[TC] Boarding mini-guide

[Goldfinch]

This post was originally asking for help with boarding, but now I have some experience with successfull boarding operations I thought it would be useful to put together a guide for anyone else having trouble. I can cover direct boarding with TPs and M6s, although I haven't yet used boarding pods.

First off, what you need for boarding:

- Cycrow's improved boarding script. Lets you set a hotkey to instantly launch all marines at a target.

- A boarding craft. Either a TP, a M6 or a M7M. Seems other capitals can't be used for boarding. TPs have cargo life support built in, you'll need to buy it otherwise.

- A combat craft. Obviously something like an M6 can double as both, if you're going for the cheapest option of a TP then you'll need a fighter ideally equipped with a transporter device and Fight Command Software Mk. II.

- Marines! These can be bought and trained at military outposts, or you can find mercenaries in pirate space. The limit to how many can board is the number the target ship can hold + 1.

- A target. TMs, M6s and capital ships can be boarded. M8s and TSs can't. Unsure about TPs, if you attempt to board something that can't be you will get a message telling you so. To start with you want to practice on TMs or M6s, as your marines gain experience and will likely fail if you send them against a large target with no practice. Avoid Xenon ships until you have practice too, as they are hard to board. I'm not even sure if Kha'ak ships can be boarded, I need to test that.

- Freight scanner and bio scanner. Lets you scan the target for internal defences and marines which will make the boarding harder.

Marines

Your marines have 4 stats that affect their boarding success.

Fighting - Can't be trained, they only gain experience in this through boarding attempts.

Hacking - Can be trained at outposts. When your marines reach the bridge of a ship your 2 best hackers will attempt to transfer control to you.

Mechanical - Can be trained at outposts. Skill at cutting through the hull. Marines board in groups of 5, and your 2 best mechanics in each group lead the attempt. Boarding pods make it easier.

Engineering - Can be trained at outposts. Reduces the damage to the ship during boarding. Useful to all marines.

I suggest you spend a while training them before you attempt any boarding. Once you buy them you can see their stats in each area and choose to train them while docked at a Military Outpost. I made sure they all had some skill in each area in case the better ones die, but you want at least 2 with good hacking or mechanical skill.

Boarding with an M6

This has quickly become my preferred boarding ship, I've been using it to board other M6s solo so I have complete control over the situation and don't need to worry about my AI ships doing something stupid. I suggest you turn your turrets off during a boarding attempt.

The process here is simple. Drop your target's shields. Fly in very close and slightly in front of the target and hit your boarding hotkey. The marines should almost instantly latch on to the target. You now need to keep the shields low (<10% I think) until you hear your marines say they are inside. I've been using Ion Disruptors for minimal hull damage.

Once your marines are inside, back off out of firing range and watch, or rather listen to, the show. Your marines will give you progress reports - the success rate with trained but inexperienced marines boarding an M6 seems to be high, but the ship will likely take 30-50% hull damage in the process and lose some of the shielding and weapons. It still leaves more behind than bailing pilots usually do, so boarding could be a good way of gaining some harder to find weapons.

Boarding with a TP

This is obviously harder, as you don't want to stay in range of an M6s turrets with an TP for long, and you're unlikely to have enough weaponry to board one solo. At bare minimum you can probably do it with a single fighter and a TP, but it will be easier if you have 1 or 2 wingmen to help.

Order your TP to standby out of range of the fight, then bring the target's shields down. Transport over to the TP, and set your fighter and any wingmen you have to attack shields of target (requires Fight Command Mk. II). This command does work, I've tested it, but be careful not to use too many ships with powerful weapons as they will deal hull damage too. A couple of M4s with PACs or PRGs should be fine. Fly in with your TP, get in front of the target, hit your boarding key and get out of range again ASAP. At this point you might want to transport back to a fighter and order your wingmen to retreat so you can minimise damage to the target. Again, keep the shields down until the marines are inside, then you can back off too.

