A feature unique to the Albion Skunk is its ability to employ a Marine Officer for use in boarding operations. When equipped with a number of marines the <player> can execute the "board" operation against L and XL ships. If successful the Marine Officer and all surviving marines can be found onboard the now <player> controlled ship and ordered back onboard either remotely or in person. If unsuccessful both Marine Officer and all accompanying marines are permanently lost.
Mechanics
Boarding begins with the <player> first disabling the ship sufficiently for drop pods to be launched. This requires that all Matter/Antimatter Drive components and the Jump Tunnel Device component be in a destroyed state. Once achieved, boarding pods will be launched.
Boarding pods are small ships with low top speed and hull which make their way to a seemingly random point of the target's physical hull. Each marine assigned to the Marine Officer is given its own boarding pod. It is unclear if the Marine Officer is physically in any of the pods or if he magically teleports as long as at least 1 boarding pod makes it. Boarding pods are subject to ship combat mechanics and so can be destroyed if their hull reaches 0% resulting in the loss of the carried Marine. If at least 1 boarding pod makes it to its destination point the boarding operation can continue, otherwise the operation will be a failure. After the last boarding pod leaves space by either arriving or being destroyed the operation will continue and fighting will begin.
Fighting has both a passive and active mechanic. Passively the Marine Officer boarding strength is periodically pitted against the ship's boarding resistance potentially resulting in marine losses. Actively the player is set boarding challenges to complete in a timely manner in order for boarding to progress. Boarding succeeds afters all active goals are achieved and several passive rounds are survived. Boarding fails if all marines are lost.
Passive combat loss results are determined by the difference between boarding strength of the Marine Officer and boarding resistance of the ship. No losses will occur as long as boarding strength is considerably larger than boarding resistance. An instant wipeout of all marines can occur if boarding resistance is considerably larger than boarding strength. Losses will also occur if the <player> takes too long to perform a set boarding challenge.
Once boarding succeeds the target ship ownership is immediately transferred to the <player>.
Boarding Resistance
Boarding resistance of a ship can be viewed under the target's info panel. The resistance is calculated from many factors which the player can influence. Nearby supporting ships such as drones, ship hull and shield percentage as well as active ship components raise boarding resistance.
Marines
For the board option to be available the player must first acquire a Marine Officer and a number of Marines. How many Marines in his command helps determine his boarding strength for the passive boarding mechanic. The Marine Officer can be assigned up to 50 Marines in total.
Marines come in 3 different variants of increasing power and value. After successful boarding operations there is a chance that surviving marines are automatically promoted to a more powerful variant for free.
| Type | Strength | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Recruit | ? | ? |
| Veteran | ? | ?1 |
| Elite | ? | ?1 |
- Although a price is listed in the encyclopedia there does not seem to be any place that trades these Marines making successful boarding operations the only way to obtain them.
Tips
Although possible to board some freighters with very few Marines, there is really no reason not to use the full 50. If you properly prepare targets for boarding you will never lose any and they are cheap enough to hire anyway.
Friendly NPC ships seem to completely ignore your boarding operation. They will keep firing at the target while your boarding pods are in transit which can potentially cause friendly fire losses. They will also not hesitate to destroy the target in the middle of a boarding operation which will result in the the boarding operation failing and the loss of all Marines and the Defence Officer. For this reason it is advisable to only board L and XL ships away from friendly NPC ships where you can conduct the boarding operation in peace. With tougher XL ships it is perfectly fine to board while 1-2 NPC fighters are hammering it as the hull regeneration can often be larger than their damage output. It is practically impossible to board a ship when an NPC L or XL fight ship is attacking because their damage output will usually kill the ship long before the operation completes from when boarding resistance is low enough to be safe.
Destroying the Drone Bay component does not destroy all contained drone units. This feature was possibly added in 4.0. For example after destroying the Drone Bay of a Cargo Freighter it still had 4 Construction Drones on it after boarding succeeded.
