I'm in the middle of the HUB plot, (doing Ore atm) and am doing the Goner Plot where I have to rescue Goners over and over. I've seen Syndicate Carracks on the first two rescue missions and suddenly thought it might be a good time to try to board one since so far, they have been alone. Disclaimer: I've never boarded a ship before!!! I have about a dozen 3+ star marines and about a dozen more 1-2 star marines. I have an M7M Cobra decked out and ready, am flying a Springblossom, and was about to kill the third Carrack when I thought maybe it would be a good time to board a ship. After reading a few boarding threads, I think I would be wasting my time trying to board a M7 as my first boarding.
Or should I go ahead a waste the Carrack and train boarding missions with civilian TL's first?
Never boarded before, killing Carracks in Goner Plot...
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Bill Huntington
- Posts: 2493
- Joined: Mon, 2. Feb 09, 17:34
Boarding Practice
Why not try? But don't be discouraged. Pirates are a tough enemy, boarding is hard at first. Carracks are harder than other M7s. They have smaller shields compared to others, so they regenerate faster percentage wise. That means you have to very careful to keep the shields down so your marines can get inside and not get toasted on the outside.
I hope the three star refers to fighting. You can gather marines at three star in fighting. Then they need fight training, like you are talking about now. Fight training is the hardest to get, so you save yourself a lot of trouble by starting with three star or more. Ten trained marines can take a lot of ships. You can compensate for lower training by using fifteen or twenty of them. I usually take a few civilian TLs to start with. I like the Elephant and Mammoth TLs, so those are the ones I take. I keep one TL for storage and don't even repair it. If you just want to sell them, any race is okay. You lose four levels in rep for every boarding so you'll have to do missions afterwards. Sometimes there is a Return Ship mission for an M7 or M6, and that's good for practice if you don't want to steal it.
By the way, be careful about boarding the Truelight Seeker. Many pilots just lose their marines. It can be a boarding opportunity, but you have to both board it AND claim it while boarding is in progress.
Good luck!
I hope the three star refers to fighting. You can gather marines at three star in fighting. Then they need fight training, like you are talking about now. Fight training is the hardest to get, so you save yourself a lot of trouble by starting with three star or more. Ten trained marines can take a lot of ships. You can compensate for lower training by using fifteen or twenty of them. I usually take a few civilian TLs to start with. I like the Elephant and Mammoth TLs, so those are the ones I take. I keep one TL for storage and don't even repair it. If you just want to sell them, any race is okay. You lose four levels in rep for every boarding so you'll have to do missions afterwards. Sometimes there is a Return Ship mission for an M7 or M6, and that's good for practice if you don't want to steal it.
By the way, be careful about boarding the Truelight Seeker. Many pilots just lose their marines. It can be a boarding opportunity, but you have to both board it AND claim it while boarding is in progress.
Good luck!
Bill in S.F., enjoying the game
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Cpt.Jericho
- Posts: 4503
- Joined: Mon, 17. Jul 06, 15:44
Save your game, try boarding and if you fail, reload your save and try again. If you get bored with trying and failing, waste the Carrack. Simple as that.
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Boycotting Steam since 2003
Yea,
I tried 5 times and had them board successfully twice only to get wasted. I used 10 marines (two pods). They were 3+ star in the trainable skills, not sure about fighting, I bought them all cheap and trained them up (not fighting obviously). Not bad for the first try I guess, I should probably set up a ship with Ion Disruptors (I think that's the right weapon) to take out on-board defenses. Anyway, it was spur of the moment and it was partially successful, went ahead and blew it up after 5 tries.
Kinda getting boring grinding through the HUB plot + Goner Plot, was a good change of pace anyway.
I tried 5 times and had them board successfully twice only to get wasted. I used 10 marines (two pods). They were 3+ star in the trainable skills, not sure about fighting, I bought them all cheap and trained them up (not fighting obviously). Not bad for the first try I guess, I should probably set up a ship with Ion Disruptors (I think that's the right weapon) to take out on-board defenses. Anyway, it was spur of the moment and it was partially successful, went ahead and blew it up after 5 tries.
