How exactly are you guys capturing big ships with big guns ?

[Klord]

Im new to boarding stuff,so far I have managed to board 2 TL ships. (not a big deal)
But each time I try to board military ships, my boarding crews get destroyed with the boarding pods.
If I sent 4 boarding pods, 2 or 3 gets destroyed on the way by anti missile systems.
Is there any specific way to do the job ? Few tips will be greatly appreciated...thank you...

[Thelic]

Im new to boarding stuff,so far I have managed to board 2 TL ships. (not a big deal)
But each time I try to board military ships, my boarding crews get destroyed with the boarding pods.
If I sent 4 boarding pods, 2 or 3 gets destroyed on the way by anti missile systems.
Is there any specific way to do the job ? Few tips will be greatly appreciated...thank you...

Distract the ships defenses with some Flail Barrage missiles before and after you send the boarding pod.

[46_n_2]

are you flying the M7M yourself? what i normally do is fly a different ship and when the pods are on the way i move to the side they are coming from and launch a few wasps.. between my ship soaking up the turret damage and my wasps confusing the missile defense the pods almost always connect.

if you are flying the M7M flails are the only option

[Klord]

Yup...Im flying the m7m....
so Its all about fails & luck. Will have to reload a lot of times.

[VincentTH]

Here is what I did, in a nutshell. Hope you find it useful.

In AP, M7 and up ships (other than those spawned in Return Abandoned Ship mission), usually have internal defense, such as on-board marines, HPD, AFS, ISL, so stripping those defense is a must.

The key here is to scan the ship first, before attempting the boarding.

[zapza]

Yup...Im flying the m7m....
so Its all about fails & luck. Will have to reload a lot of times.

Not really; probably it's more about a little bit of practice.

I'm pretty new to boarding myself, but I'm having a whale of a time right now kicking seven kinds of shy*e out of the Zeus M1s patrolling the unknown sector south of Heaven's Assertion.

Just fly through the gate and turn your tail on the Zeus and its escorts,(normally up to half a dozen Nemesis(s),

Target these with liberal volleys of Flail missiles 'till there's just you and the chasing Zeus.

Let him get within about 15km of you then give him half a dozen flails and a few Hammers, keep an eye on his shields and keep the flails going 'till you can see them dropping consistently with your flail hits.

I find it help to use the external Fn2 "view" and also have the target up on one of the 'monitors'. That way you can see the missiles leave your ship and also see them hitting your target.

It's more about timing than luck, when his shields start to get around the 10% just slow down your flail delivery, when they drop to about 2 or 3% launch your marines and quickly send a few more flails, one every few seconds should be enough, keep that up till you hear your marines are inside the hull, then just sit back and relax.

I know people say you should save at every level, but I forgot to do that the first few times and managed over 90% hulls and no losses. The last eight or nine times, I've managed 100% hull at each attempt. I'm yet to lose a marine (they all started out at 5 stars in everything except fighting)

In my humble opinion the Duke's Zeus is a great way to train marines and hone capping skills. (And, at c 60million a pop in the Heaven's Assertion shipyard they're not to be sneezed at)

Happy hunting.

[ajax34i]

Go into your (ingame) controls settings pannel and find/remap the key that lets you select missiles. For me I've remapped it to 5. That way I just press it and switch from flails to pods to flails really fast so that the pods are surrounded by missiles on the way over.

It's just a matter of switching fast, so that you don't have a huge delay between the stream of flails, the pods, and the next stream of flails.

[Draekros]

If I have problems with turrets (damn Terran's shooting down my pods with PSPs ) I just hit SETA for the final moments of the pod's travel and hope my flails don't take the shield down too far (and cause hull damage) when I resume normal time (which is when the marines make hull contact). It's a bit of an exploit (since turret scripts don't work well in SETA), but it works reliably on larger ships when I am impatient to get the boarding done.

[jlehtone]

At least in X3TC you can play dirty by knowing that not all NPC turrets are equal -- some don't have orders to shoot at incoming missiles.

[Draekros]

At least in X3TC you can play dirty by knowing that not all NPC turrets are equal -- some don't have orders to shoot at incoming missiles.

Very true - X3TC turrets are much easier to evade since the front turrets never shoot your missiles (I haven't played the latest patches for X3TC though since I've been playing X3AP since it's launch last year - but I doubt it has changed). X3AP has much smarter turret and anti-missile measures for shooting down all manner of missiles and pods before they get to the enemy ship, along with some other changes to boarding, makes the experience a lot more fun and realistic IMO.

[Triaxx2]

It depends on the game. In AP, I've heard that the front turrets will shoot at missiles, so the following tactic won't work.

The tactic is simple. Get the target to chase you. Ram it, hit it hard enough. Anyway you need to do it. Get it to chase you so it's straight behind you. Be more than 7, but less than 10km away. This is so it's not firing at you, since it WILL get lucky and splash all the pods.

