (like Defend Station, Assassination and maybe Patrol) have marines onboard, but little loot. Once your first batch of 20 marines reach 4-5 star on everything, consider targeting these ships for additional marines. Each will have a handful of 3-star or better marines and the rest no-stars. These marines will be ejected once your marines reach the core. Have a TP ready to pick them up. Assist by picking them up yourself if you have a ship in addition to the M7M at hand. I dump the no-stars back in the captured ship and sell it. You can decide what you want to do with them.
Using this method, you'll hardly need to buy more marines from production facilities. One of the local marines may have displaced one of your boarders. If so, look at the sector map for marines with an alphabet prefix that is slightly different from the rest. Check that one's Info window and see if their "Home" entry is your M7M. Prioritise picking them up.
This applies only to AP (so I've been told) in TC, the marines just die instead of ejecting.
Second, I don't know if other M1's behave the same way, but the Yaki Shuri can regenerate it's fighters even if you've destroyed all of them before begining the boarding. If you see your target that was chasing you suddenly stop for no reason, check if it's regenerating fighters onboard (look at "Landed Ships" on the target menu) If it is, observe them before engaging. There's a chance they'll simply fly away from the M1 rather than stick around and shoot at it once you claim it.
One thing to remember about the Cobra, at full tunings, you're faster than most ships M7 and larger. With a Turbo Booster and plenty of cells, you can keep your distance from your target.
After my first few M7 caps, I developed what I call the "distant" method for capping large ships, applicable to anything M7 or bigger and marines of all skill levels.
Requirements
1x Cobra (I've never used any other M7M in AP or TC)
20x marines (If their skill level is low, choose your targets with care)
100 or more Flails (that's per capture target)
32 or more Hammers (specifics below)
4x boarding pods (per target)
1000 energy cells
Transporter Device
Jumpdrive
Turbo Booster
Personally, I pack my Cobra with 32 pods, 400 Flails and 150 Hammers and go capturing until I run to about 100 Flails then resupply.
The method
1. Place your Cobra at least 10-15km from your target.
2. Get the target hostile to you and chasing you. If the target is already hostile to you, go to the next step. Otherwise, you can either set the race of the target to Foe for your ship then missile it (from the M7M) or fly closer in a ship with lasers and start shooting it. Once it goes hostile, run back to your Cobra and transfer to it and order your other ship to tag along.
3. Point your Cobra away from your target and run. Choose a direction away from any other ships, stations and planets to avoid complications. Try to maintain a distance of 10-13km from your target until the boarding is complete, use the Booster if it gets unconfortably close.
4. Before you begin boarding, you might want to consider destroying any escorts accompanying the target. Use Flails on fighters, add Hammers for M6 and M8's.
Be aware that this could crash your reputation with the target's race. Try not to overkill, because leftover Hammers and Flails will autonmatically retarget, including onto your boarding target.
Also be aware that capturing one ship will knock your reputation down 4 ranks from maximum. Capturing two without recovering reputation in between will knock it down to -2 from max.
Personally, I don't care what the Yaki think of me and it's easy enough to get the Pirates to be not-hostile to me again. If you don't want to destroy the escorts, there's some extra steps you'll need at the end of the boarding.
5. The first step of the actual boarding operation is to see how many Flails you need to knock 1% off the target's shields. Launch 2 Flails 2 seconds apart. This is usually enough for an M7.
The important thing here is to switch your view to Target View on the boarding target. Select the boarding target, then press F3, now you can swing your camera around the target and zoom in and out. You can now watch as your missiles hit the target, or miss and come back around to hit again, or get shot down. Keep track of how much damage the shields are taking and how many missiles are still flying around before you launch more.
If you're not playing DiD, now would be a good time to save.
6. Launch 3-5 Flails at 2 second intervals at the target.
7. If the target is an M7, rapid fire (press L as quickly as you can, not the Barrage command) 6-10 Hammers. If the target is an M2 or M1, fire a single Barrage from the Additional Commands menu, followed by 6-12 Hammers via rapid fire.
