Post
by Progress-M » Wed, 10. Oct 12, 02:43
There are many ways to board ships, each has it's pros and cons. There are good guides to these on the guides thread - have a read. Things have changed some since TC but I would still read those TC boarding guides and examples to get an idea.
You have an M6 so I would go for single-ship boarding (meaning you do both shield-suppression and launching marines from the same vessel). Suitable first targets to train marines and yourself are TM-class ships and other M6s.
As stated above, marines only gain fighting skill from boarding - taking them through trainings will gain other skills; improve their chances to cut through the ship hull, hacking skill for the ship computer core and skill to damage the ship less whilst fighting their way through the ship. You don't need 100 in everything; a single advanced all skills-session will get them to 2 stars or so, which will be more than enough to get you going.
Ion Disruptors are used because they do good shield damage but very little hull damage and the low-damage hull 'hits' still have a chance to destroy internal systems. Enough IonD-"frying" will basically render the target ship completely weaponless and leaves it with no internal or external defenses. However, the IonD-lightning has a tendency to bounce off to anything airborne nearby, such as missiles or, you guessed it, marines.
Because of this, once you have fried the defenses with IonD's, switch to a weapon that's low damage enough to keep the shields between 1% and 7% or so (marines get fried at 10% shields or so, so you want to keep well under this). PAC, EBC, PBE etc. all work well. Either have a turret constantly ticking low-dmg shots at the target or give a short burst from your forward-firing gun every few secs to do this. Just keep the shields between 0% and 7%ish in whatever way you can.
So:
1) find a TM, scan it - ideally no internal defenses such as sentry lasers, (internal sentry lasers are the equivalent of 1 5-star fighting marine), polarised hull (harder to cut through) or advanced firewall (harder to hack). You can fry these off with IonD's but it takes time, something that you may not have. Pirate Alley is a good place to look for lone TM's; look for high-tech traders, they are often TM-class.
2) line up and attack target - using some fighter drones and wasps is a good way to deal with defense light fighters the TM may launch.
3) bring the target's shields down to 0% and fry any internal defenses, then switch to shield suppression weapon (a single PAC, EBC, PBE) and keep the shields down while maneuvering to launch marines. Being in front of the targets path helps but the marines are not *absolutely* terrible at catching up in AP, I think their speed is 38m/s so if they are roughly in the right place they will latch on.
4) keep the shields down as the marines cut through the hull: use Property-Personnel screen to see if all 8 marines are 'Cutting Hull'. Once the marines shout 'we're in!' or similar, you can stop suppressing the shields.
5) watch the marines fight via property screen - they will fight through 3 floors and then hack the computer core, after which the ship turns green and becomes 'Your <TM>'.
Save after lining up to attack but before you attack, that way you can rinse and repeat if things go wrong.
Common things to go wrong are:
-accidentally destroy or damage the target ship too much (marines will abort boarding if hull % drops too low)
-marines don't reach the target ship/can't cut through hull (if they take too long they abort)
-marines get to ship but die inside or can't manage to hack the core (again, if hacking takes too long they abort)
You can also save right after the marines have cut through the hull and also between fighting floors, as the fighting can go either way - reloading might result in less losses. Not good for gaming immersion but good for learning the ropes.
TL/DR but eh, I'm at work and excited about the subject myself so rambling a bit. Hope this helps.
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