I give up on boarding...

[thatguyfromvienna]

Without using the SETA exploit, I find boarding next to impossible.

When I try to board from my M7M, the attacked ship will shoot down almost each and every single of my missiles.
I start with Heavy Hammer barrages, usually double the amount needed to take down the shields, then I shoot single Flails every few seconds depending on the attacked ship's shield regeneration.
Now this won't work most of the time; either I do hardly any damage at all or I trash the other ship.
Yay!!!

Another approach is going in with either an M7 or an M2 and suppress the shields that way while the M7M is set to board. This way, it will launch the pods the very moment the shields go down.
I continue to hold the shields below the threshold just to see all pods destroyed upon approach.
Another yay!

Adding drones to that mix doesn't help either; they get decimated extremely quickly and they don't manage to distract the turrets at all.

I've been watching some tutorials on Youtube and I think I'm playing an entirely different game than those people in the videos do; they have almost 100% missiles getting through.

Very, very frustrating.

[Alan Phipps]

X3AP boarding is different to X3TC boarding (if that is what the tutorials are). Yes, now you do have to over-estimate your missiles and risk over-damaging the target sometimes.

It is still slightly better to take on a head-on target with missiles than a side-on one, even though the front turrets can now adopt missile defence (unlike in X3TC). Having said that, I don't recall having many if any pods shot down with a head-on target front turret in X3AP, perhaps pods are still a special case for front turrets? The worst case I have found for a head-on boarding is when the target launches a Hammerhead at the wrong time. It can take out all your missiles and pods inside the blast envelope, which is huge, when it encounters incoming objects within its large collision envelope.

[Blue Wraith]

I understand your frustration. I ran into this over the weekend while trying to get all my marines to 100 fighting.

It depends a lot on the ship you are trying to board, and the random equipment they have. Some are outfitted with weapons which swat your missiles much easier than others. I spent hours trying to board one particularly troublesome Carrack.

For now, try scanning the ship first, then try to board with missiles for shield suppression. If it's extremely difficult, note the ship setup.

What I found effective when all else failed was piloting a ship and doing shield suppression myself. That also may enlighten me as to why the ship can intercept all my missiles.

Often I'll do boarding with 2 ships for this reason. One M7M for boarding and heavy hitting missiles, and another ship that can dogfight my prey as well as launch missiles for shield suppression on lesser-equipped targets. For me, that's the Hyperion and Cobra.

[thatguyfromvienna]

X3AP boarding is different to X3TC boarding (if that is what the tutorials are). Yes, now you do have to over-estimate your missiles and risk over-damaging the target sometimes.

It is still slightly better to take on a head-on target with missiles than a side-on one, even though the front turrets can now adopt missile defence (unlike in X3TC). Having said that, I don't recall having many if any pods shot down with a head-on target front turret in X3AP, perhaps pods are still a special case for front turrets? The worst case I have found for a head-on boarding is when the target launches a Hammerhead at the wrong time. It can take out all your missiles and pods inside the blast envelope, which is huge, when it encounters incoming objects within its large collision envelope.

I am actually playing TC.
And most of the time, I will have all my pods shot down when the target is heading towards me.
No Hammerheads involved either; it's plain old laser fire that's taking them down.

I just don't want to rely on SETA cheating like obviously many do.

[thatguyfromvienna]

What I found effective when all else failed was piloting a ship and doing shield suppression myself. That also may enlighten me as to why the ship can intercept all my missiles.

Doesn't work for me at all, unfortunately.
When I pilot the other ship and order the M7M to launch the pods, they will all be shot down all the time.

[Blue Wraith]

Like Alan said, I have rarely had my Boarding Pods shot down in AP. It happened to me once over the weekend. I have also had them hit asteroids on their way to the target.

[Blue Wraith]

Are they hitting ships, stations, or asteroids on the way to the target?

[ajax34i]

X3TC I didn't have access to that many Hammer Heavies, so I used Flails a lot and it seemed extremely easy. Pods did get shot down unless they were surrounded by flails.

I used barrage (some Hammers, then lots of Flails) to take the shields down, then 5 flail shots, 4 pod shots, 5 flail shots in quick succession, and then 1 flail shot per second to continue.