If I've missed anything important or made any mistakes, please correct me. I hope this guide helps, and I'll try and update it with guides for M7Ms and boarding pods when I've had a chance to try them. Thanks to Cycrow and everyone else who answered my questions and provided some of the information I've included.

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[Original post]

I had my first go at boarding an M6 earlier, and while I survived the attempt, I didn't see any signs of my marines boarding. I had a TP on standby with 10 marines while I attacked the M6 in my Chimera. When I had the shields down, I issued the order to board it, but this is where I'm not sure what I need to be doing.

- The manual says the target's shields need to be down for the whole capture attempt - does this mean at 0 the whole time or below a certain threshold?

- If they need to be 0, do they need to be at 0 when you issue the order, or just when the TP moves in range? If it's when you issue the order, how do you keep the shields at 0 while going through all the menus to issue the command?

- Will an ion disruptor be able to keep an M6's shields at 0 for long enough without running out of energy? How long does boarding take? I was using HEPTs but if the shield needs to constantly be at 0 then they won't be much good.

- And finally, is 10 marines even enough to capture an M6? This was really just intended as a test, but I couldn't even get the boarding to start as far as I could tell.

[PunkiBastardo]

Hi, I think I've seen a type of missile called boarding Pod, i believe you would need this to be able to board anything.

I haven't personally tried it out yet, but I would guess that the best approach would be to have the marines inside your own ship with the pods loaded, and as soon as you get its shields down, start throwing the pods at it and see what happens.

[PapaTong]

you don't need the boarding pods but they help, they give you a nice bonus to getting through the hull without the pods you kinda have to wait for the marines to fly to the ship i believe... but that's all i've gleemed from the manual and cycrow

[akaifire]

It seems that you only have to keep the shields critically low the entire time, but I'm not sure of the percentage. Based on the warnings, I'd say <10% or so. The boarding itself takes a very long time.

For an M6, I think that might be enough, as it says there's only room for 5 marines on the ship info screen.

[Sandalpocalypse]

The boarding command doesn't seem to work if you issue it to a ship you aren't piloting. Transporter devices are a great help in this regard, as is the attack shields command.

M6s are very difficult to board with a TP. You need to get up close and get in front of it so that your marines don't get left in the dust, then you can't dodge while you're issuing the board command and so you take the full brunt of turret fire.

Any marines that survive the breaching process but can't fit in the 'marines' category (for instance, because you attacked a m6 with 10 marines) will eject into space once the first 5 marines get inside.

[calanorn]

i found boarding pods but:

Spoiler

Show

Ive only found them at pirate stations and there 80k a pop

[Cycrow]

Shields only have to below a certain threshold, which is dependant on the ship.

also, they only have to be down during the first stage of boarding. Once all the marines make it on board you can let the shields rise again

10 marines is more than enough to capture an M6, depending on how many they have on board and what skill yours are. You can only send in 6 marines anyways, the other 4 will stay in space coz they cant fit in the ship.

The boarding command can be started at any time, the marines wont be launched until the ship is in range and the shields are below the threshold

[Goldfinch]

The boarding command doesn't seem to work if you issue it to a ship you aren't piloting. Transporter devices are a great help in this regard, as is the attack shields command.

I really don't want to see what happens to my Chimera trying to attack an M6 under AI control

Looks like I'm saving up for a Sirokko or whichever the boarding pod Corvette is.

[GCU Grey Area]

The boarding command doesn't seem to work if you issue it to a ship you aren't piloting.

Did when I tried it, though it did seem to take quite a while for the TP to get into position & for the marines to start flying across. For this test run the target ship was an Argon TM, marine dropship was a Terran TP, while I was flying a Paranid Deimos M7 & periodically tapping on the hull with a couple of PBEs to keep shields down.

Was successful to the extent that the marines got there, drilled through the hull & started the boarding operation. Got a series of messages about them fighting through each deck, though it failed at the hacking stage (probably because the marines had no additional training beforehand).

