Boarding
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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
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. |
See also
- Crew — Marines are your boarding specialists; prisoners can be recruited as crew
- Leadership — skill tree that boosts boarding power, crew resistance, brig size and prisoner economics
- Drydock — where captured ships are repaired, scrapped or sold