Why did I not know this about PALC! Possible AP Plot Spoilers

[MarvinTheMartian]

It might be my fight rank but I'm at the point in the Shady Business plot where I have to kill some space fly hunters and the last two are Tigers and have been trying to board the first, rather than kill it if I'm going to lose rep anyway!

This Tiger has a couple of PALC up front which I can probably work around but... not a single flail has touched it and I couldn't figure out why until I reloaded and took an outside view of it - the PALC caused a chain reaction that wiped out a 6x barrage in one hit!

The entire tunnel of 768 flail warheads just burnt up from front to back in a cascade of explosions like a giant spiralling firework, pretty cool to watch but somewhat problematic, will have to approach this from the other end!

[Monkeyfister]

Wow! I have never seen that. Must have been beautiful to watch... until you realized how much that fireworks display cost you!

I do hope the Tiger's PALCs survive the boarding for you.

[MarvinTheMartian]

I have replayed it a couple of times to watch the show to get my money's worth

It's probably more a weakness of the barrage of swarm missiles than a strength of PALC but you probably need a beam weapon or something with a lot of energy to start the chain reaction in the first place, I doubt blowing 1 warhead is enough to do this otherwise it would be far more common.

Not had time to retry yet, this is going to taking some "Think"ing - so far boarding in AP is not nearly as easy as TC so I'll have to develop a new technique. In TC I can board an enemy ship inside 10 minutes every 10 minutes and was capping so many capitals I couldn't equip them fast enough to put into service that I had quite the log jam of Paranid Destroyers, Carriers and Frigates waiting for shields and guns to be fitted.

[Martin Head]

Not sure if I am remembering correctly. But I think I boarded one of those Tigers, and it disappeared along with my boarding crew at the end of the mission.

[Jimmy C]

Marvin, it is due to your fight rank. Once you reach Vindicator or thereabouts, mission-spawned M7s (like these ones) have a chance of carrying 2-4 PALCs. Take combat missions and scan the M7s spawned, you'll see.
I had been wondering if mission spawned Tigers would use any PALCs they were carrying, now I know.

[MarvinTheMartian]

Good to know about that chance that I'd lose the Tiger, I'll try to confirm that.
I'm only assassin but I did get a PALC drop from a Deimos in a defend station mission a while back which I thought was odd at the time but yes, those tigers are very happy to use PALC if they have them!

[Jimmy C]

In TC, the Assassination target was said to jump away if you captured it instead of destroying it. Haven't succeeded in capturing anything in TC to confirm this, but I've only seen this behavior once in AP.
The assassination target was an M1, unlike other times where I managed to capture a target M1, this one would jump away, but only if it had its jumpdrive after it was captured.
Escorts on assassination missions have a 50% chance of jumping away, with your boarding crew still onboard, after you capture the target. This is standard behavior and makes capturing them challenging at times.

[MarvinTheMartian]

So, after some hard work, I win the tiger get both PALC and 3 5* fighting marines I lose 3 ranks with the split but I really like the look of the Tiger, my first one!

Now for the 3rd and final spacefly hunter and ... it's another Tiger! I already have the Marines back on board the Kraken so I'm setting up for another go but while I'm remotely transferring new shields to the first tiger the transfer menu cuts to "Ship Destroyed" so I guess you don't get to keep it after all.

I tried a couple of things, piloting it myself in an attempt to stop any scripts running on it and even stayed on board - that just booted me out to the game load menu, not even a game over.

I worked hard for that Split reputation from an Unholy Traitor start so I'm not prepared to lose 3 ranks - I'll buy a tiger and steal PALCs form the Parnid

Moral of this story is not to bother stealing plot (temporary) ships.

I did get a sort of time lapse pic of the flail fail cascade, if I get time I'll stitch it together as an animation. no promises.

[Martin Head]

Again, If I remember correctly. A little later in this plot

Spoiler

Show

You get a lot of attacks on your stations, by Assassins in M6's

I think you can board and keep them.

[Jimmy C]

Marvin, the PALCs and your marines are more important. Since you can't keep the ship, just eject the marines and the PALCs for pickup before the ship vanishes.
And don't worry about losing your reputation. A few missions will take care of that easily.
I got booted from top to -2 for capping two Argon frigates in a single mission once. One Average mission for the Argons later, I was back to +2 or so. The most costly part of the whole thing was replacing several satellites in Argon space.