Author Topic: Can they be boarded?  (Read 3868 times)

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Offline Shadow (OP)

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Can they be boarded?
« on: March 30, 2011, 06:55:40 PM »
I know they're unconventional at least as far as the aftermath of their destruction is concerned (no wrecks), but can Star Swarm creatures be 'boarded' for SCIENCE?
 

Offline Brian Neumann

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Re: Can they be boarded?
« Reply #1 on: March 30, 2011, 07:08:57 PM »
The short answer is no

Brian
 

Offline Shadow (OP)

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Re: Can they be boarded?
« Reply #2 on: March 30, 2011, 07:39:26 PM »
Damn it. It would be neat if I could somehow capture one of them.

But what's the long answer? Are boarding orders rejected, all marines die on insertion or what?
 

Offline vladimir

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Re: Can they be boarded?
« Reply #3 on: March 31, 2011, 12:41:41 PM »
Actually, yes they can be boarded. . . . . and captured.   It just wasnt worth the decimation of my marine division to get it done.   Now the problem is how do i get that huge mothership thru 3 ungated jump points with a destroyed military jump drive. 
 

Offline Shadow (OP)

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Re: Can they be boarded?
« Reply #4 on: March 31, 2011, 01:22:27 PM »
Get maintenance supplies and repair that drive using damage control.
 

Offline vladimir

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Re: Can they be boarded?
« Reply #5 on: April 01, 2011, 02:08:33 AM »
The damn thing doesn't carry enough maintenance supplies to repair it.  That drive is huge.  Working on building jump gates to it, but still not sure how I'm going to get it repaired. . .  none of my military yards is  even up to 15k tons let alone 60k.
I'm currently thinking of getting it back to sol and see if a commercial yard will be able to scrap it and hope for enough components to make tech increases.   I agree with another poster who said he didn't think NPRs or at least the aliens use the same maintenance and fuel use as player races.   Its a wallowing slow pig, with squat for range and a terrifying failure rate as a player ship.
 

Offline Narmio

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Re: Can they be boarded?
« Reply #6 on: April 01, 2011, 02:12:25 AM »
If we're talking about the same thing as I think we're talking about... Isn't "it" essentially a "she"?  I find it rather confusing that it can be boarded at all, much less controlled without special neural interface technology. It's not like there's a bridge...
 

Offline vladimir

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Re: Can they be boarded?
« Reply #7 on: April 01, 2011, 03:03:12 AM »
Yes i am talking about a queen and 5. 2 did let me board and capture her. . .  might be something to fix for later editions if its not intended for that too happen. . . really hope I will be able to get some tech at least for losing 17 of 20 marine brigades and officers(from a role playing point of view, I would imagine volunteers for ground forces and fighter pilots both should be significantly down considering their massive losses of late)
 

Offline Erzengel

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Re: Can they be boarded?
« Reply #8 on: April 01, 2011, 05:58:26 AM »
The reverse would also be nice - swarm ships dropping little bugs on your ships to take them apart from the inside.
 

Offline Shadow (OP)

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Re: Can they be boarded?
« Reply #9 on: April 01, 2011, 08:51:48 AM »
Swarm boarders would be neat. Taking inspiration from a certain show, Swarm assault ships could be fast, spear-shaped creatures that'd ram and stab themselves into their targets before unloading a torrent of 'marine' buggers into the victim, through the armour hole they hopefully created. Nevermind the vague sexual undertone. :P

Yes i am talking about a queen and 5. 2 did let me board and capture her. . .  might be something to fix for later editions if its not intended for that too happen. . . really hope I will be able to get some tech at least for losing 17 of 20 marine brigades and officers(from a role playing point of view, I would imagine volunteers for ground forces and fighter pilots both should be significantly down considering their massive losses of late)

Could you please clarify your losses? At first you said a marine division (which is 4 brigades or 12 battalions) and then you said 17 brigades, which is 68 (!) marine battalions. ???