One can quickly get decent Captain and Defence Officer by flying into a built up sector and hiring the most expensive remotely. Both use 3 stats so the chance to get a good one when hiring based on overall stats is pretty good. Engineers on the other hand only use 1 stat and that stat must be maxed. As such you will need to hunt with the small talk mini-game to find a good one.
Do not worry if you are left with nothing but a wrecked with practically no hull after boarding. A 5 start Engineer will soon have it as good as new without any additional cost. You should always have one handy as your Albion Skunk Engineer anyway. If you plan to sell the ship you can reclaim the engineer for use in another boarding operation after it is done repairing to a sufficient amount.
Removing all ship components and reducing hull to 10% before boarding is a great way to secure a successful boarding. No turrets will mean no losses during the boarding pod phase and the low boarding resistance will mean no losses during the passive boarding phase. All the damage is only temporary and no problem for an Engineer to repair.
If you are struggling to reduce the hull is at a safe percentage to board. and shields of tougher XL ships after stripping them of turrets then consider bringing your own to the party. If their Defense Officer is set to defend then they will only attack the ship if you order it and will immediately stop firing the second you tell them to stop. Such a ship can make a 5-10 minute weapon cycling nightmare against hull regeneration a 1 minute lazy job.
Some DLC weapons like the Heavy Laser (TTO) have the ability to damage components and hulls through shields. These come in very handy when destroying the primary shield generators of tougher XL ships since you can kill them without having to take down all of the massive shields. Do note that Heavy Laser does not follow the auto aim mechanics as such hitting components from a distance depends on the <player>'s ability to aim.
Unless playing with a self-imposed "no save skumming" rule you will only ever need 1 Boarding Officer. If a board operation fails or has sufficiently bad results you can always reload from a previous save. As such it is recommended to make multiple saves at different stages of boarding to allow you multiple different points of retry in case some goes wrong. As such it is recommended you find or make one with maxed primary skills for the highest boarding strength.
The Albion Skunk with good strafe engines can effortlessly evade the fire from most turrets by constantly changing strafe direction. Dashing shields can help to quickly recover the odd hit that lands in between changing direction. This makes capping ships with only basic HIT/MA and Plasma/MA turrets a long but very easy task, no matter how many of them it has.
Guided missiles are very useful for removing critical mobility components fast such as M/AM Drives and Jump Tunnel Device. You should build up enough stock of them by killing fighters as well.
Starting with 4.0 better captains of L and XL ships will often try to flee if in a losing situation. This can be used to the players advantage to push them away from allied NPC ships into quite areas for capture. Once the ship is in a suitable capture location you can shoot up the M/AM Drives to render the ship immobile and unable to flee. You can then strip it and board at your leasure.
Pay attention to the Jump Tunnel Device of L and XL ships you plan to board. If you see it starting to glow and making noise you do not have much time to destroy it before the ship jumps and is likely lost for good. This can be difficult as it is always shielded. Missiles and your heaviest guns are most useful in this situation.
Although one can in theory board high end L and XL fight ships. The chance of you pulling it off is extremely low and often dependant on abusing exploits so as to not be destroyed. This is especially the case for ships equipped with Plasma/JET lasers as the Albion Skunk cannot survive more than 3 hits at close range and a single hit will break Dashing type shields and leave Behemoth shields critical. Although JET turrets do have slow rotation rates, if they ever face you they will damage you no matter how well your strafe.
You can still communicate with the crew of L and XL ships while in the middle of a boarding operation against them. They will respond with their usual hostile "go fly into a black hole" type message despite 50 marines coming after them. The instant ship control is transferred to you they always magically disappear. Although lore wise one can assume they were all killed during the boarding operation it does not make much sense that everyone would fight to the last person. One cannot help but feel this was a missed opportunity for "prisoners" or an alternative to recruiting staff (some of them would be willing to work for you in exchange for a little money or even just sparing them).