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β 0.8.1.6

Boarding is a mechanic that lets you storm a crippled enemy ship, or a civilian/military installation, fight through it compartment by compartment, and capture it, or blow it up from inside.

A captured ship can be repaired and recommissioned, or scrapped and sold at the Drydock, and surviving defenders can be taken as prisoners. Captured bases usually contain vast amounts of wealth, bulk goods, and other loot.

Boarding Missions

Some factions can generate missions that require the player to board:

An already-disabled ship: Kolyatov Collective, Luminate Combine, Stellar Industries, Orsanon Security, Omnitac Agency.
A pirate base: Kolyatov Collective, Luminate Combine, Stellar Industries, Orsanon Security, Omnitac Agency, Canisec.

When completing these missions, player gets to keep all loot found inside their targets, but any boarded ship will be sent to the employer - not the player. In order to actually keep the ship, player needs to capture it in the wild.

Capturing Non-mission Bases and Ships

Boardable bases are generated in standard POIs - a mining asteroid field has a chance to contain a mining base. A military installation belonging to a faction will appear in the system's map overview and will nominally be hostile and defended by a few ships. Attacking these bases is simply a matter of removing their defenders and then boarding them.

Ships are more complicated. An enemy ship can only be boarded once it is critically damaged — its hull must be driven below 40%. This is the first milestone at which there is a chance for the ship to become boardable. Further milestones happen at every 15% hull damage ship receives. Final check is at the killing blow at 0% hull - if that fails, then ship is destroyed. Assuming any of the checks succeed, ship becomes boardable, and can no longer be damaged by weapons, unless player specifically targets it by ctrl-attack.

What helps:

EMP weapons: Every weapon has an EMP value, but plasma canons and plasma repeaters have the largest value. EMP is applied in miniscule amounts as long as the ship has shields and/or armor, but once those are gone full EMP value is applied to the hull. Full EMP bar will boost the chances of a ship becoming boardable most. EMP by itself will bleed off if player stops firing.
Hull HP: The more damaged the ship, the better the chances. Most of ships that become boardable do so on the killing blow - so their hull will be at 0%.

Ships at level 81+ never become boardable.

Boarding Setup

Once the boardable target is selected, Boarding setup is offered. This setup can be changed later at any moment by clicking the cogwheel in upper-left corner.

Relevant choices are:

Noise level: How fast the compartments alert to enemy presence.
Ammo selection: Different ammo have different effects.
Grenade use: Grenades help the player crew keep alive, but cause structural damage.
Automove toggle: Whether ECHO should direct the boarding party into all available compartments at first opportunity or not.

When boarding ships, which have low structural integrity, not using grenades is wiser. Depending on the enemy composition type, ammo can be switched on the fly.

Boarding

Boarding plays out as a tactical takeover of the enemy ship's or base's interior, usually one compartment at a time, but with automove order, one can fight in several spots simultaneously.

Generally, goal is to move room by room and clear them out. Some rooms (or all, on ships) will have defenders, some will have loot, some will have random hazards that cause structural damage, or some other special quirks.

When attackers and defenders meet, a firefight ensues. More combatants can be shoved into a firefight from either side, there can be morale failures, defections, prisoner captures, heroic last stands and similar.

In case either side's morale falls too low, there can also be a mass surrender or mass retreat, effectively winning or losing the boarding attempt instantly.

Player wins when every defender is dead or captured, and entire ship/base has been explored and investigated (thus resolving all hazards).

Player loses if all boarders are killed, morale collapses so all attackers flee, structural integrity falls to 0, or the defenders blow up the boarded ship by scuttling its reactor.

Defenders don't always fight fair: depending on the faction, they may counterattack, vent the airlock (which will instantly kill everyone inside and a lot of people nearby), scuttle the reactor on a self-destruct timer, rush a last stand, defect to your side, or offer to be bought off (see Faction defenses).

Player however also has helpful tools - namely the Leadership skill tree. Make sure to have officers with Assault Doctrine and/or Crew Conditioning skills.

Prisoners

Defenders who surrender or are captured become prisoners, held in your ship's brig. When boarding large ships, you might free friendly crewmen from the hostile faction's brig, which then fight on the player's team.

Over time, a prisoner has a chance to become recruitable.
A recruitable prisoner can be recruited at 40% of the normal hire cost.
Prisoners can also instead be put to work, contributing a portion of their profession bonus while still imprisoned (improved by the Forced Labor skill node in the Leadership skill tree), or simply jettisoned.
Brig capacity and prisoner conversion chances are improved through the Leadership skill tree.

There is no ransom mechanic — prisoners can't be sold back for credits.

