[X3AP] Extreme Fishing! (Or spacewalking bigships instead of using pods)

[Nehlis]

Hey guys it's me again. I've almost built up enough resources to start a bigship spacewalk. I need some advice from the veterans.
The Goal:
Capture an M7.
No using pods, Must spacewalk.
Use less total funding than it costs to just by a M7 of the same type.
Have the total reward value (sell value, minus the damaged percent) of captured ship be significantly greater than total costs.
Minimize losses (damaged/destroyed ships, killed marines, expendetures)

That's the idea of what I'm trying to do. I need some expert advice/criticism on the plan
The Plan:
I have a jumpdrive capable Express on standby with approximately 21 maxed marines. Once a target ship is located, Isolate it in a relatively safe sector, then destroy all escorts. I will use a Hyperion for this task. Once the target ship is successfully stripped of any escorts, I will then proceed to strip the hull of shields, switching to a IRE to hopefully strip internalized defenses. Once internalized defenses are down, I will deploy approximately 100 figher drone Mk1's to distract the target's defense systems, while leading it towards the gate. Once within 10 km of the gate, I will jump in my Express, and order it to follow me, transferring myself at the 5 km mark. I will then personally maneuver the express to the dropoff point, approximately 1km from the front of the target, and once marines are ejected, will then transfer once again into the hyperion. Using the hyperion, I will then keep the shields of the target below 5% until the boarding team reaches the target, while attempting to bait the target at an angle generally towards my marines.

That's the idea at least. I'm pretty sure it's riddle with holes but it's the only think I can really think up. Any advice/criticism from the pros?

EDIT: From suggestions/feedback
Using 10 drones instead of 100.
Park the TP in the same sector.

[dubnium]

why do you want to lead it towards the gate, the express could just as easily idle close-by?

[Nehlis]

I really am uncomfortable with leaving the ship carrying my 21 marines too close to the vessel i'm trying to take, especially if I haven't killed off all the fighters. Maybe I'm just too cautious, but I'm afraid that a missile might be launched at it, or some stray fighter might decide to frag it, or the capship guns may target it. Besides, it feels more like fishing if I have to lure it into an ambush.
Still, If I were to idle in the same sector, how far from the action should it be approximately? Maybe I could land it in a nearby station for security?

[dubnium]

it's been a while since i spacewalked, but 10km should be plenty of distance, although if you can engage the target near a station by all means you it.

are you playing no-reloads? in that case i would abandon capping altogether, considering the high probability of losses and the ludicrous amounts of money and time required to replace marines.

[Nehlis]

Not 0 reloads, but I'd like to minimize the amount of time I spend smacking the keyboard in fustration and selecting the last saved game. The personal challenge I'm employing in this playthrough is 0 M7M usage. If there's any other critique or flaw you can point out in the plan I posted, please do so. I'm still a relatively new player and I'm very sure I missed something. Thanks!

[dubnium]

i would recommend going after a ship that has no internal defenses rather than trying to fry them and not to worry about trying to get them to a secluded sector - just apologize profusely to any police you might redden. using powerful missiles like hammerheads will help you strip target shields without incurring massive deductions to your relationship with the ship's owner race - the reputation loss is based on number of hits, not their strength. try using slow-firing weapons with high-damage projectiles for the same reason.

or you could intellectually checkmate the game by capping a civilian TL (some of their monikers are "arena" and "hospital ship") as they have no weapons and little shielding, then sell it and buy whatever ship you like.

[firestorm79]

I boarded myself up to M2s, and M1s. Never purchased anything I could board (except for a Sirokos, but that was some time after I had a fleet of destroyers and couldn't find the elusive Sirokos anywhere so that I could board it).

So my first real target was a Cobra. Whilst you don't want to use M7M boarding M7Ms are surprisingle straightforward with spacewalk.

I see you have the Hype, which is perfect for the TP + M6 combo.

As suggested above, have your TP parked nearby, same sector, but maybe docked at a station that is very close to your target M7. When it's docked nothing can harm it (short of something actually destroying the station!)

Then get Hype to deal with escorts - preferrably choose a ship with no escorts, but that's not always possible. As for ISL, HPD and AF they expose the only flaw in the Hype, its inability to mount ion weaponary. I guess IBE may wor, but I have always skipped the stage where people fry anti-boarding equipment by having sufficiently highly trained marines. If your marines are about 4 star average in everything they should be ok with ISL/HPD/AF (incidently ISL requires good fighting skill to overcome, HPD requires good mechanics and AF requires good hacking).

