--- I've heard conflicting reports from others who have had boarding actions drag out, better to have and not need than need and not have. This formation eats 36 GSP per round of combat, those 10 Tons worth of squad supply represent an extra 20% combat endurance each, and an extra 50% when combined. I feel in light of other reports that they were worth the roughly 6% of the formation that they take up. In total, the Command Team, and both Supply Teams only constitute 1/10th of the entire formation. I have heard that defenses tend to drag on more than attacks in general, and that contested boardings are often decided by the supply points rather than the casualties.
It depends a lot on your Marines composition, formation size, and how many formations you send - as well as the enemy crew size. Generally, a smaller formation like this is likely to run out of supplies - while this formation can fire 72 killshots per combat round, ship crew is granted a fortification level of 2 which cancels out the boarding combat capability (in terms of %to-hit, obviously you can still board the ship) so you're firing with 20% accuracy (14.4 kills per round). As unit intrinsic supply lasts 10 rounds of combat you will kill about 140-150 ship crew before running out of supplies. Of course sending multiple marine companies at one ship will avoid this problem.
If you were running 1000-ton companies of similar composition you could expect to kill off closer to 500 ship crew before running out of supplies, which would handle most ships you'd ever have the chance to board.
Why are you using light personel weapons for the majority of the members?
--- Because enemy crew members are no match for Boarding Combat PWL, making them very cost effective for such a small formation. The PWI in Powered Armor are also plenty fine at tackling normal old enemy infantry, and will absolutely shred enemy crews. Likewise, the PWL are plenty fine for roughly even tech fights with enemy PW Light Infantry. I can put 5 PWL in the space that 3 PW take up and get that many more shots to kill them with.
Note that PWL kill rate against regular infantry, even armed with PWL, is 1/4 the kill rate of PW which is a much larger gap than the tonnage ratio. PWL are only effective against crew (at equal tech) because they use 1/2 the racial armor rating which matches PWL's AP and attack, and if the enemy has superior armor tech PWL drops off rapidly.
PWI are a waste for boarding actions unless the NPR actually keeps garrisons on their ships, which I haven't seen but I'm open to hearing otherwise. PWI is 100% effective but only for equal or superior tech; if the enemy armor tech outpaces your weapons tech then PWL rapidly drops off in effectiveness - which can be a problem if you have outdated Marine formations that you don't or haven't replaced. If the intention is to have a mixed offense/defense force then you've mainly built a force that doesn't excel at either role which I find a questionable play.
In fact CAP is far and away the best boarding weapon at 50% more tonnage efficiency than PWL, although tonnage-wise PWL is second by enough that role-play can trump optimization in equal-tech scenarios. However CAP is almost impervious to tech differences due to 1.0 piercing and attack instead of the 0.5 of PWL. Notably, CAP kill rates exceed those of PWI in
all anti-infantry matchups regardless of enemy armor and HP simply due to volume of fire which more than cancels out the extra AP of PWI, meaning they also excel in a defensive role.
Basically, PWL are okay, but PWI are
awful for Marines and really only make sense for larger power-armor infantry formations when you want your meatshields to pack a punch, since number-of-bodies matters more in that scenario. to ablate enemy AV fire.
Also what if you decide you need those marines for some other action other than ship boarding, such as securing an automining colony or civilian colony? Or maybe you need a little backup on the world you have just invaded? You'll be happy to have supplies then.
I've never personally seen the situation where one or even several 300-ton Marine Companies would save the day in a ground combat situation. Maybe in a multiplayer campaign but otherwise I can't think of a
combat situation besides boarding where I've ever wished for a 300-ton formation to drop out of the sky and save the day. 1000 tons, maybe, because dropping several of them would be roughly equivalent to another infantry battalion.