Captured Ships

A Boarded and Captured Meriavex Flying to a Drydock

When a ship is captured, it is sent to the Drydock, where it can be:

Recommissioned: Usually this required a hefty store of refined materials such as bulkheads, computing units etc, and a reasonably large amount of Credits.
Scraped: This generates aforementioned refined materials, and most importantly half the Hull Kits the ship was equipped with.
Sold: The sum will depend on the hull state - more damaged ships are worth less.

If the capture was for the Capture Enemy Vessel mission, the mission completes and pays out automatically, and the ship goes to the employer instead.

Faction Defenses

How hard a crew fights when boarded depends on its faction:

Faction	Behaviour when boarded
Mindus Holdings, Steel Vultures, Forge Industries	20% health penalty, highest surrender chance.
Stellar Industries	Surrenders, and even defects most readily of the majors.
Kolyatov Collective	Fights hard and counterattack more often, never surrenders.
Luminate Combine	Deploys defense drones and has a chance to kamikaze their troops.
Canisec	30% health bonus, never mass-surrenders.
Omnitac Agency, Void Drifters	10% and 20% health bonuses, can be bought out to end the fight.
Corsair Syndicate	30% attack speed bonus, can scuttle the reactor (20% chance), huge counterattacks.
Meridia's Chosen	50% attack speed bonus, fights to the death often, never surrenders, mass kamikazes, always scuttles the reactor, vents airlocks.
Darkspace Compact	40% health bonus, 30% attack speed bonus, enormous counterattacks, never surrenders.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
+{{Ver|0.8.1.6}}
-<!-- Screenshots to capture: a boardable (disabled) enemy ship with the board prompt, the boarding simulation / compartment view, the boarding roster bar, the brig / prisoners panel. -->
-'''Boarding''' <small>''(<span style="color:red">beta</span>)''</small> is a mechanic that lets you storm a crippled enemy ship, fight through it compartment by compartment, and '''capture''' it instead of destroying it. A captured hull can be repaired, scrapped or sold at the [[Drydock]], and surviving defenders can be taken as [[#Prisoners|prisoners]].
+'''Boarding''' is a mechanic that lets you storm a crippled enemy ship, or a civilian/military installation, fight through it compartment by compartment, and '''capture''' it, or blow it up from inside.
+A captured ship can be repaired and recommissioned, or scrapped and sold at the [[Drydock]], and surviving defenders can be taken as [[#Prisoners|prisoners]]. Captured bases usually contain vast amounts of wealth, bulk goods, and other loot.
-== '''Becoming boardable''' ==
+== '''Boarding Missions''' ==
-An enemy ship can only be boarded once it is '''critically damaged''' — its hull must be driven below roughly '''40%'''. Below that threshold, each further chunk of damage gives a chance for the ship to become boardable. When it does, the ship goes dead in space (engines cut) and a boarding prompt appears.
+Some factions can generate missions that require the player to board:
-* '''EMP weapons greatly increase the chance.''' Draining a target with EMP damage is by far the most reliable way to force a ship into a boardable state — the intended "disable, then board" loop. Pure firepower can trigger it too, but far less often.
+* An already-disabled ship: [[Kolyatov Collective]], [[Luminate Combine]], [[Stellar Industries]], [[Orsanon Security]], [[Omnitac Agency]].
-* The lower the hull, the higher the chance per hit.
+* A pirate base: [[Kolyatov Collective]], [[Luminate Combine]], [[Stellar Industries]], [[Orsanon Security]], [[Omnitac Agency]], [[Canisec]].
-* Approach a boardable ship and interact to launch the [[#The boarding simulation|boarding simulation]]. (You can also simply destroy it instead.)
+[[File:Boarding.mission.png|800px]]
-== '''Capture Enemy Vessel mission''' ==
+When completing these missions, player gets to keep all loot found inside their targets, but any boarded ship will be sent to the employer - not the player. In order to actually keep the ship, player needs to capture it ''in the wild''.
-[[File:Boarding.mission.png|thumb|400x400px]]
-The easiest way to try boarding is the '''Capture Enemy Vessel''' mission, which hands you a target that is already set up to be boarded.
+== '''Capturing Non-mission Bases and Ships''' ==
-* Offered at stations once you have progressed far enough into the main story (and reached higher-level stations).
-* The target is always a '''[[Corsair Syndicate]]''' (pirate) ship, so capturing it carries no reputation penalty with the legitimate factions.
-* Pays a '''boosted reward''' compared to a normal mission of the same tier.
+[[File:Boardable.station.png|thumb|500px|Boardable Station]]
-It's a low-risk sandbox for learning the boarding simulation without having to grind a ship down yourself.