Kinda getting boring grinding through the HUB plot + Goner Plot, was a good change of pace anyway.
There are easier ships to board than a Carrack, but it's a perfectly viable target. As long as you've got at least two Marines in each boarding party with at least average Mechanical skill to breach the hull, and at least two Marines with decent Hacking skill left at the end out of all your boarding parties, it shouldn't be too difficult unless the ship has Hull Polarization or Sentry Lasers (scanning it before boarding should reveal any nasty surprises and tell you whether or not you're wasting your time even trying).
Normally, I command the M7M remotely, and use my own ship as a distraction, as well as to keep the target's shields down without wrecking the hull. I launch a few cheap Wasp missiles occasionally to keep the target's turrets busy, instead of having them shoot down my expensive Marines. A couple of basic combat drones can also distract the target and help suppress shields.
The other problem comes if/when you capture the target. If it's done damage to (or killed) a race ship at any time in its existence, it may spawn a reaction fleet to destroy it. It doesn't matter if you own it now, they're out to destroy it, and they'll shoot at you or your peaceful traders if they happen to spot you or them first. In essence, if you don't know where it's been and what it's done since it spawned, sell it immediately if possible.
I've had at least half of my games "broken" when a race fleet showed up to destroy my recently captured pirate or hostile race ship, and started taking out my traders and stations. If the captured ship has killed a civilian ship, apologies don't work, the race fleet will eventually turn hostile again and resume attacking. Selling it is the safest approach.
Normally, I command the M7M remotely, and use my own ship as a distraction, as well as to keep the target's shields down without wrecking the hull. I launch a few cheap Wasp missiles occasionally to keep the target's turrets busy, instead of having them shoot down my expensive Marines. A couple of basic combat drones can also distract the target and help suppress shields.
The other problem comes if/when you capture the target. If it's done damage to (or killed) a race ship at any time in its existence, it may spawn a reaction fleet to destroy it. It doesn't matter if you own it now, they're out to destroy it, and they'll shoot at you or your peaceful traders if they happen to spot you or them first. In essence, if you don't know where it's been and what it's done since it spawned, sell it immediately if possible.
I've had at least half of my games "broken" when a race fleet showed up to destroy my recently captured pirate or hostile race ship, and started taking out my traders and stations. If the captured ship has killed a civilian ship, apologies don't work, the race fleet will eventually turn hostile again and resume attacking. Selling it is the safest approach.
Use 20 marines (four pods worth). Ten lower level marines aren't really enough. Best way to do it is to give the Piracy command 'board ship' to the Cobra while you approach the Carrack and drop its shields. The Cobra will wait and fire the pods automatically when the shields are down. All you have to do then is keep them down until the marines are inside the hull. Should be easy enough to do in your Springy.wolfee wrote:Yea,
I tried 5 times and had them board successfully twice only to get wasted. I used 10 marines (two pods). ....
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X4 is a journey, not a destination. Have fun on your travels.
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Do a freight scan on the ship first. If it has defences (HPD, ISL, AF or marines) then you need to remove those (ID, PBE) or get a better team.
If there is none, you might succeed (still get a team of 20, as fight skills are summed up when the game decides on losses). But some reloads might be necessary as some rookies might not make it through the hull.
If there is none, you might succeed (still get a team of 20, as fight skills are summed up when the game decides on losses). But some reloads might be necessary as some rookies might not make it through the hull.
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Bill Huntington
- Posts: 2493
- Joined: Mon, 2. Feb 09, 17:34
My plan for Marine training
Wolfee, here's a few things to get started without the mistakes we all made.
1. Search all the places that have Marines and Mercencenaries. Check the Encylopedia. You want them to progress together, so buy them now. Choose one location for training. I use Aladna MO because it's central.
2. Buy three star or more in fighting. The rest is trainable.
3. I even up the three skills, so they are within 4 points of each other. Then I train all skills. The first time for All Skills, I train for Normal, which is three times Quick. After that it's quick.
