Boarding Basics

Boarding is certainly not the most intuitive aspect of Battlefleet Gothic: Armada. It is only briefly covered in the tutorial and has led to many questions (and misunderstandings) in the forums. This guide aims at beginners and experienced players who want to know more about boarding and the game mechanics behind it. Since I have no knowledge about the tabletop game this one is based on, the contents of this guide come exclusively from my ingame observations. And from reading the tooltips, of course.

What does boarding do?

Basically, “boarding” means to bring some of your armsmen to the enemy ship where they try to wreak havoc. There are several ways to do so, for example by teleportation. This is called a “Lightning Strike” and every line ship (not the small escort-class ships) is equipped for it. Let’s have a look at a simple battle situation: An imperial light cruiser, Dauntless class, against an ork light cruiser, Basha class. Both should be Level 1, so they have neither crew nor ship upgrades. Now we assume that the Dauntless has already broken through the shields of the enemy and the imperial captain orders a Lightning Strike. The armsmen are teleported to the orkish heap of space junk and try to do their work. What can happen now?

A chaotic Lightning Strike









A boarding operation can only be a success or a failure, there is nothing in between. If it is a failure, you will get a message and the boarding skills will be on cooldown (90 seconds, in most cases), but there will be no other penalties. If it is a success, it will have the same effect as a critical hit by a weapon (without the weapons damage) and initiate the cooldown of the boarding skills. The possible effects are:

• Hull Breach: 50 points of damage
  
• Subsystem destroyed: Deck, generator, engines or one weapon is destroyed. It is random which subsystem is affected, but you can raise the chance by prioritising one of them. (More detailed explaination: If a subsystem is prioritised, the random test that determines the target is repeated once, should the first test not give the desired result. In numbers: The chance raises from 25% to about 44%, because 1 - 0.75 * 0.75 = 0.4375)
  
• Fire: 2 points of damage per second for 45 seconds. Fires can stack with each other and deal tremendous amounts of damage if the victim is not able to use emergency repairs.

Since escort-class vessels and transports have no subsystems, there will always be a fire or a hull breach when they are boarded successfully.

A game of chances – Troop Values and Assault Actions

Whether a boarding operation is successful or not is random. It is as easy as that. But “random” does not mean 50:50. The chance of success is misleadingly labelled “Chances of critical damage”. This information is just a tool of convenience for the attacker, because only its opposite, the chance to fail the boarding, can be influenced (and is used by the game). The chance to fail is equal to the so called “Troop Value” (TV) of the defender which can be taken from the ship’s stats.

Yep, that’s right. The TV of the attacking ship has NOTHING to do with the boarding operation. Only the defending ship can influence the chance to fail the boarding (and so the chance to succeed for the attacker) by raising its TV. The basic TV in the game is 60 for human (Imperium or Chaos) ships, 70 for the orks and 50 for the eldar. This means 60/70/50% chance to fail the boarding and 40/30/50% chance for the attacker to succeed.
Now back to the example with the lvl1 Dauntless vs lvl1 Basha: If the ork kaptin tries a Lightning Strike against his opponent he will notice “Chances of critical damage: 40%”. The imperial captain instead will read “Chances of critical damage: 30%” when trying the same.






The Basha is not an easy target


For the attacker there is another way to improve the effectiveness of his boarding operations: the number of attacks. This is called “assault actions” and can be seen as the number of teams the attacker sends onto the enemy ship. A Lightning Strike with improved assault actions would teleport two teams instead of one. Both would have the same chance to succeed (as shown in “Chances of critical damage”), but the outcome would be calculated individually. The combined chance to succeed cannot be seen in game, you will have to calculate it for yourself.

If we use our example again and assume that the Basha is now lvl2 and has the “More Tellyportas” upgrade (+1 to assault actions of Lightning Strikes) the combined chances of a successful Lightning Strike against the Dauntless would be as follows:

• both assault actions succeed: 16% (0.4 * 0.4 = 0.16)
  
• both assault actions fail: 36% (0.6 * 0.6 = 0.36)
  
• one or both assault actions succeed: 64% (1 - 0.36 = 0.64)
  
• exactly one assault action succeeds: 48% (0.64 - 0.16 = 0.48)

Types of boarding operations

Lightning Strike
The basic boarding operation. Up to three assault teams are teleported onto the enemy ship. It has a range of 5000, offers one assault action without upgrades and has a 360° angle of attack. All line ships can do a Lightning Strike, but only after the shields of the enemy are down. Lightning Strike and boarding pods share a cooldown, if you use one, both will be unavailable for 90 seconds.