Fire your barrage first of all, then move to the Flails. Use the Command Console Additional Commands Launch All Marines to launch pods. It works better than manually launching.

[VincentTH]

Fire your barrage first of all, then move to the Flails. Use the Command Console Additional Commands Launch All Marines to launch pods. It works better than manually launching.

Actually, according to Cycrow, unless you have 100% skill on all 20 marines, the Piracy command does best, since it balances out the skills per pod. (Say you have 8x 100% in Engineering, then each pod will have 2 of those 100% engineering marines.) The Launch All Marines command will randomly fill your pods, so you may end up with a weak pod that cannot penetrate the hull.

[Spero]

NPC ships won't shoot missiles with their forward guns. This even applies to capital ships.

Basically you tag a ship with a few flails until it starts chasing you. Stay out of weapon range.

Save.

Figure out how many missiles you need to drop it's shields to 1-2%.

Fire away. Don't save. Loading a safe with missiles in-flight will cause them to behave oddly.

When the missiles impact, immediately launch a few extra flails and then your pods.

Keep a constant stream of flails.

Save when your pods successfully breech the hull. This is a binary check. Either they can get in or not.

After that, just maintain the flail stream and save after every successfully cleared deck. You can save-reload your way to 100% success with any ship. Marines die only at pre-defined times per deck, and always have a chance to survive.

[Triaxx2]

Once your marines are on-board, there's no reason at all to continue firing Flails at all.

[ajax34i]

Unless you're trying to provide cover missiles for additional pods to make up for marine losses.

But yeah, the typical non-xenon takeover, damage to the target should be avoided once the marines are in.

[Klord]

Okey guys...thank you very much for the information. Im gonna get some m7s today.
Oh anyway, Im playing AP. (forgot t mention it earlier...sorry)

Thanks again...good luck...

[Triaxx2]

I don't think it matters, except that the turrets are supposed to be smarter than in TC.

[DrBullwinkle]

Yup...Im flying the m7m....
so Its all about fails & luck.

No, you missed 46_n_2's point.

It's all about not being in the ship firing the pods.

Enemy AI greatly prefers attacking the player ship (including pods fired by the player ship). So don't launch the pods from your own ship.

Also, by not being in the M7M (and by "M7M" I mean "Sirokos"), it allows you to use ISR's. They are the best pirating weapon in the game; they strip shields quickly with little hull damage AND THEY DRAIN ENEMY WEAPONS. (Ion Cannons do the same).

I find the "dead spot" in the enemy ship's defenses (often directly underneath or above the target), then fly up close (less than 1 km), while hammering the ship with ISR's. That technique drops shields quickly, protects my M7 from being shredded, and dramatically reduces the target's ability to fire.

While continuing to nibble with ISR's, launch marines from your M7M.

You can experiment with keeping the M7M at a great distance (15 km). That sometimes helps.

[Klord]

No, you missed 46_n_2's point.

It's all about not being in the ship firing the pods.

Enemy AI greatly prefers attacking the player ship (including pods fired by the player ship). So don't launch the pods from your own ship.

Also, by not being in the M7M (and by "M7M" I mean "Sirokos"), it allows you to use ISR's. They are the best pirating weapon in the game; they strip shields quickly with little hull damage AND THEY DRAIN ENEMY WEAPONS. (Ion Cannons do the same).

I find the "dead spot" in the enemy ship's defenses (often directly underneath or above the target), then fly up close (less than 1 km), while hammering the ship with ISR's. That technique drops shields quickly, protects my M7 from being shredded, and dramatically reduces the target's ability to fire.

While continuing to nibble with ISR's, launch marines from your M7M.

You can experiment with keeping the M7M at a great distance (15 km). That sometimes helps.

Well...thats a pretty good advice. Are you sure about...

Enemy AI greatly prefers attacking the player ship (including pods fired by the player ship). So don't launch the pods from your own ship.

??

then its a waste that I bought the Cobra, should have got the Srokos.

Anyway, thanks for the tips...

[DrBullwinkle]

Yes, I'm sure. Enemies will fire at your other ships, of course, and in AP boarding pods are always a "high priority" target. But the player ship is also a priority target, and penetrating turret fire is all about saturating the turrets with targets.

In other words, make yourself the main target, and let your M7M shoot from a safe distance. Some of this depends on which turret script is running on the enemy ship. AP's turret scripts are smarter (more challenging) than TC.

But don't worry about your Cobra... use it to steal a Sirokos. Then it's like a two-for-one deal.

BTW, if you are open to modding your game, you can also make Boarding Pods "Fragmentation" type in TMissiles. That improves their hit percentage (although you may still lose some marines). For really tough boarding ops against MARS-equipped foes, fragmentation helps to balance the odds.