8. Fire another 5 Flails at 2 sec intervals to distract the target's turrets.
This should be enough to lower the shields to less than 20% without touching the hull. With Target View, you can see how many Hammers hit and how many were shot down. If too many were shot down or too much hull damage resulted, consider reloading and changing the number of Hammers appropriately.
Now would be a good time to save again.
9. Once the shields are below 20%, it's too risky to use Hammers to lower the shields further. Based on your estimates from step 5, launch enough flails at 2 second intervals to lower the shields to 3%.
10. Once you have enough missiles launched, go to additional commands and then to Launch All Marines. WAIT at the window where it lets you select the boarding target. If you're on target view of your boarding target, it should be selected at this point. Get ready to press Enter to launch the boarding, but wait just a bit more.
11. Keep your eye on the target's shield level. Once the shields fall to 4%, and there are only 2 or so Flails en route, now press enter.
If there are more Flails still flying, hold off! Wait for them to hit and assess the damage. Decide if you want to reload or go ahead with the boarding.
12. Immediately after launching the marines, launch another 2 Flails at 2 second intervals, followed by 3 at 4 second intervals. This should distract the turrets enough for everyone to board and then suppress the shields without causing further hull damage, for your marines to get through the hull.
13. If the shields recover to 2% before your marines enter the ship, launch a Flail.
You can track your marines through the Property Menu (R) on the Personnel tab. Marines doing a boarding op are on the top. At this point, their status would be "Cutting Hull" Save a game any time between now and when it changes to "fighting"
On AP, once their status reaches "Fighting (Deck1)" their fate is decided and any further save and reloading will make no difference. Reload if you consider losses to be unacceptable.
14. Once the marines start clearing the decks, it's safe to switch away from target view. I recommend going to ship view (F2) at this point and look backwards towards the target. Use this and the sector map to keep an eye out for complications.
15. When the marines announce they have reached the core, prepare to save once more for the last time on the boarding. If you are inexperienced with this part, just save as soon as they announce "hacking the core" or equivalent. Reload should they get repelled by the final measures. Eventually, you'll come to recognize the last lines of the process (it's different for each race) Then, you can save at that point. But it's only a few seconds from there until the ship is turned over to you and you must save before then, or it's too late.
16. The final loot on the ship is randomly determined. If you are dissatisfied with it, use this last save to reroll the dice for better loot.
17. Once you are satisfied with the loot, get the M7M close to the ship and recover your marines.
18. In the event you choose not to destroy the escorts, you must reload to get shields and jumpdrives. Then, you need to get to the ship, transfer ecells over and jump it out before it suffers critical damage.
That's the default process. There are two further complications I will elaborate below.
First, cap ships spawned from missions (like Defend Station, Assassination and maybe Patrol) have marines onboard, but little loot. Once your first batch of 20 marines reach 4-5 star on everything, consider targeting these ships for additional marines. Each will have a handful of 3-star or better marines and the rest no-stars. These marines will be ejected once your marines reach the core. Have a TP ready to pick them up. Assist by picking them up yourself if you have a ship in addition to the M7M at hand. I dump the no-stars back in the captured ship and sell it. You can decide what you want to do with them.
Using this method, you'll hardly need to buy more marines from production facilities. One of the local marines may have displaced one of your boarders. If so, look at the sector map for marines with an alphabet prefix that is slightly different from the rest. Check that one's Info window and see if their "Home" entry is your M7M. Prioritise picking them up.
This applies only to AP (so I've been told) in TC, the marines just die instead of ejecting.
Second, I don't know if other M1's behave the same way, but the Yaki Shuri can regenerate it's fighters even if you've destroyed all of them before begining the boarding. If you see your target that was chasing you suddenly stop for no reason, check if it's regenerating fighters onboard (look at "Landed Ships" on the target menu) If it is, observe them before engaging. There's a chance they'll simply fly away from the M1 rather than stick around and shoot at it once you claim it.
-
tikanderoga
- Posts: 409
- Joined: Sun, 28. Dec 03, 02:38
Thank you all for your posts, they've been a great help. 