4. I get my marines to three star in all skills, then get 10 together and start fight training. If I can wait a little and get 15 or even 14, that's good too.
5. I start with CW TLs, either Arenas or Casinos. You have to be aware of sector defenses, but there should be many opportunities.
6. I like to have about 30 marines in training, but 20 is okay too. When you get the Centaur in the Plot, there are 8 good marines aboard.
7. If you are at top rank with all the races, you can take one TL from each of them, put all you marines back in training, choosing All Skills Quick, then do missions for each race to get back to top rank. Every boarding drops you to the fourth rank. You might finish the missions about the time when you marines are ready for the next round. I don't want my marines just sitting unless they waiting for the right number of marines, or they are at 100 in all skills. I'll take Return Ship missions for a M6 or M7 for training purposes. You could just claim them, but you get training points for boarding them. Stolen Ships missions are okay too, but I don't usually want to lose pirate rep.
8. I clone all the Hammers and Flails and Boarding Pods I need in Rhonkar's Trail.
9. I pick up a Hype early for my personal ship. (Edit: If you have the Hype or any M6 or M7, you can it to handle the shields of the civilian TLs and save the Hammers and Flails for the big ships.)
Good Luck!
1. Search all the places that have Marines and Mercencenaries. Check the Encylopedia. You want them to progress together, so buy them now. Choose one location for training. I use Aladna MO because it's central.
2. Buy three star or more in fighting. The rest is trainable.
3. I even up the three skills, so they are within 4 points of each other. Then I train all skills. The first time for All Skills, I train for Normal, which is three times Quick. After that it's quick.
4. I get my marines to three star in all skills, then get 10 together and start fight training. If I can wait a little and get 15 or even 14, that's good too.
5. I start with CW TLs, either Arenas or Casinos. You have to be aware of sector defenses, but there should be many opportunities.
6. I like to have about 30 marines in training, but 20 is okay too. When you get the Centaur in the Plot, there are 8 good marines aboard.
7. If you are at top rank with all the races, you can take one TL from each of them, put all you marines back in training, choosing All Skills Quick, then do missions for each race to get back to top rank. Every boarding drops you to the fourth rank. You might finish the missions about the time when you marines are ready for the next round. I don't want my marines just sitting unless they waiting for the right number of marines, or they are at 100 in all skills. I'll take Return Ship missions for a M6 or M7 for training purposes. You could just claim them, but you get training points for boarding them. Stolen Ships missions are okay too, but I don't usually want to lose pirate rep.
8. I clone all the Hammers and Flails and Boarding Pods I need in Rhonkar's Trail.
9. I pick up a Hype early for my personal ship. (Edit: If you have the Hype or any M6 or M7, you can it to handle the shields of the civilian TLs and save the Hammers and Flails for the big ships.)
Good Luck!
Bill in S.F., enjoying the game
Bill summed it up nicely. My approach is similar, except that I take all my fight trainees to 100 in all the other skills. I also won't buy a marine with less than 3 stars in fighting. If you're friendly with the pirates, it opens up pirate bases and rehabilitation facilities as sources of marines. Long term, you may need to buy up the really lame ones and enslave them (at Pirate Bases) so that new marines/mercs are generated. I've managed to find 4 and even 5 star marines that way.
I like capping Atmospheric Lifters to provide fight training for my marines because the Lifters have bigger cargo-bays than the purchasable TLs (useful when building big complexes). Also look out for Ship Recovery missions where M6 or M7s need to be retrieved, you can send your marines at those for practice/training without having the nuisance or working the shields down (because they already have no shields).
The other slight variation is that I often throw 20-25 MkII Fighter Drones at a target to turn it hostile (less chance of collateral damage when using Flails). Cobras with FD mkIIs, flails, hammers and boarding pods.