+Boardable bases are generated in standard POIs - a mining asteroid field has a chance to contain a mining base. A military installation belonging to a faction will appear in the system's map overview and will nominally be hostile and defended by a few ships. Attacking these bases is simply a matter of removing their defenders and then boarding them.
-== '''The boarding simulation''' ==
+Ships are more complicated. An enemy ship can only be boarded once it is '''critically damaged''' — its hull must be driven below '''40%'''. This is the first milestone at which there is a chance for the ship to become boardable. Further milestones happen at every 15% hull damage ship receives. Final check is at the killing blow at 0% hull - if that fails, then ship is destroyed. Assuming any of the checks succeed, ship becomes boardable, and can no longer be damaged by weapons, unless player specifically targets it by ctrl-attack.
-[[File:Boarding.simulation.png|thumb|400x400px]]
-Boarding plays out as a tactical takeover of the enemy ship's interior, '''one compartment at a time'''.
+What helps:
-* The ship's interior is a set of connected '''compartments''' (rooms) — airlocks, quarters, engineering, the bridge, and so on.
+* '''EMP weapons''': Every weapon has an EMP value, but plasma canons and plasma repeaters have the largest value. EMP is applied in miniscule amounts as long as the ship has shields and/or armor, but once those are gone full EMP value is applied to the hull. Full EMP bar will boost the chances of a ship becoming boardable most. EMP by itself will bleed off if player stops firing.
-* Your boarders arrive in '''boarding pods''' (about 10 crew each) and enter through an '''airlock'''. Your goal is to push through to the '''bridge'''.
+* '''Hull HP''': The more damaged the ship, the better the chances. Most of ships that become boardable do so on the killing blow - so their hull will be at 0%.
-* Each contested compartment is decided by '''combat power''' — the total fighting strength of your crew in that room versus the defenders. [[Crew#Crew members|Marines]] are far stronger boarders than ordinary crew, and adjacent rooms lend partial support to a fight.
-* Crew on both sides have '''morale'''. When morale breaks, units '''surrender, panic or flee'''. Seizing the bridge can trigger the entire enemy crew to surrender at once.
-* A win-chance indicator reflects your fighting strength relative to the defenders.
+'''Ships at level 81+ never become boardable.'''
-'''You win''' when every defender is dead or surrendered. '''You lose''' if all your boarders are killed or your morale collapses — and a defending ship can sometimes break off and flee, ending the attempt.
+== '''Boarding Setup''' ==
-Defenders don't always fight fair: depending on the faction, they may counterattack, vent an airlock, scuttle the reactor on a self-destruct timer, rush you in a last stand, defect to your side, or offer to be bought off (see [[#Faction defences|Faction defences]]).
+[[File:Boarding.setup.png|500px|thumb|right|Boarding Setup]]
+Once the boardable target is selected, Boarding setup is offered. This setup can be changed later at any moment by clicking the cogwheel in upper-left corner.
+Relevant choices are:
+* '''Noise level''': How fast the compartments alert to enemy presence.
+* '''Ammo selection''': Different ammo have different effects.
+* '''Grenade use''': Grenades help the player crew keep alive, but cause structural damage.
+* '''Automove toggle''': Whether ECHO should direct the boarding party into all available compartments at first opportunity or not.
+When boarding ships, which have low structural integrity, not using grenades is wiser. Depending on the enemy composition type, ammo can be switched on the fly.
+== '''Boarding''' ==
+[[File:Boarding.destroyer.png|thumb|right|500px|Boarding a Meriavex]]
+[[File:Boarding.station.png|thumb|right|500px|Boarding a Pirate Base]]
+Boarding plays out as a tactical takeover of the enemy ship's or base's interior, usually one compartment at a time, but with automove order, one can fight in several spots simultaneously.
+Generally, goal is to move room by room and clear them out. Some rooms (or all, on ships) will have defenders, some will have loot, some will have random hazards that cause structural damage, or some other special quirks.
+When attackers and defenders meet, a firefight ensues. More combatants can be shoved into a firefight from either side, there can be morale failures, defections, prisoner captures, heroic last stands and similar.
+In case either side's morale falls too low, there can also be a mass surrender or mass retreat, effectively winning or losing the boarding attempt instantly.
+'''Player wins''' when every defender is dead or captured, and entire ship/base has been explored and investigated (thus resolving all hazards).
+'''Player loses''' if all boarders are killed, morale collapses so all attackers flee, structural integrity falls to 0, or the defenders blow up the boarded ship by scuttling its reactor.
+Defenders don't always fight fair: depending on the faction, they may counterattack, vent the airlock (which will instantly kill everyone inside and a lot of people nearby), scuttle the reactor on a self-destruct timer, rush a last stand, defect to your side, or offer to be bought off (see [[#Faction defenses|Faction defenses]]).
