Boarding Mechanics (how and how much marine stats influence boarding?)

[Loth Crow]

Boarding is one of the aspects of X4 I still have a lot to learn about.

There is an obvious difference between the combat effectiveness of recruit and veteran marines, but do the specific stats of each marine affect the outcome? if you have a veteran with higher boarding and/or morale than other veterans will it affect the boarding outcomes?

How exactly the marines rank (and the number of marines you deploy) affect the duration of the second phase of boarding?

Does the stats of a marine affect it's survivability rate individually? Like, if I send 10 veterans in a a boarding operation and 5 of them die, how does the game decide which ones of them survived?

And last but not least a question that goes beyond boarding, but nonetheless affects marine stats: How does the Morale of crews increase? Service Crew morale raises (as well as engineering stats) by taking part in battle, trade, mining etc, but does ship combat / long service in a ship affect marines as well, ortheir stats only change if they board a ship?

[Kalisa]

cant comment on most of this since still learning boarding mechanics myself, but i had marines on my ships from start of game for over a hundred hours, and those marines didnt improve at all in stats when not doing anything (since i never boarded with them) so i think its safe to say, marines only improve on boarding or with the military training facility, no other way it seems

[Loth Crow]

Originally posted by Kalisa:

cant comment on most of this since still learning boarding mechanics myself, but i had marines on my ships from start of game for over a hundred hours, and those marines didnt improve at all in stats when not doing anything (since i never boarded with them) so i think its safe to say, marines only improve on boarding or with the military training facility, no other way it seems

I have mixed impressions on this, but what you say seems right.

EDIT: I had to ask, anyway, just to be sure.

[Wraith]

from my own experience it very significant if your marines are veterans.
Taking ships like it was a piece of cake.

Though to minimize casualties don’t mix recruits with veterans

I find having all veteran marines do work for little casualties but if they have recruits in the mix more veterans start to die

[Loth Crow]

Originally posted by Wraith:

Very from my own experience it very significant if your marines are veterans.
Taking ships like it was a piece of cake.

Though to minimize casualties don’t mix recruits with veterans

I find having all veteran marines do work for little casualties but if they have recruits in the mix more veterans start to die

This is definitelly valuable information. I will experiment with that in my game.

[Kalisa]

i tried to take a ship that had 4 vets defending it, i sent 40 new marines with less then 1 star, they managed to kill 1 vet, it was a sad day. these vets were 3-4 star

[Loth Crow]

Originally posted by Kalisa:

i tried to take a ship that had 4 vets defending it, i sent 40 new marines with less then 1 star, they managed to kill 1 vet, it was a sad day. these vets were 3-4 star

Yeah... Similar things happened to me. More than once each veteran in the enemy ship cost me more than 10 rookie marines at boarding operations. I know that because I sometimes board ships using only recruits just to see if i get some veterans in the process.

[Loth Crow]

For those who came here for the answers, there is a good thread on the subject here:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/392160/discussions/0/3117023981185288775/

[Oddible]

Vets are beasts. Elites are near unkillable. I often determine whether I'm boarding or destroying based on how many defenders but more importantly how many are vets. I train up a massive crew of marines boarding SCA ships. Lately been using a Barbarossa as my boarding ship since it holds so many crew and is fast to get to the target. I pop out the engines and turrets with a Katana then bring in the Barb to board.

[Oddible]

BTW, everyone wants boosted crew with all 5 stars, like having the infinite money fountain that shipyards used to be - it really just makes the game less fun - everything is too easy when you never lose any crew, never lose any ships, and can print ships like confetti. Having to actually care for your high star rating marines and protect them and use them judiciously is way more careful and planned gameplay - so much more enjoyable to have it be marginally difficult.

[Loth Crow]

Originally posted by Oddible:

Vets are beasts. Elites are near unkillable. I often determine whether I'm boarding or destroying based on how many defenders but more importantly how many are vets. I train up a massive crew of marines boarding SCA ships. Lately been using a Barbarossa as my boarding ship since it holds so many crew and is fast to get to the target. I pop out the engines and turrets with a Katana then bring in the Barb to board.

It may be just my luck, but you can get LOTS of veteran marines when you hire them via ship upgrade interface in VIG stations. About 1 to 4 marines hired there are veterans.

[Loth Crow]

Originally posted by Oddible:

BTW, everyone wants boosted crew with all 5 stars, like having the infinite money fountain that shipyards used to be - it really just makes the game less fun - everything is too easy when you never lose any crew, never lose any ships, and can print ships like confetti. Having to actually care for your high star rating marines and protect them and use them judiciously is way more careful and planned gameplay - so much more enjoyable to have it be marginally difficult.

I'm mostly a roleplayer, so I make my own challenging conditions.

[Marc1314]

I havn't discovered any marine training stations yet so i dont have any choice about using recruits. However so far my recruits have capped 5 barbarossas and 3 donia miners.
I now have about 30 odd veterans and i never have any second thoughts about sending them in with my recruits. Every time i've capped a ship the number of vets has always went up by about 5 or so.
After you cap a ship you can turn your marines into service crew so that they can help to repair the ship then after the repairs you can turn them back into marines and they wont lose any boarding stats.
You can do this using the sliders on the personnel tab for the ship.

[Durandal]

You'd think by this point we could just have things like Academies where you could send raw recruits to train up their skills to a more competent level before you send them into meat grinders. Because considering the difference between "Recruit-Veteran-Elite" when it comes to Boarders, for example, you'd think Recruits run around with bombs attached to their chests and just run around mid-boarding hoping no one shoots their chest bomb while Vets actually have Rifles in their hands as the Elites have Ultra Marine armor. Military schools, Engineering Schools, Business Schools...Paid-leave for Morale boosts or something like that to further control Manpower development...but...
But we get a Casino...

[Wraith]

Originally posted by Durandal:

You'd think by this point we could just have things like Academies where you could send raw recruits to train up their skills to a more competent level before you send them into meat grinders. Because considering the difference between "Recruit-Veteran-Elite" when it comes to Boarders, for example, you'd think Recruits run around with bombs attached to their chests and just run around mid-boarding hoping no one shoots their chest bomb while Vets actually have Rifles in their hands as the Elites have Ultra Marine armor. Military schools, Engineering Schools, Business Schools...Paid-leave for Morale boosts or something like that to further control Manpower development...but...
But we get a Casino...

um we already have a marine academy and pilot academy.
it in the terraforming planets.
You can level 100 people each project up to 4 star as a group.

[Loth Crow]

Originally posted by Marc1314:

I havn't discovered any marine training stations yet so i dont have any choice about using recruits.

Originally posted by Loth Tear:

It may be just my luck, but you can get LOTS of veteran marines when you hire them via ship upgrade interface in VIG stations. About 1 to 4 marines hired there are veterans.

Try this.