Or did you mean marine companies? To drop whole battalions with any reasonable degree of success and not too much readiness loss, you'd need a very fast and large assault ship.
« Last Edit: April 01, 2011, 08:53:40 AM by Shadow »
 

Offline vladimir

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Re: Can they be boarded?
« Reply #10 on: April 01, 2011, 10:56:42 AM »
Oops.  When I said a marine division it was actually 16 marine battalions and 4 brigade headquarters.  The divisional headquarters stayed on the troop transport:).  The losses where actually 3 brigade headquarters and 14 marine battalions(the equivalent of 70 marine companies but I use drop battalions not companies).   Initial drop was 2 battalions.   After they started taking significant readiness losses I dropped 2 more battalions and a headquarters.   When it became clear I was still losing the boarding action  I dropped a further 4 battalions and a headquarters exhausting my drop capacity.   While the dropships were reloading, I lost all boarders on the queen.  Final assault was a full 8 battalions and 2 headquarters at once.   As a side note, always remember to detach your dropships from the troop transport fleet and increase their speed to max it significantly cuts down on drop losses.   :o.  Still not sure exactly how the boarding combats work ie. .  does a failed fight still reduce the defenders combat strength in later boarding attempts so you can attrition them down, or does each complete loss reset the defenders to effectively full strength.
 

Offline Shadow (OP)

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Re: Can they be boarded?
« Reply #11 on: April 01, 2011, 11:05:15 AM »
I think your fundamental problem was that there wasn't enough speed difference between the hiveship and your assault vessels. The former has a maximum speed of 1000 km/s, so you need a minimum of 20000 km/s to land your troops with minimal readiness losses. Readiness is effectively their "hit points", so if a battalion makes it with a 85% readiness loss, then it ends up fighting like an understrength company (having just 15% of its total integrity left).
 

Offline Peter Rhodan

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Re: Can they be boarded?
« Reply #12 on: July 18, 2011, 06:47:37 AM »
I decided I wanted some FACs so I did my first attack on a Star Swarm System - 145 of the buggers - used my AMM corvettes to disable about 120 of them (over killed a few - oops) - then began boarding them - had to shoot up a few more who still had active weapons and fired on my Assault ships - Finished up with 90 captured FAC - lost only 5 Companies of Marines - took me two full real time days (my days off work) playing all day and into the night to do all this - the missile shooting was tedious using 1 damage missiles and trying not to overkill by waiting for each hit before launching another at a FAC and I only had 3 assault ships. And had to send one back for replacement marines at one stage.
They have no engineering section so you can't do repairs - I had no FAC carrier and only 1 tug - on the other side of my empire - about a third of the captured ships had high maintenance on the clock (20+) and each production turn one or more would blow up...
They would move at 1k so I started them all off to towards the jump gate....  while I brought up my tug and started building more in a commercial shipyard that just finished.
While all this was going on I developed a LOADCMD error - it started with 1 error window then increased by 2-3 every production turn - nothing I did would stop it so after it got to the point of needing to press ok to 90+ of the damn things every move I abandoned the game and went back to a my previous save before I did the battle - sigh....
 

Offline waresky

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Re: Can they be boarded?
« Reply #13 on: July 26, 2011, 12:24:45 PM »
I decided I wanted some FACs so I did my first attack on a Star Swarm System - 145 of the buggers - used my AMM corvettes to disable about 120 of them (over killed a few - oops) - then began boarding them - had to shoot up a few more who still had active weapons and fired on my Assault ships - Finished up with 90 captured FAC - lost only 5 Companies of Marines - took me two full real time days (my days off work) playing all day and into the night to do all this - the missile shooting was tedious using 1 damage missiles and trying not to overkill by waiting for each hit before launching another at a FAC and I only had 3 assault ships. And had to send one back for replacement marines at one stage.
They have no engineering section so you can't do repairs - I had no FAC carrier and only 1 tug - on the other side of my empire - about a third of the captured ships had high maintenance on the clock (20+) and each production turn one or more would blow up...
They would move at 1k so I started them all off to towards the jump gate....  while I brought up my tug and started building more in a commercial shipyard that just finished.
While all this was going on I developed a LOADCMD error - it started with 1 error window then increased by 2-3 every production turn - nothing I did would stop it so after it got to the point of needing to press ok to 90+ of the damn things every move I abandoned the game and went back to a my previous save before I did the battle - sigh....

This are absolutely boring situation..

Ive left many campaign for this situations..sigh..

Hope Steve play extensively and found this damned hidden bugs...


ahhh...amen
 

Offline Peter Rhodan

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Re: Can they be boarded?
« Reply #14 on: July 27, 2011, 09:48:21 PM »
Why I regularly save backups - no big deal on this occasion - apart from lost time - I am about to repeat the attack but with some changes based on what I learnt last time - not going to board the immobilized FACs till I have by FAC carriers on hand - only 3 in service so will be running a shuttle service 3 FACs at a time till I build more... but better than the none last time. That way they won't be running up the maintenance clock until I board. Means it wil become an ongoing situation for some months game time but thats OK - one of the beauties of Aurora is that NOTHING happens quickly...