Marines Aborting after target is acquired: AP Vanilla

[Sabrina Bergin]

I just wondered if anyone else has come across this.

I have a Cobra with twenty 4 Star fighters on board and for the first four ops no problem and no loss's.

Then over a two hour period I had one marine not board his pod and stayed behind then on the next two ops I had five Marines bail from the target with the message there was insufficient fuel in the pod even though the other fifteen marines were busy clearing deck one.
Both times it was the same five marines.

Distance from target maintained at 12-15K and shields held at 0-3%.

One other thing when I went to retrieve the marines they flew away from me are they trying to desert ?.

[Alan Phipps]

Regarding the one marine staying at home, check that he is not on the marine exclusion list (Ship Commands, Piracy, second selection menu screen). Also be aware that if using remote barrage commands for pods, the pods only load 4 marines and not 5.

I have not seen any pod low fuel messages myself, but I do know that pods can randomly bounce off the target on first contact and spill the marines to space. See this (I assume it applies to both TC and AP).

Regarding your marines flying away from you, they could have already been avoiding a large ship/object nearby rather than your own approaching ship. Not sure though.

[Black_hole_suN]

I had one marine not board his pod and stayed behind

Marines drink spacefuel like a fish.. it is possible that one guy had a severe hangover from the party the night before your boarding op.. do you launch marines using piracy menu?? you might have accidentally set that marine to not participate in you op

I had five Marines bail from the target with the message there was insufficient fuel in the pod even though the other fifteen marines were busy clearing deck one.

It seems that these guys dont know how to use a torch to cut the hull of ships thus they resorted in using a hack saw which is, well, ineffective.. after finding that they cannot enter the hull they tried to bail using pods, but pods dont have have enough fuel for a two way trip.. (there was never an incident that the pods will fly back to the player in case the marines decides to bail)

One other thing when I went to retrieve the marines they flew away from me are they trying to desert ?.

DESERTER!!! Lord Eddard Stark will personally execute him!!


sorry for the lame jokes.. Im drunk..

[Sabrina Bergin]

Regarding the pod usage it is always twenty marines in four pods there are no secondary menus that I've played with.

With reference to marines flying away from me I had to chase after them and stop at which point they tried to high tail it making no attempt to board the ship even though I was stationary and parked ahead of their direction of travel. Plus with no other ships in sector at that point they were going the wrong way to find a station.

I just don't get it I train these guys up and spend millions on their education and travel and now all they want to do is goof of.

Bloody ingrates the lot of them.

[samoja]

My advice would be "SAVE, SAVE, SAVE" a boarding op is a tricky business, save at every step, then if something like that happens reload and try again. As for that one marine check piracy menu, if he is selected, may be a glitch that excluded him without your intervention, or just plain human error. If that does not work you could try these:in this order 1. transfer him to another ship and retrieve him, 2. eject him and pick him up, 3.put him to training and wait or else if non of that works just get another marine. Also marines always try to escape you as they are run on stock spacesuit script and originally spacesuits are bailed pilots running for their lives from you(if you catch them you enslave them or just kill them)

[Sabrina Bergin]

Samoja:

Your response seems to be the most likely answer to the mystery so it seems I will have to draft in some of the B team whilst they go back to school.

As for the advice on saves fortunately the ships were captured with no other loss's which is fortunate as I am role playing a DID and would have had to bite the bullet.

But thanks for your responses.