Boarding failing 95% of the time.

[Floyd Stash]

Hello, i'm sending boarding squads 50 recruit marines and a 5 star boarding captain into a rahanas marauder. After the 4th full boarding squad died and i keep rebuying they just keep dying. What the hell is going on. This ship is fully incapable of doing anything i hacked it before i started boarding, then i destroy drive and engines like yisha tells me to. but the soldiers just keep dying in packs of 10-15 and they never fully take over the ship.

it doesnt make sense.. you would think after sending 4 full boarding squads in there it would be totally bloodbathed inside with enemy.

[Floyd Stash]

amazingly enough right after i post this topic i try another boarding for the 5th time with a full new crew. and this crew seems to not lose one soldier in the entire fight.. so weird.

[Lupo]

You can check the boarding value of your target and the Skunk, whoever is higher wins. Apart from drive, engines and external elements, a big chunk of that boarding value is the hull and the drone bay, as each drone counts toward the boarding resistance.

[axeslay3r]

check the boarding Resistance , if yours isnt higher you will die ;)
you can lower it by following Yishas directions , you also MUST attack and bring down the hull.
on a really tough ship I'll take it down too under 10% . slap a 5 star Eng on it and it'll repair all the way up.

[Floyd Stash]

wasn't aware of these statistics, thx for the info's

[$300]

EDIT: Wow I'm really slow and less eloquent, just do what Lupo said haha.

To keep losses to zero you have to make sure your attack strength exceeds the boarding resistance of the ship you want to capture. You can view the boarding resistance of the ship in its info panel, under the General tab. For example, if the ship has 371 in boarding resistance, your attack strength needs to be 371.1 or more to not lose any marines. If your strength is lower than the ship's, there are things you can do to fix that.

The most obvious way is to kill all the surface elements of the ship, like turrets and such. The more, the better.

The second maybe not-so-obvious way is to outright damage the ship you want to capture. This is something you pretty much have to do if taking out all the surface elements didn't lower the resistance enough. Taking a ship down to 70% hull or less can make all the difference.

Just be mindful that its engineer WILL repair the hull during the boarding attempt, increasing its resistance again. I have lost marines to this, so always make sure the hull stays at a percentage you are comfortable with, and Yisha should point you towards any surface elements that were suddenly repaired during boarding.

And lastly, do all of this BEFORE you start the boarding attempt. Never start boarding until you are absolutely sure you can capture the ship.

I use the mod Marine Rebalance and I don't know if it works the same in vanilla, but before every boarding attempt it tells me the attack strength of my marines and the boarding resistance of the ship, making it easier to plan ahead.

TL:DR Kill jumpdrive > kill engines > kill surface elements > lower hull percentage > double-check boarding resistance > BOARD!

[Lupo]

Nice info there My Life is potato.

[dukes111]

I blow up everything on the ship and bring the hull down to 30% then board, never lose any marines. most of them are experts now.

[kMotion]

Bring the hull down to 10-20% and send squads.

[IronSquid501]

Remember that some ships also have surface elements that aren't marked down or easy to find. One such example is the Arawn, which has two large but destroyable "wings" on either side and hundreds of tiny red tanks that each contribute to its boarding resistance, as well as turrets inside the ship itself.

Make sure you've completely scoured the ship and sent its hull down to around 10% before you bother sending in a boarding crew, and always keep an eye on strength and resistance.

[Floyd Stash]

boarding is so easy once you read the above informations :P

[$300]

A bit TOO easy, maybe... But hey, Somali pirates use rubber dinghies to attack lone freighters with success so I guess it's not a stretch for the Skunk to bring down a lone Arawn if the conditions are right.

And as with Somali pirates in real life, the only way to combat boarding in X Rebirth is with escorts. I don't touch K's escorted by a fighter wing of 20-something Xenons, but Gangrene Chasers with only 3 Skull Crushers in tow are ripe for picking.

If you are willing to draw the ire of a stray faction or two, boarding is ridiculously profitable and propels you towards the "end-game" at ludicrous speeds. My entire empire is built upon the bodies of countless Split and Teladi. Terran xenophobic supremacy!

[JVonD]

After a few fails and screaming "why did they change this" I started to get a hang of this.

1. Say 80% of the hull value is the ships defense value.
2. Turrets and such are 1-2 points each depending on the type. Bigger the gun more points.
3. Drone launcher is a small chunk of defense points.
4. Shields like the guns 1 point for the small a bit more for the capital ship shield.

So I start my run. Ship "X" has 147 Defense and I have 34 offensive.

I take out the engines and jump drive and pound on the bottom of the "X" ship clearing the guns and lowering the hull % to at least 34 defensive value (my offensive) and often a extra 10 or so for wiggle room since the hull quickly repairs while your boarding. LEAVE AT LEAST 6 SURFACE ITEMS FOR WHEN YOU BOARDING MISSION REQUIRES YOU TO DESTROY THAT OBJECT TO SPEED UP CAPTURE TIME AND SUCCESS!!!

Assuming all your marines survive the boarding you will get mission from Yisha to destroy or hack parts of the ship. I myself dont like the hack part you can loose the cargo to space you want to keep and will have a hard time getting back so I leave those drones at home.

At this point you kept the hull at a low % not to increase the ships defense value, you did all Yisha's destroy missions and 4-5 phases later you should have captured the ship low or no marine losses.

Now I have had some ships with every sub system destroyed the defense at 1% hull was still 45 and my attack power is 34. This you will loose your marines on this so might as well pop the boat.

[ZaydinTTV]

Yeah, that's one of the bigger faults of the game, that it doesn't explain to you how boarding works. Well, really works, with boarding resistance and such.

To board higher tier warships, you need a good amount of veteran/elite marines, so boarding freighters is a good way to level them up.