Will give it another go when the marines have had a bit more training. Incidentally, is it necessary/desirable for all marines to be trained in all 3 skills, or is it OK for each one to be a specialist in just 1 skill?

[Goldfinch]

The boarding command can be started at any time, the marines wont be launched until the ship is in range and the shields are below the threshold

So is Sandalpocalypse's comment about boarding not working if you aren't piloting the ship correct (and hopefully a bug that will be fixed)? Because I have an Iguana Vanguard which is much faster than the Osprey I tried to board, and there was no sign of any boarding attempt even when I got fed up and knocked it's hull down to ~10% so it could hardly move and most of its turrets were gone.

[Sandalpocalypse]

I bow to Cycrow's wisdom.

It's never worked for me, though. Granted I didn't give it very much time; the transport usually ended up taking a bunch of turret fire so I had to hop into it.

Might work better with an AI m6.

[P M]

do you eject the pods out of the ship

[BillSheil]

AFAIK the pods can only be used and launched by the M7M ships.

Other ships (with life support) can launch boarding parties, but the marines need to crossover in their own space suits, which is slower and more perilous.

[phoenix-it]

The boarding command doesn't seem to work if you issue it to a ship you aren't piloting. Transporter devices are a great help in this regard, as is the attack shields command.

M6s are very difficult to board with a TP. You need to get up close and get in front of it so that your marines don't get left in the dust, then you can't dodge while you're issuing the board command and so you take the full brunt of turret fire.

Any marines that survive the breaching process but can't fit in the 'marines' category (for instance, because you attacked a m6 with 10 marines) will eject into space once the first 5 marines get inside.

Board via transporter? Do tell...
Attack Shields? What software?

[Goldfinch]

The comment about the transporter would be using a transporter device to hop into the cockpit of the TP from your fighter in space, rather than transporting marines on board. Attack shields is from one of the fight command softwares.

[Cycrow]

Board via transporter? Do tell...

doesn't existing im afraid

Attack Shields? What software?

Fight MK2

[Enuo]

What are good ships that have ability to send marines? kind of lame the military transport TM classes for whatever reason, cant send them but can carry them. and TP class ships are way too weak to survive turret fire.

Unless they are supposed to be able to launch them, i bought 2 magnetars (TM) loaded with marines, thining their 2x200mj shields would help them survive turret fire from m6s since TP class ships get destroyed so fast. But then the magnetars, didnt have the piracy command from command menu, despite having marines onboard.

even more annoying i cant seem to transfer marines between ships, at least not with normal frieght exchange, or tansporters. I dont want to have to eject them to be able to transfer them cant they be frieght exchanged or transported between two ships?

[Sandalpocalypse]

The only time i've gotten an option to transfer marines is when one of the ships involved was a TL. YMMV.

TMs can carry marines because they can be boarded, and marines can be used defensively; if you have a bioscanner, take a peek at passing M6s and TMs every once a while. They might have Marines or other anti-boarding defenses.

TMs cannot however launch marines. Don't know why but I suspect it's to keep the costs of entry on boarding up, as TMs are dirt cheap for the amount of shielding they mount. TPs CAN launch marines, but it takes some tricky flying to keep them alive near a board-worthy target.

[GCU Grey Area]

even more annoying i cant seem to transfer marines between ships, at least not with normal frieght exchange, or tansporters.

One way round that problem is to dock at a Military Outpost & send them off for training. Then undock their original ship & send in the new ship you want them on. Then when their training is complete they'll automatically get on board the new ship.

[Enuo]

that doesnt seem to work, i have 15 marines training at a base, and their training finished, and then i docked by cargo life support eqiuped vidar, which dropped 5 marines off there, and they arent loading into my ship.

oh i had to UNDOCK and redock after making sure i had enough room for the marines.

even more annoying i tried ejecting marines and flying into them to pick them up and killed them for probably the same reason lol.

whats the purpose of putting defensive marines on your military TMS? ive never seen anyone try to steal/marine attack another ship.