Boarding Pods
Called “Boarding Action” by the game. Boarding pods can be fired only from the broadside of a line ship, have a range of 2500 and ignore shields. They can be shot down by defence turrets, which is calculated by giving the defender +1 to the troop value for every active defence turret. The number of assault actions varies with the ship class of the attacker: 2 for light cruisers, 3 for cruisers and battlecruisers and 4 for battleships. Ork ships get a +1 by their “Savage Boarding” trait. Lightning strike and boarding pods share a cooldown, if you use one, both will be unavailable for 90 seconds.

Assault Craft
Assault craft can be used by ships with ordnance bays. They have a range of 12000 and will cast a single assault action for every started assault craft. If it reaches its target, that means. Like other ordnances, they ignore shields. Eldar ships don't have assault craft.

Boardin’ Torpedoes
Ork ships can fire Boardin’ Torpedoes instead of normal torpedoes if desired. They give one assault action per hit, but don’t do any further damage.

Shokk-Attack Mega Kannon
The “Bad Moon Klan” favour upgrade gives ork ships yet another way to board. It offers a range of 25000 with a minimum of 5000, one assault action and ignores shields. Although it looks like a lightning strike, it is more similar to an assault craft that hits instantly. Sadly, it doesn’t work for data recovery.
Big Boarding Boom









Pathfinder Webway Assault
Given to eldar ships by the Craftworld Alaitoc favour upgrade, this is the ultimate boarding skill. It is guaranteed to be successful, has unlimited range and bypasses shields. Disadvantages are the lengthy cooldown and that you cannot upgrade the number of assault actions. Since it starts on cooldown, it is not of much use for data recovery.

Special boarding operations

Cancel Warp
Whenever a ship is boarded during the preparation of a warp jump, the assault teams will try to stop the jump. The chance of success is the same as for a normal boarding if the enemy doesn’t have the “Generator Security Team” upgrade. If the boarding consists of several assault actions, the first successful one will cancel the jump while the remaining ones proceed normally. A jump caused by insubordination cannot be cancelled.

Data Recovery
Boarding operations that try to recover data ignore the troop value, which means they are always successful. If the boarding consists of several assault actions, the first one will get the data while the remaining ones proceed normally. Assault Craft and Boarding torpedoes won't retrieve data, instead they work just as in other game modes.

Change log

05/14/2016: In the official forum the devs made clear how subsystem prioritising works with assault actions. Reworked the paragraph. Corrected some spelling mistakes.
04/24/2016: Added information about assault craft and boarding torpedoes being unable to retrieve data. Corrected some spelling mistakes.
04/18/2016: Deleted dispute note. It seems to work as described. Added information about non-existing eldar assault craft.
04/14/2016: Added information about the eldar. Added dispute note about targeting subsystem priorities. Corrected fire damage and added duration.

[75338]

Why the F would they not stick with the basic technical terms from the bloody game, why reinvent the wheel and confuse people??

[Red Star, Blood Moon]

This is the kinda thing which should be pinned to the front page always. I really wish devs would make it feel easier to understand and find out this kind of stuff, rather than it usually feeling like community effort to explain the game to players. This is especially true when certain things are counterintuitive, like armour only being about hit chance or your troop strength having nothing to do with your assault action chance

[Gorwe]

You failed to mention the difference between Temporary(Orange) Crits and Permanent(Red) Crits. One can be repaired and the other can not.

[Kail]

I just started playing this the other day and this was a big help! Thank you!

[StopSolo&HelpTeam]

Source for TV not affecting boarding?

[Purple Aki]

spot on

[Nicolas Rage ™]

KNEEL !

[Walsingham]

FINALLY, a guide that makes some sort of sense of the counterintuitive mechanics. Thanks. Bonus points for probability theory.

[chaz]

thanks to made me understand the math beyond assault. but stop me if i am wrong, the fire cast favor do fire for each assault action or only one fire by each boarding. i never play it but it sound fun

[Caliell]

Forgot to add that there are upgrades that lower defending ship's boarding value, such as Space Marine detachment for Imperial Navy or Chaos Space Marines for Chaos.