You absolutely must bind a key for switching missiles fast, and must use it; if you muck about with the menus to load the pods and then load flails you will leave too big a gap for the turrets to kill the pods.

If the target is small (M6), consider using spacewalk, as it is hard to prevent damage with missiles.

If you do it from 15 km away, with the target trying to catch you, there's a LONG time between when you shoot and when you see what your shots did, so just mechanically do your shots as described above (don't wait to see what happens) and reload if they mess up or if you need to do 6-4-5 or other combinations.

[thatguyfromvienna]

Are they hitting ships, stations, or asteroids on the way to the target?

No, the way is clear.
I can see them being shot down by lasers.

[thatguyfromvienna]

You absolutely must bind a key for switching missiles fast, and must use it; if you muck about with the menus to load the pods and then load flails you will leave too big a gap for the turrets to kill the pods.

Never thought of that!
I'll try to find a way how to do this.

[ajax34i]

Controls -> Keybindings, it's called Missile Select, I have it set up to be 5. Every time I press 5 it loads the next kind of missile in the tubes.

[loxen]

I use two methods. Drop shields. volly swarm. launch pods. volly swarm.

If it is a hard target ill launch 50 fighter drones then drop shields launch pods then volly swarm to keep shields down..

50 fighter drones keep any ship busy..I even capped a xenon i this way..

[heratik]

1: what ships have you been trying to board?

2: are you running any mods/scripts that deal with turrets?

3: Have you scanned any of the ships to see what they have installed in their turrets?

I have had the occasional ship that just destroys my missiles/pods, and after a couple of tries I just move onto a new target!

[thatguyfromvienna]

1: what ships have you been trying to board?

2: are you running any mods/scripts that deal with turrets?

3: Have you scanned any of the ships to see what they have installed in their turrets?

I have had the occasional ship that just destroys my missiles/pods, and after a couple of tries I just move onto a new target!

1: A Brigantine recently was impossible to board.
And everything Xenon.

2: MARS. But it's not supposed to run on enemy ships.

3: No. I don't consider my M7M being tough enough to get into scanner range of an M2.

[Nanook]

...
And everything Xenon.

Problem number one: Xenon are extremely difficult to board unless you have maxed marines, and lot's of them. Preferably two M7M's full, and lot's of reloads.

2: MARS. But it's not supposed to run on enemy ships...

Problem number two: I wouldn't count on it. As I recall, MARS includes some enhanced missile defense for the AI that can't be turned off. This would explain all your pods getting shot down, even during head-on boarding attempts. And FYI, any further discussion of scripts and mods needs to occur in the S&M forum, not here.

If you're not a boarding expert, I'd advise against going for the Xenon, and I'd definitely advise getting rid of MARS until you're much more proficient at boarding.

[heratik]

As Nanook suggested, I would drop MARS and leave the xenon alone for now, see how things go, and come back with the results!

[Kirlack]

Sorry, I know S&M comments shouldn't be here, but it's absolutely NOT MARS. The MARS missile defence on enemy ships is off by default, and so is the fighter drone defence option that's part of the script package. I use MARS a lot, I know that's not the issue!

[Alan Phipps]

Yet we know that vanilla X3TC NPC front turrets do not routinely use missile defence so any head-on engagements are almost always from turrets in other quarters. Hence the confusion of observations over turret/missile engagements shown here.

[Alan Phipps]

Controls -> Keybindings, it's called Missile Select, I have it set up to be 5. Every time I press 5 it loads the next kind of missile in the tubes.

I must be missing something, but how is that different to the standard default set-up of pressing 'm'.

(Edit: Bother I've double-posted myself! Take a self-rebuke!)

[Nanook]

Sorry, I know S&M comments shouldn't be here, but it's absolutely NOT MARS. The MARS missile defence on enemy ships is off by default, and so is the fighter drone defence option that's part of the script package. I use MARS a lot, I know that's not the issue!

Unless he's installed the optional Missile Defense Mk 2 script, which is mentioned in the MARS thread. That script's behaviour matches exactly with the problems he's having with pods getting shot down.