Last thing. Sometimes it is worth having a 21st marine cutting at the hull in case there is a casualty among the boarding crew. For Carracks you definitely need to maintain a crew of 20 on the boarding crew (I'll pull in a second Cobra for capping Xenon Qs, for example). Switch ships and fire off another boarding pod or two, just to keep the boarding party at 20.
I like capping Atmospheric Lifters to provide fight training for my marines because the Lifters have bigger cargo-bays than the purchasable TLs (useful when building big complexes). Also look out for Ship Recovery missions where M6 or M7s need to be retrieved, you can send your marines at those for practice/training without having the nuisance or working the shields down (because they already have no shields).
The other slight variation is that I often throw 20-25 MkII Fighter Drones at a target to turn it hostile (less chance of collateral damage when using Flails). Cobras with FD mkIIs, flails, hammers and boarding pods.
Last thing. Sometimes it is worth having a 21st marine cutting at the hull in case there is a casualty among the boarding crew. For Carracks you definitely need to maintain a crew of 20 on the boarding crew (I'll pull in a second Cobra for capping Xenon Qs, for example). Switch ships and fire off another boarding pod or two, just to keep the boarding party at 20.
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ancienthighway
- Posts: 1663
- Joined: Tue, 24. Apr 07, 05:25
I suggest learning the art of Flail boarding. Firing a missile every second or so, depending on the shield rate is much cheaper than having your drones get too enthusiastic, or get shot down by defenses. It will tend to occasionally see hull damage, but not more than the marines incur without 5 star engineering. It's fantastically cheap, and also endangers only one ship at a time.
I also prefer the Launch Marines command under the command console, because I like to fly the ship myself, but it won't fire unless the shields are at 5% or lower.
And to that end, you'll want to learn how to hold a chasing ship just out of range of it's guns so it doesn't shoot down the pods while firing at you. Nothing's quite so embarrassing as that.
I also prefer the Launch Marines command under the command console, because I like to fly the ship myself, but it won't fire unless the shields are at 5% or lower.
And to that end, you'll want to learn how to hold a chasing ship just out of range of it's guns so it doesn't shoot down the pods while firing at you. Nothing's quite so embarrassing as that.
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In my opinion, you don't need to train up every marine in every skill.
Only the two highest Mechanical skills in each group of 5 are considered, so having all of them with high Mechanical skill instead of only half is rarely cost-effective. If they've got passable Mechanical skill, I give them some extra training; if not, they remain as simple "grunts", and I keep their clumsy hands well away from any tools other than guns.
At the end, once the marines have reached the core of the ship, only the two marines with the highest Hacking skill are considered. Again, why pay to train up every marine, when you only need 2 in the whole operation, plus a couple of "spares" in case the dedicated hackers don't survive to the end. I only train around 1/4 of them in Hacking, generally those who already have some skill at it. The rest are simply there to get your 2 hackers to the core.
Engineering reduces collateral damage to the ship they're boarding, so every marine should have at least reasonable Engineering skill. It doesn't need to be spectacular, at least until the marines have their Fight skills boosted by a few successful boardings. I train them all up to at least 3 stars in Engineering, and send them back for extra training to max it out if they reach 4 stars in Fighting.
Fight skills can't be trained, other than by doing boarding ops. I look for prospective additions to my marine teams every time I pass a military base or training facility. Any with 3+ in Fight skill are prime purchases, regardless of the other skills, because the rest can be trained up.
Fight - untrainable
Mechanical - I train 1/2 to max
Hacking - I train 1/4 to max
Engineering - I train all to at least 1/2, and eventually 1/2 to max
That's a significant cost saving over training every marine to max in every skill.
In my last campaign, I scoured at least half of the game universe and was only able to come up with around 10 marines with at least 3 stars in Fight, and only 3 of those had 4 stars. That meant I had to spend a lot of time grooming 2-star marines until I could field a decent boarding party against anything serious. Unfortunately, there's no way to get rid of low-skill marines cluttering up the military bases other than by buying them and dumping them or selling them as slaves for a fraction of what you paid. Once you've culled the bases for recruits, their replacements have the same high odds of being unskilled, so after around the second wave of purchases, you're left with nothing worth buying.
