[X3AP] Boarding: is the loot depending on Marines Skill levels?

[rnada]

Lately i have been boarding quite a lot, switching from spacewalking from my Hyperion to mostly M7M-based boarding (i use a Cobra).
Until now i always got rather empty hulls, with just the occasional minor quantity of trash (a couple of missiles or drones in an M7). Lately (the last two M7 i got from the Yaki and a Jonferco mercenary) i started getting somemore substantial loot, such as 16 CIG or 8 HEPT and I am wondering why.

May that be because i am using slightly more trained marines?
If yes, can i expect even better loot if I use 5 star marines?

[Cycrow]

what you have left on the ship after boarding will be random and depend on what was on the ship in the first place.

what happens when you board is that some of the wares/lasers/shields, etc are randomly removed, and you get whats left over.
You will never get anything that wasn't on the ship to begin with

This is the same as when you capture small ships, and isn't influenced by the skill level

[RAVEN.myst]

The "skill level" that might be improving to affect things here is your own play skill - when you spacewalk-board, often you will be taking more time to clear away defensive guns, which means there is less stuff left over that has a chance of sticking around. As your skill with the Cobra improves, you may find yourself starting the boarding more confidently and earlier, which means that (unless you are using the Ion Disruptor or PBE-based approach to strip away defenses) more hardware survives to the final resolution of your boarding op - at that point, as Cycrow said, what is still left afterward is randomly determined.

Of course, it's also possible that none of what I mentioned is applicable in your case, in which case you are simply enjoying a cluster of lucky dice-rolls However, as your skill improves, you CAN expect the amount of loot to increase a bit, on average.

Good hunting!

EDIT: PS: You probably know this already, but higher Engineering skills on your marines reduce the amount of collateral damage they inflict on the ship, though as far as I know it only affects the target's hull points. Nevertheless, that's still very handy, as it improves the resale value or reduces the repair cost, whichever is relevant.

[Honved]

From what I've seen, random loot on bailed fighters is mainly affected by your character's Fight level. It doesn't matter what's on the ship at the time the pilot bails, because the ship is effectively REPLACED by an identical type of ship with random remaining equipment. This is often completely different than what the ship was firing at you a moment before.

High Engineering skills result in less hull damage during boarding of capital ships, which affects the amount of items that remain. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if your character's Fight rank also affects which items remain and which are removed.

[AleksMain]

It is depending from damage of the boarded ship.

Here is example:
I had boarded ship M2 with 16 PPC (Photon Pulse Cannons).

Since there (in space around boarded ship) were marines too (some of them 4*), then I was busy, gathering them and not saw Pirate Elite flying towards boarded ship.

As result M2 had been damaged little before jump and instead of 16 PPC it had 15 PPC.

[Jimmy C]

The random nature of loot left after boarding is why guides tell you to save before the boarding completes.
In the final phase of boarding, Hacking Core, there will be five spoken lines by your boarders before the boarding is complete. Six if Advanced Software Firewall is present, you'll know if that's the case. Save after the last line is spoken. Then, you can restore until you get the loot you want.
I board ships all the time and I do this all the time to optimize my loot. Mission-spawned ships are my main supply of CIGs and shields. They'd be my main supply of PPCs too but it takes too long to reach the fight rank where M1s that carry PPCs show up. I have to build my own PPC forges long before that.

[RAVEN.myst]

Sounds a bit cheaty to me, tbh...

[Jimmy C]

If they did want us to do this, they would have arranged matters to make it impossible.

[Sirrobert]

Just because it's possible doesn't make it any less cheaty. It's also possible to cheat the Stock Exchange out of billions of credits, but that's still super cheaty

[rnada]

"..the PBE approach..." Ack! That is indeed something i do!. keep shields down with PBE so, even if i hit the hull, i am not stripping it down seriously.

That could be a reason why the boarded ships are so stripped of their original equipment (i scan them usually).
The save-and-reload approach is a bit cheaty (in my personal opinion) and definitely too time-demanding, but i'll try a couple of time and see.

Is there an opinion about the best gun (best in the sense of keeping equipment hale) to keep the shields at a minimum?

[Sirrobert]

Just keep shields at 1% should keep all equipment intact, you only fry stuff when hitting the hull.
As far as things that do hit the hull, I believe it's just a chance for each time you hit, so the lowest shots/minute would be best

[RAVEN.myst]

I recommend switching to numeric shield+hull displays when doing this sort of thing, as while it is less visually intuitive (I use the graphic indicators most of the time), it gives more precise information - you can see when you are down to 1-2% so you can ease up on the trigger, and shoot again when it's back to 3% or so. (There's a setting for this somewhere, or you can simply left-click on a shield/hull indicator bar to switch it directly on the interface.)

As Sirrobert says, the chances of frying installed equipment are based on hull impacts - every shot that hits the hull has a chance of breaking something. I'm not sure whether some weapons have a higher chance per shot, but those that hit fast definitely have higher overall chances, simply from increased checks per second - so, PBE, IRE (somewhat less so, as it will generally not keep up with shield recharge except on the lightest of targets), and the hull-friendly IonD are pretty much the most lethal to equipment.

[Honved]

I'm partial to using Phased Repeater Guns to keep the shields suppressed on lighter targets (M6), because the high bullet velocity and low damage per projectile allows one to tightly control the amount of damage being delivered, without having a lot of ordinance still in flight to target. As long as you don't strip the shields to zero, you're not doing hull damage or wrecking equipment.

High damage weapons tend to take too large a bite, and the delay between firing and impact of a slow projectile makes it hard to judge when to fire another shot. A high-damage, low rate of fire weapon with low projectile speed (like HEPTs or PPCs) would be the worst choice, in my opinion. Obviously, as shield strength and recharge rates increase, it takes larger (or more) guns to keep them suppressed.

[Cycrow]

From what I've seen, random loot on bailed fighters is mainly affected by your character's Fight level. It doesn't matter what's on the ship at the time the pilot bails, because the ship is effectively REPLACED by an identical type of ship with random remaining equipment. This is often completely different than what the ship was firing at you a moment before.

High Engineering skills result in less hull damage during boarding of capital ships, which affects the amount of items that remain. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if your character's Fight rank also affects which items remain and which are removed.

Thats not actually how it works. The ship isn't replaced, its the same object, just the pilot is removed and the owner is changed. The wares are then randomly removed