Do NOT deploy 100 drones: they will obliterate your target ship in seconds. If you just wanted a distraction then maybe 10... but the Hype should be plenty of distraction. while you keep its shields under 7% get your TP to remotely board the target ship. Through option '5' in the command console. As long as you make sure the M7 shields are down the TP should fly up to it and release the marines for spacewalking duties. But as we all know autopillock is stupid, so I tend to jump into my TP when its near the target ship (you do have transporter device don't you?) and use other ship commands. It means I can manually fly near the target ship and drop the maines. Then jump back into the Hype.

A word of warning do NOT let the TP get destroyed after it has deployed the marines or the target M7 will stay blue after the core is hacked. Just get it either jump out or dock at a nearby station straight after releasing the marines.

[firestorm79]

forgot to mention, with M7M boarding, before you start draining shields get it to empty its missiles on you. Just troll it from about 4.5k away (your ISR/CIGs should have enough range) and shoot down all the missiles that come your way (its useful to turn your front turrets to missile defence so you can concentrate on getting its shields down whilst your turrets get rid of the approaching missiles).

If the target M7M has marines on board you can even drop your shields into space and watch the M7M fire boarding pods at you, at which point you can shoot down the pods and scoop up free marines! Just make sure to collect your 200mj shields again. And DON'T try this if there are any serious threats nearby otherwise they start chewing through your hull straight away.

[dubnium]

If the target M7M has marines on board you can even drop your shields into space and watch the M7M fire boarding pods at you, at which point you can shoot down the pods and scoop up free marines! Just make sure to collect your 200mj shields again. And DON'T try this if there are any serious threats nearby otherwise they start chewing through your hull straight away.

this makes me wish we still had the disable shields (well, open cargobay, but w/e) hotkey from X3:R. i guess the M7M will also need boarding pods to try and board you, or will ships try to spacewalk the player as well?

[GCU Grey Area]

Not strictly necessary to use a TP at all for this. I prefer to keep things simple & just use a single ship for this sort of boarding op. In AP an M6 can carry 8 marines which is just enough to successfully board an M7 (or any other big ship), provided they're all fully trained with 100% skill in fighting & you get rid of anti-boarding kit first (sentry lasers, life support for defending marines, etc). Couple of other caveats:

1. All the marines need to survive the journey to the target's hull - taking any casualties during the spacewalk phase of the op will drop their overall fighting skill to the point where they probably won't survive the fighting inside the target. Use drones and/or lots of Wasp missiles to keep the target's turrets distracted.

2. During an M6-based spacewalk op marines operate in two squads comprised of 4 marines each. Both of these squads need to arrive at the target at approximately the same time, otherwise the first squad will cut the hull, enter the ship & likely die while waiting for the second squad to finish hull cutting. Can't really do much to affect this, it's just something to watch out for - if there's a significant lag between the squads arriving at the hull the op will probably fail.

Also would certainly agree with firestorm79's comment about the drones - 100 is far too many.

[Sirrobert]

Use Ion Disrupters for frying internal systems, instead of IREs

[firestorm79]

Not strictly necessary to use a TP at all for this. I prefer to keep things simple & just use a single ship for this sort of boarding op. In AP an M6 can carry 8 marines which is just enough to successfully board an M7 (or any other big ship), provided they're all fully trained with 100% skill in fighting & you get rid of anti-boarding kit first (sentry lasers, life support for defending marines, etc).

8 100% marines can take an m7?

Time to get into my acicnonyx...

Use Ion Disrupters for frying internal systems, instead of IREs

He's using the hype to strip shields, so no IDs available for him...

[pref]

To get my Cobra in last AP game, i needed 4x 4-5Star marines, and the rest were random guys from outposts without training (20 total).
I launched the marines from maybe 2 km distance - when the M7M runs out of missiles you can do whatever you want with it.
I would skip M7Ms with internal defences for spacewalking - just look for a better target - the untrained marines do enough damage to the ship, no need to make it worse by trying to fry equipment (which probably wont happen without reloads, chances are high that you won't fry all the needed equipment before hull drops too low).

[Nehlis]

Not strictly necessary to use a TP at all for this. I prefer to keep things simple & just use a single ship for this sort of boarding op. In AP an M6 can carry 8 marines which is just enough to successfully board an M7 (or any other big ship), provided they're all fully trained with 100% skill in fighting & you get rid of anti-boarding kit first (sentry lasers, life support for defending marines, etc). Couple of other caveats:

1. All the marines need to survive the journey to the target's hull - taking any casualties during the spacewalk phase of the op will drop their overall fighting skill to the point where they probably won't survive the fighting inside the target. Use drones and/or lots of Wasp missiles to keep the target's turrets distracted.