Only the two highest Mechanical skills in each group of 5 are considered, so having all of them with high Mechanical skill instead of only half is rarely cost-effective. If they've got passable Mechanical skill, I give them some extra training; if not, they remain as simple "grunts", and I keep their clumsy hands well away from any tools other than guns.
At the end, once the marines have reached the core of the ship, only the two marines with the highest Hacking skill are considered. Again, why pay to train up every marine, when you only need 2 in the whole operation, plus a couple of "spares" in case the dedicated hackers don't survive to the end. I only train around 1/4 of them in Hacking, generally those who already have some skill at it. The rest are simply there to get your 2 hackers to the core.
Engineering reduces collateral damage to the ship they're boarding, so every marine should have at least reasonable Engineering skill. It doesn't need to be spectacular, at least until the marines have their Fight skills boosted by a few successful boardings. I train them all up to at least 3 stars in Engineering, and send them back for extra training to max it out if they reach 4 stars in Fighting.
Fight skills can't be trained, other than by doing boarding ops. I look for prospective additions to my marine teams every time I pass a military base or training facility. Any with 3+ in Fight skill are prime purchases, regardless of the other skills, because the rest can be trained up.
Fight - untrainable
Mechanical - I train 1/2 to max
Hacking - I train 1/4 to max
Engineering - I train all to at least 1/2, and eventually 1/2 to max
That's a significant cost saving over training every marine to max in every skill.
In my last campaign, I scoured at least half of the game universe and was only able to come up with around 10 marines with at least 3 stars in Fight, and only 3 of those had 4 stars. That meant I had to spend a lot of time grooming 2-star marines until I could field a decent boarding party against anything serious. Unfortunately, there's no way to get rid of low-skill marines cluttering up the military bases other than by buying them and dumping them or selling them as slaves for a fraction of what you paid. Once you've culled the bases for recruits, their replacements have the same high odds of being unskilled, so after around the second wave of purchases, you're left with nothing worth buying.
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RainerPrem
- Posts: 3574
- Joined: Wed, 18. Jan 06, 07:39
Hi,
Also, you will start to kick yourself, if you lost one hacker and can't hack the core even if you have nineteen marines standing around.
Also, you will kick yourself, if you try to board a badly damaged Aran and have too few marines with Engineering skills. Jump back and wait or sacrifice the next hours to fix the Aran's hull enough?
So, get all marines costing 100k or above, train them to five stars in any craft, and then take twenty of them (with a total of 50 fight stars) on training missions to hired TLs. You'll soon get a kick-ass crew.
cu
Rainer
My different opinion: If you've got the time and the money, why not grow a second crew? You'll need it once you want to board a Q (it's a steam achievement).Honved wrote:In my opinion, you don't need to train up every marine in every skill.
Only the two highest Mechanical skills in each group of 5 are considered, so having all of them with high Mechanical skill instead of only half is rarely cost-effective. If they've got passable Mechanical skill, I give them some extra training; if not, they remain as simple "grunts", and I keep their clumsy hands well away from any tools other than guns.
At the end, once the marines have reached the core of the ship, only the two marines with the highest Hacking skill are considered. Again, why pay to train up every marine, when you only need 2 in the whole operation, plus a couple of "spares" in case the dedicated hackers don't survive to the end. I only train around 1/4 of them in Hacking, generally those who already have some skill at it. The rest are simply there to get your 2 hackers to the core.
...
Also, you will start to kick yourself, if you lost one hacker and can't hack the core even if you have nineteen marines standing around.
Also, you will kick yourself, if you try to board a badly damaged Aran and have too few marines with Engineering skills. Jump back and wait or sacrifice the next hours to fix the Aran's hull enough?
So, get all marines costing 100k or above, train them to five stars in any craft, and then take twenty of them (with a total of 50 fight stars) on training missions to hired TLs. You'll soon get a kick-ass crew.
cu
Rainer