+Player however also has helpful tools - namely the Leadership skill tree. Make sure to have officers with '''Assault Doctrine''' and/or '''Crew Conditioning''' skills.
+[[File:Boarding.skills.png|800px]]
 == '''Prisoners''' ==
-[[File:Boarding.brig.png|thumb|400x400px]]
+[[File:Brig.png|thumb|right|400px|Brig]]
-Defenders who '''surrender or are captured''' become '''prisoners''', held in your ship's brig.
+Defenders who surrender or are captured become '''prisoners''', held in your ship's brig. When boarding large ships, you might free friendly crewmen from the hostile faction's brig, which then fight on the player's team.
-* Over time, a prisoner has a chance to become '''Willing'''.
-* A Willing prisoner can be '''recruited into your [[Crew]] at 40% of the normal hire cost''' — a cheap way to grow your crew.
+* Over time, a prisoner has a chance to become recruitable.
-* Prisoners can instead be put to '''work''', contributing a portion of their profession bonus while still imprisoned (improved by the '''Forced Labor''' node in the [[Leadership]] skill tree), or simply '''jettisoned'''.
+* A recruitable prisoner can be recruited at 40% of the normal hire cost.
+* Prisoners can also instead be put to work, contributing a portion of their profession bonus while still imprisoned (improved by the '''Forced Labor''' skill node in the [[Leadership]] skill tree), or simply '''jettisoned'''.
 * Brig capacity and prisoner conversion chances are improved through the [[Leadership]] skill tree.
 There is no ransom mechanic — prisoners can't be sold back for credits.
-== '''Captured ships''' ==
+== '''Captured Ships''' ==
+[[File:Boarded.destroyer.png|thumb|right|500px|A Boarded and Captured Meriavex Flying to a Drydock]]
-When you take a ship, it switches to your colours and its surviving crew is cleared (assign your own crew to fly it). The captured hull is sent to the '''[[Drydock]]''', where you can:
+[[File:Recommisioning.png|thumb|right|500px|Recommissioning a Carkalon]]
+When a ship is captured, it is sent to the [[Drydock]], where it can be:
-* '''Repair''' it and add it to your fleet,
-* '''Scrap''' it for materials, or
-* '''Sell''' it for credits.
+* '''Recommissioned''': Usually this required a hefty store of refined materials such as bulkheads, computing units etc, and a reasonably large amount of Credits.
-If the capture was for the '''Capture Enemy Vessel''' mission, the mission completes and pays out automatically. See [[Drydock]] for repair/scrap/sell details.
+* '''Scraped''': This generates aforementioned refined materials, and most importantly half the Hull Kits the ship was equipped with.
+* '''Sold''': The sum will depend on the hull state - more damaged ships are worth less.
+If the capture was for the '''Capture Enemy Vessel''' mission, the mission completes and pays out automatically, and the ship goes to the employer instead.
-== '''Faction defences''' ==
+== '''Faction Defenses''' ==
 How hard a crew fights when boarded depends on its faction:
@@ Line 66: / Line 100: @@
 ! Faction !! Behaviour when boarded
 |-
-| [[Stellar Industries]], [[Steel Vultures]], [[Mindus Holdings]] || Industrial/mining/salvage crews — weakest defenders, surrender readily
+| [[Mindus Holdings]], [[Steel Vultures]], [[Forge Industries]] || 20% health penalty, highest surrender chance.
+|-
+| [[Stellar Industries]] || Surrenders, and even defects most readily of the majors.
 |-
+| [[Kolyatov Collective]] || Fights hard and counterattack more often, never surrenders.
-| [[Orsanon Security]] || Security forces; put up a real fight but may surrender or defect
 |-
+| [[Luminate Combine]] || Deploys defense drones and has a chance to kamikaze their troops.
-| [[Omnitac Agency]], [[Void Drifters]] || Mercenaries and smugglers — can often be '''bought off''' to end the fight
 |-
+| [[Canisec]] || 30% health bonus, never mass-surrenders.
-| [[Luminate Combine]] || Deploys defence drones
 |-
-| [[Corsair Syndicate]], [[Canisec]] || Pirates — fight to the death and counterattack; won't surrender
+| [[Omnitac Agency]], [[Void Drifters]] || 10% and 20% health bonuses, can be bought out to end the fight.
 |-
-| [[Meridia's Chosen]] || Fanatics — fight to the death, scuttle the reactor, vent airlocks, suicide rushes
+| [[Corsair Syndicate]] || 30% attack speed bonus, can scuttle the reactor (20% chance), huge counterattacks.
 |-
+| [[Meridia's Chosen]] || 50% attack speed bonus, fights to the death often, never surrenders, mass kamikazes, always scuttles the reactor, vents airlocks.
-| [[Darkspace Compact]] || Very tough; relentless counterattacks, fight to the death
 |-
+| [[Darkspace Compact]] || 40% health bonus, 30% attack speed bonus, enormous counterattacks, never surrenders.
-| [[Umbral Reach]] || Toughest defenders — highest defence, will scuttle and vent rather than be taken
 |}
@@ Line 90: / Line 126: @@
 [[Category:Game Concepts]]
-[[Category:Beta]]