I narrowed it down to where I can attempt a boarding operation while having my guppy nearby, watching, the cobra doing the dirty deed and my Thresher providing fire power.
One thing still baffles me though: 10 barrages of Flails chew up 50% of a Tokyo's shield (was the only cap ship I found), but 20 Typhoons do less damage. 10 x 8 x 5000 = 400'000 damage.
20 x 8 x 30'000 = 4.8m damage
Unless the barrage launches much more than I can count. I saw the numbers for the launch calculation - no wonder you have that many fabs - it just chews through the numbers faster than SETA.
I narrowed it down to where I can attempt a boarding operation while having my guppy nearby, watching, the cobra doing the dirty deed and my Thresher providing fire power.
One thing still baffles me though: 10 barrages of Flails chew up 50% of a Tokyo's shield (was the only cap ship I found), but 20 Typhoons do less damage. 10 x 8 x 5000 = 400'000 damage.
20 x 8 x 30'000 = 4.8m damage
Unless the barrage launches much more than I can count. I saw the numbers for the launch calculation - no wonder you have that many fabs - it just chews through the numbers faster than SETA.
If you got a monopoly on an operating system, and you make tons of money by supporting it, why fix it?
-
ancienthighway
- Posts: 1663
- Joined: Tue, 24. Apr 07, 05:25
, so if you fired 10 barrages of flails, that would be 80-160 missiles heading towards the target.-
Dis Astranagant
- Posts: 212
- Joined: Mon, 5. Apr 10, 22:56
In my experience dealing with Terran capital ships usually involves ion frying since those bastards regularly have additional equipment on board (firewall, sentry lasers, hull polarization) and even with 5 star marines their ships can be almost impossible to board if they have it on board...something to remember if you can't successfully steal it
May i suggest a really good and profitable place for boarding?
Last Vengeance has that Zeus which sells at 60 mil when it has 100% hull and has only 3-4 nemesis as escort. Since it's CW capital it has a lot lower morale and it's quite easier to board even if it has additional equipment on board. And it respawns...quite fast actually. I just capped 2 Zeus since i read the last post on this topic :=)
I started capping in AP a week ago after not playing the game for almost a year (X Rebirth depression) and the best help in capping technique was actually when I acquired my own jump beacon.
Fly in with my overtuned Hyperion (412 ms), find the target, if hostile fly away and let it follow you then drop beacon and call m7m and if necessary griffon for frying.
And if not hostile i use beacon for calling help and for extraction point if there needs to be frying involved...it helps a LOT to have it.
Btw. my by far easiest capping is one of the strongest ships in the game....Megalodon...that thing simply has no missile defense in the hands of AI...unlike other ships :/
May i suggest a really good and profitable place for boarding?
Last Vengeance has that Zeus which sells at 60 mil when it has 100% hull and has only 3-4 nemesis as escort. Since it's CW capital it has a lot lower morale and it's quite easier to board even if it has additional equipment on board. And it respawns...quite fast actually. I just capped 2 Zeus since i read the last post on this topic :=)
I started capping in AP a week ago after not playing the game for almost a year (X Rebirth depression) and the best help in capping technique was actually when I acquired my own jump beacon.
Fly in with my overtuned Hyperion (412 ms
), find the target, if hostile fly away and let it follow you then drop beacon and call m7m and if necessary griffon for frying.And if not hostile i use beacon for calling help and for extraction point if there needs to be frying involved...it helps a LOT to have it.
Btw. my by far easiest capping is one of the strongest ships in the game....Megalodon...that thing simply has no missile defense in the hands of AI...unlike other ships :/
Jump Beacons are the most difficult things to get, if you're unlucky.
I was very unlucky. I only found one in my game. On an RRF Yokohama.
Was a real pain to capture it. When it respawned, it didn't have a beacon. So I only have this one.
Still, even this single beacon has been a real boon. Capturing all those marines would have been even more difficult without it.
I was very unlucky. I only found one in my game. On an RRF Yokohama.
Was a real pain to capture it. When it respawned, it didn't have a beacon. So I only have this one.