2. During an M6-based spacewalk op marines operate in two squads comprised of 4 marines each. Both of these squads need to arrive at the target at approximately the same time, otherwise the first squad will cut the hull, enter the ship & likely die while waiting for the second squad to finish hull cutting. Can't really do much to affect this, it's just something to watch out for - if there's a significant lag between the squads arriving at the hull the op will probably fail.

Also would certainly agree with firestorm79's comment about the drones - 100 is far too many.

Seems a bit risky, but I'm willing to try that.

[Nehlis]

Thanks for all the feedback guys, It's really helpful . I'm going to try this after midterms, and I'll let you know how it works.

[BurningMan]

I have boarded some M7s with a TP and its not too hard really, although it requires a little skill and luck to get the Marines to the Hull (that is hands down more difficult than anything else).

Boarding M7Ms is pretty easy i would actually say that a M7M is propably the second easiest boarding target for spacewalk the easiest being TLs, once a M7M has shot all its missiles it is a sitting duck and will basicall do nothing except waiting to get boarded even M6 and TMs are propably harder to board (although you won't need good marines for them).

However spacewalking M7/M2/M1 is quite challenging the first step should be getting it into a quiet place and taking out its escorts which shouldn't prove too difficult in the Hyperion. After that call in your TP, but let it stay near the gate until you have stripped down the shields and deploy the Drones (pro tip: store them in your TP ), how many you need depends on your targets shields and recharge rate 10 won't be enough you will at least need 50 MK1 Drones for a M7 and propably around 100 for M2/1 you will have to experiment a bit but it took me about 70 MK1s for a Tiger IIRC if you eject too much don't worry the IREs won't do too much hull damage, but it is likely that your target won't have much equipment afterwards. Also take some spare drones with you to launch a second wave in case the first is depleted of energy before your marines are on board.
Now comes the tricky part, the targets shields are stripped down and your drones are doing their best to keep it that way while also distracting the turrets you can now simply order your TP to board the target and hope that your marines will reach the Hull however M7s are pretty fast and most likely faster than your marines so if you take this route it will be a gamble if your marines get on board before your drones run out of juice, but stay away until you launch a second wave. It is doable if you can lure the ship near your marines, but still it will require some reloading and nerves of steel to do it that way.
To solve this problem there is a pretty easy solution simply get into the TP and do it yourself instead of relying on the stupid autopilot simply fly in front of the M7 and dump out your marines via the launch all marines command and chances are that your marines will be onboard in no time.

This doesn't comes with its own set of problems however first and foremost you are sitting in a TP and anyone who has 1) ever flown a TP and 2) ever been in a combat situation knows that these things don't mix too well for numerous reasons. the best thing to do is sit in a fast/small and well shielded TP the best ones are the Boron Angel (155 m/s, 4x 25 MJ,1600 XL cargo!), Argon Phantom (180m/s, 5x25MJ, 950 L cargo), Teladi Geochen (148 m/s, 1x200MJ!!!, 1100 L cargo) and the Terran Mani (192 m/s!,5x25Mj!, 1350 L). the Terran Mani is overall the best but if you don't have good standings with the Terrans the other 3 can work as well. the second problem is that it seems the AI likes to shoot at the player ship more than anything else (that is just a feeling more than anything else but i was always attacked when i sat in the TP myself, while it was often completly ignored if the AI flew it) so the best aproach would be to fly there fast and try to dodge any incoming fire spit out the Marines and fly away before you get shot down in any case the MK1 Turbo Booster is a big help.
Once your marines are in space there isn't much to do other than to hope that everything goes well which is propably the most frustrating part about space walk boarding, because a lot of times your marines take forever to get on the ship if you can't lure it towards them.

So in conclusion everything you need is:
A good TP preferably the Mani with MK1 Turbo
A set of good marines
Enough Fight Drones MK1 (having a stock of 500 should be enough for a couple boarding ops)
A ship that can take out the escorts and strip down the shields while being able to take a couple hits without being too dangerous to the target.

[firestorm79]

if you're going down the fighter drone route to strip shields, go with MKII as you'll only need half the amount as MKI. Or better still Keris - maybe you'll need about a third the amount of MKIs...

Make sure you order each one to attack shields of target M7 (you can't broadcast this command to all drones).

[BurningMan]

Meh the MK2s/Keris cost more/take longer to produce than they are worth and the ISRs wan't do much Hull damage any way and the faster speed of the MK1 drones make them harder to shoot down for the Turrets.

[Nehlis]

Well I was planning on using the drones ONLY for distraction, since a couple of botched attempts led to my marines getting popped out of space, Freaking PBE...