AI Boarding (Shady Business Spoiler)

[RandomDude]

There was a topic about AI boarding a while ago. A fella was complaining he was always getting boarded and nobody would belive him.

I just completed Shady Business, opting to cap the goner TL which set my Argon/Terran relations to hostile.

I warped into Black Hole sun to kill some Xenon to restore rep but there was an Argon Destroyer there that started to shoot at me. I engaged jump drive to another gate in the system and before I jumped I heard the music/audio change to the same audio for when you're going to board an enemy vessel.

I flew back to the previous gate until I was within sensor range and there are some hostile Astronauts(Marines) hanging around.

Vanilla game, no mods.

My question, if it wasn't obvious, is can AI board ships including your own?

EDIT: This equalled 4 free marines for me, they didn't burn on my shields and acted just like normal AI marines that you can collect. I can't really explain the boarding music.

[Ketraar]

As mentioned in the other topic there is no AI boarding. If there were, Cycrow would be among the ones adding it. There is no doubt about it.

Having said that, sometimes RRF ships have marines escaping the death of their ships and if said ship is hostile to player you get red marines floating about, but they wont board you. You can easely test this by just not doing anything.

MFG

Ketraar

[RandomDude]

Originally posted by Ketraar:

As mentioned in the other topic there is no AI boarding. If there were, Cycrow would be among the ones adding it. There is no doubt about it.

Having said that, sometimes RRF ships have marines escaping the death of their ships and if said ship is hostile to player you get red marines floating about, but they wont board you. You can easely test this by just not doing anything.

MFG

Ketraar

What about the boarding music/audio? I guess you can't really give an explanation unless you coded the game.

[Winking Wizard]

I'm very familiar with that music and "warning, one of your ships is being boarded" message because I steal marines from RRF M7Ms using the same mechanic.

TL,DR version. M7Ms come with boarding pods installed and if their target is a shield down capital ship within 4ish km, they are not afraid to fire it. It just so happen that there are marines on the M7Ms.

You can exploit that by taunting an RRF M7M with a shield down capital ship, then shoot down the boarding pods to abduct their marines. If you somehow didn't intercept the boarding pods, then the aforementioned music plays and you get a warning.

Originally posted by Ketraar:

As mentioned in the other topic there is no AI boarding. If there were, Cycrow would be among the ones adding it. There is no doubt about it.

AI won't actively look to board other ships, but they might accidentally fire their boarding pods with marines in it if circumstances are met.

[RandomDude]

Originally posted by Winking Wizard:

I'm very familiar with that music and "warning, one of your ships is being boarded" message because I steal marines from RRF M7Ms using the same mechanic.

TL,DR version. M7Ms come with boarding pods installed and if their target is a shield down capital ship within 4ish km, they are not afraid to fire it. It just so happen that there are marines on the M7Ms.

You can exploit that by taunting an RRF M7M with a shield down capital ship, then shoot down the boarding pods to abduct their marines. If you somehow didn't intercept the boarding pods, then the aforementioned music plays and you get a warning.

Interesting, thanks ;)

[DrSuperEvil]

There is AI boarding but it is rare. It only occurs for RR M7M ships since they have the chance to spawn with up to 20 boarding pods and some marines for defence. If a boardable ship hostile to the m7m loses shielding they will fire the boarding pods although a turret set to missile defence is enough to stop them. If they somehow do manage to board the player will be ejected from their ship (and usually shot up shortly afterwards by their old ship) if the boarding was successful.

[[XU]Cycrow]

The AI dont try to board ships, earlier versions of RRF did do it on AI controlled ships, but this was removed.

They do sometimes fire boarding pods however, and boarding pods automatically load marines when fired. This is a bug with the RRF ships, as they shouldn't be selecting boarding pods to fire

[RandomDude]

Thx Cycrow ;) Been a big fan of your scripts for years, btw, from X2 onwards.