Still, even this single beacon has been a real boon. Capturing all those marines would have been even more difficult without it.
-
Dis Astranagant
- Posts: 212
- Joined: Mon, 5. Apr 10, 22:56
Hmm, jump beacons....I'm actually in Menaleus Paradise right now next to RFF Kraken which has a beaconJimmy C wrote:Jump Beacons are the most difficult things to get, if you're unlucky.
I was very unlucky. I only found one in my game. On an RRF Yokohama.
Was a real pain to capture it. When it respawned, it didn't have a beacon. So I only have this one.
Still, even this single beacon has been a real boon. Capturing all those marines would have been even more difficult without it.
The plan is to launch a barrage, jump out the cobra, then some ion frying till it jumps out/goes hostile, and then a regular capturing....tho there is a little problem of him having over 50 hammers but oh well....nothing in life is that simple
I found 4 jump beacons in my game...don't know where is the replacement for the one I captured though
EDIT:
Well, the original plan to use barrage for shield suppression went down the hill, the bugger used it's missiles to shoot them so i had to use Griffon for that task and that went surprisingly good especially since Griffon shot down a lot of missiles with its FAA+CFA combo.
Kraken then jumped to Ocean of fantasy where i followed him and called my cobra with command board ship. I had to reload once since the big guy decided to shoot my pods but on second try it went really well and the only thing left was to actually get the damn thing out of the sector before the cops blew it up (forgot about hyperion and extra jumpdrives
) and now i have 2 jump beacons. Two remaining beacons will be captured later since i have no need for them at this moment.
10 barrages of flails firing from eight tubes** is 10 barrages x 8 missiles/barrage x 8 warheads/missile x 5000 = 3.2Million damage.tikanderoga wrote:...
One thing still baffles me though: 10 barrages of Flails chew up 50% of a Tokyo's shield (was the only cap ship I found), but 20 Typhoons do less damage. 10 x 8 x 5000 = 400'000 damage.
20 x 8 x 30'000 = 4.8m damage...
**Note that in AP, the number of missiles in a barrage is determined by the number of tubes on the ship. In TC, it was a fixed 8 missiles per barrage, or 64 flail warheads per barrage.
Have a great idea for the current or a future game? You can post it in the [L3+] Ideas forum.
X4 is a journey, not a destination. Have fun on your travels.
X4 is a journey, not a destination. Have fun on your travels.
-
Dis Astranagant
- Posts: 212
- Joined: Mon, 5. Apr 10, 22:56
While it's important to have high fight marines you also need marines which have at least 4 stars in engineering so that they don't destroy the hull.Masterik wrote:How many marines and min of stats i need to cap an aran? most of my marines are 3-4* in fight.
I used 8 (i think) marines in my Hyperion and they all had 100 in engineering.
Aran had 6% hull when I started the boarding process and because my marines were perfect in that area alone they didn't cause any additional damage to it.
How much damage marines cause is dependent on their engineering skill so keep that in mind when capturing Aran.
Does all the marine need to be 100 in all the stats outside combat and eng? or its enough to have at least 1 marine with max hack for the last stage.Dis Astranagant wrote:While it's important to have high fight marines you also need marines which have at least 4 stars in engineering so that they don't destroy the hull.Masterik wrote:How many marines and min of stats i need to cap an aran? most of my marines are 3-4* in fight.
I used 8 (i think) marines in my Hyperion and they all had 100 in engineering.
Aran had 6% hull when I started the boarding process and because my marines were perfect in that area alone they didn't cause any additional damage to it.
How much damage marines cause is dependent on their engineering skill so keep that in mind when capturing Aran.
-
tikanderoga
- Posts: 409
- Joined: Sun, 28. Dec 03, 02:38
From what I read, one is enough - but what happens if that one marine dies?Masterik wrote: Does all the marine need to be 100 in all the stats outside combat and eng? or its enough to have at least 1 marine with max hack for the last stage.
That's why it is better to have all of them at max level, as that way, your boarding party won't be depending on a single party member.
If you got a monopoly on an operating system, and you make tons of money by supporting it, why fix it?