Newbie question - dealing with boarding pirates

[Tharmund]

Is the only way to deal with boarding parties, to have enough firepower to fight them?

Since there are no turrets or traps, or a way to shoot down shuttles, if I happen to have a random crew with poor skills and few weapons, is there nothing that I can do besides running a way? It would be fun to create a hostile area around the airlock, with high temps and no oxygen, or some kind of trap, but I doubt that this would work.

[ioanniskass]

You build cover in front of the airlock and place you crew behind it. That, of course, if you have sufficient crew members and guns (not pistols) - in other words, overwhelming force. If not, you get the hell out of there

[Saboera]

Well there is turrets, sort of.
You can deploy a bunch of sentries and create a kill box with an overwhelming number of them. The remote control only takes weapon skill 1 and each user can deploy and control up to 3 sentries.

There is probably a way to use the airlocks as well but I never tried. I know you could force them to fight wearing a spacesuit by creating a buffer zone that has no air, forcing them to go deeper in the ship before engaging. Wearing a spacesuit inflicts a -15% accuracy penalty.

[TheSuit]

ya would be nice if you could like make an airlock room and depressurize it so they need to like hack a terminal or run out of O2

[Vector3D]

I have a problem with pirates hating me, and chases me just to blow up my ship - ruins it a bit as I don't know what to do about it

[Flin Fredstone]

Originally posted by Randot:

I have a problem with pirates hating me, and chases me just to blow up my ship - ruins it a bit as I don't know what to do about it

If you can, install a targetjammer. Let the pirates bourd your ship and wack em in a killbox. Then fly over to their ship and kill/capture their remaining crew and loot the place.
I usually never build any guns and just drain the enemies that way.

[tebow baggins]

yea the target jammer, which if playing higher difficulty takes time to research and build.. but yea killbox.. there is special furniture now a cover object, but before that then you use the rails of storage and shuttles for cover also you can shoot over beds and medical beds that much block incoming fire until destroyed..

pause button should be very close by during any fight. disengage when char takes too much fire from multiples and seek better cover. frontal engage the airlock and flank it also,, 3 crew can stop 4 raiders at the airlock with luck and pausing every shot. focus fire all crew on 1 raider then goto the next.

before you get target jammer then you have to run from bigger encounters.. the small enemy ships you can shuttle rush them usually before they do enough damage and they usually try to hail your ship which they stop fire and you buy time to get your shuttle docked to them.

you can do what you asked there are ways to kill the raiders with a bad enviorment but i just rely on cover and focus fire.. focus fire is your main ally

[Stryderunknown]

I usually counter-board during a pirate attack. As soon as they send a shuttle with a boarding party I send my own boarding party towards their ship. You can easily overwhelm the crew they've left on board and leave their home ship a derelict.

It thins out their numbers and increases the chances that the ones onboard your ship will surrender (when you re-appear back at your own ship) and If the AI is written to put the strongest fighters into the boarding party, then those left on the vessel are the weakest ones (and likely armed with mostly pistols).

I would leave a few members onboard though so they don't just outright cap your ship :/

(* This was true at time of writing, however omissions like this could cause development changes)

[Xanthiras]

You can board at the same time they do, but that doesn't really provide you any advantage other than saving a bit of time. The pirates that board your ship are going to be killed or surrender anyway, so if you don't have a large number of good fighters to fight on two fronts, you might as well keep yours on your ship to handle hostile boarders, and then send your own boarders afterwards. Even if you kill their boarding party, pirates typically don't jump out prematurely, so you have enough time to send your party before they jump out.

[Sushi_Rocks]

You can build a second airlock next to the first one and vent it as soon as they enter your ship without space suits. Theoretically. Never actually did that.

The pirate Ai might choose to go back to the air lock to put on space suits, though.

Still, if that causes them to walk into the next room with space suits, they would be at a disadvantage, because the spacesuits decrease accuracy significantly.

If you manage to take one of the pirates out, you can execute them immediately after surrender and equip the weapon that they drop. So theoretically, it should be possible to beat a pirate boarding crew without any weapons in your crew if you do it right...

[Stryderunknown]

Originally posted by Sushi_Rocks:

You can build a second airlock next to the first one and vent it as soon as they enter your ship without space suits. Theoretically. Never actually did that.

The pirate Ai might choose to go back to the air lock to put on space suits, though.

Still, if that causes them to walk into the next room with space suits, they would be at a disadvantage, because the spacesuits decrease accuracy significantly.

If you manage to take one of the pirates out, you can execute them immediately after surrender and equip the weapon that they drop. So theoretically, it should be possible to beat a pirate boarding crew without any weapons in your crew if you do it right...

Venting can cause damage to equipment, so ideally having the airlock(s) in a room on their own, connected via a door (with it's vent closed) that enters to a corridor which has vents (not doors) to a large room that has no oxygen (like the engine room), followed by an exit corridor door (again vents closed) and then a room (with oxygen) like a hangar with some cover furniture placed 3-5 tiles across from the door.

This way when the pirates board you can vent the airlock room using the corridor door vent (since that room will be connect to a room with no oxygen) which will then force the pirates into their suits.

If you keep the corridor one square wide it means the pirates will attempt to enter the hangar single file through the door, which if greeted by your defenders positioned behind the cover furniture will quickly dispatch of pirates with a minimum of fuss.

[I blame Earthshaker]

Originally posted by Sushi_Rocks:

Still, if that causes them to walk into the next room with space suits, they would be at a disadvantage, because the spacesuits decrease accuracy significantly.

One more reason devs need to add multiple space suit options (ie, tactical/space marine suits), but I get it, they got other fires to stoke or put out...