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Tactics for dealing with Intruders


Mitchell
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I've read all the advise I can find searching these boards, what's available in the manual, and the docs from BC3000AD et al, but am still wondering what tactics work best for other players in practice when it comes to dealing with those pesky unwanted guests who always seem to show up at the least opportune times...

One piece of advice I found interesting related to protecting your AE by moving him/her to locations away from the intruders. This sounds good, but how does one know which way 'away' is? I can infer something of the ship's layout from the systems distribution among the decks available through the Logistics computer, but it seems that I, and the vessel's commander, ought to know a little more about the actual layout of my ship ( )? In the original BC3000AD (and/or in the associated docs - I cannot remember for certain), the sections of the ship were displayed schematically on the representations of the decks shown through the Logistics computer - but not in BCM. Maybe this is because there are so many different ships now? Either way, short of experimenting by watching personnel move step-by-step in PerScan to learn how my ship is laid out, does anybody else know the 'floor plan'?

[ 11-29-2001: Message edited by: Mitchell ]

[ 11-29-2001: Message edited by: Mitchell ]

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My tactics so far regarding intruders:

1. Always have a few Marines "searching" - rotate groups of 2 to 4 to keep fatigue from building too high.

2. If intruders board, power down the launch bay and send a team of Marines to the launch bay and another 'toward' the bridge. Assign additional marines to 'search'.

3. If/when you get notification of sabatauge damage, send a team of marines toward the affected section of the ship (assuming you can figure out where that is... .

This seems to work if the number of intruders is small. What works for you?

[ 11-29-2001: Message edited by: Mitchell ]

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Well, it's not documented, and it probably won't be. But, you can figure it out yourself by watching your marines/medics search the ship.

Most ships seem to have similar layouts, but I haven't tried all the ships yet by any means. The ones I've tried, generally have:

Fore, Central, and Aft sections of the main corridor on 4 decks, with the turbolift in the aft, with locations off of those.

So follow your guys around, and keep notes, and you'll have a handy-dandy map of your ship.

As for dealing with intruders, just put all your marines on search duty, turn off launch control, and wait.

This just occured to me. It would be fun to land on a planet, evacuate the ship using the transporter, and shutdown launch control, and primary and secondary life support. Watch 'em suffocate.

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quote:


Originally posted by Badgerius:

This just occured to me. It would be fun to land on a planet, evacuate the ship using the transporter, and shutdown launch control, and primary and secondary life support. Watch 'em suffocate.


Yep. You can do that. Just make sure none of your crew are on the ship. You can then keeping hopping into your craft, checking their stats, exiting again etc. After about 30 mins, they should all be quite dead.

....unless of course they find a way to rig a life support system. In which case, they'd be around longer.

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quote:

Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

Wasn't there another thread dealing with this very subject? Why'd you create a new topic?

Yes, I believe there was one concerning the 'basics' early on, but I couldn't find it again - plus, I thought it would be interesting to discuss alternative (and specific) tactics, not simply the stock advice on how to deal with intruders...

Please don't court martial me - I'm having great fun playing BCM and I've watched a couple of interesting battles between my marines and various interlopers. I am curious what other people think of this aspect of BCM and how they handle it...

Now, if I could only arm my AE with a ZS10 and hop on that turbo-shaft down to Deck 3, I'd show those insurgents a thing or two...

[ 11-29-2001: Message edited by: Mitchell ]

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Here's another cool trick;

Dock at a station and all your intruders will automatically become prisoners (... at least it seems that way to me, anyone else notice this?)

And yes, turning off launch control is a must. In fact, I usually have my launch control turned off unless I'm actually launching something (at least on my non-carrier ships :-) ).

In fact ... it seems to me once your intruders go onto your shuttles to escape, they stay in there rather than attempt further mayhem, so long as your launch control is off. I usually let them stay there and beeline for a station, especially if my marines are hurt :-D

Sorry if all this is documented/said elsewhere! :-)

Steve Conley

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quote:


Originally posted by Steve Conley:

Here's another cool trick;

Dock at a station and all your intruders will automatically become prisoners (... at least it seems that way to me, anyone else notice this?)

And yes, turning off launch control is a must. In fact, I usually have my launch control turned off unless I'm actually launching something (at least on my non-carrier ships :-) ).

In fact ... it seems to me once your intruders go onto your shuttles to escape, they stay in there rather than attempt further mayhem, so long as your launch control is off. I usually let them stay there and beeline for a station, especially if my marines are hurt :-D

Sorry if all this is documented/said elsewhere! :-)

Steve Conley


I guess you haven't come across a situation where you have intruders and marines jammed in a shuttle huh?

There was time (during the Beta) where intruders would go into FCs, close the hatch and refuse to come out. You just had to picture the marines standing there, guns drawn, threatening to blow a hole in the FC. Of course they won't do that, so the only option was to power up launch control, let the b*stards take off with the craft, then blow it up:

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quote:

Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

There was time (during the Beta) where intruders would go into FCs, close the hatch and refuse to come out. You just had to picture the marines standing there, guns drawn, threatening to blow a hole in the FC. Of course they won't do that, so the only option was to power up launch control, let the b*stards take off with the craft, then blow it up:

Nearly as bad as when they started grabbing hostages, that was a PITA.

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I heard intruders also damage systems, but I've only had this happen once. The rest of the time, the made a beeline for the flight deck, and stole whatever they could find. Has anyone else had intruders actually damage the ship?

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quote:


Originally posted by Steve Conley:

Here's another cool trick;

In fact ... it seems to me once your intruders go onto your shuttles to escape, they stay in there rather than attempt further mayhem, so long as your launch control is off. I usually let them stay there and beeline for a station, especially if my marines are hurt :-D


Just remember to check shuttles cargo after you killed all those bastards, they try to steal your cargo so they load it from your cargo bays to the shuttle. Else you endup thinking "Where the hell I put that radiation control unit?" when you need one

ps. How about nice sfx like "Intruders stealing cargo!" SC.

O.K. I'm heading to the airlock already, no wishlist items.

[ 11-30-2001: Message edited by: Papi ]

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LOL, I was really surprised when I found a whole lot of my cargo in the shuttles after the intruders were "taken care of". Never thought they would be that smart as to not only try to steal a shuttle but also take the cargo.

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Yeah, they trash my ship all the time. I think they even damaged some of my unlaunched shuttles.

Just 3 hours or so ago I jumped into Midae in a Mk 3 battlecruiser. In tacops I see 2 Stormcarriers and 2 Warmongers scattered around the system. None of them were headed my way at the moment so I just sat around waiting for my hyperdrive to recharge so I can chase one down. While waiting, a third Stormcarrier comes through the gate right behind me. I'm a relative newbie to the game and I wan't paying attention to their race/castes very much. They were red on my scope and that's good enough for me. I immediately match speed and open fire on the new Stormcarrier. To my surprise, he engages his hyperdrive and runs.

It was about this time that the first 5 marines boarded my ship. No big deal, I hyperdrive after the stormcarrier, shut down launch control, and assign some more marines to search. All my fighters were currently getting charged up, so I was on my own at the moment. This is when I checked tacops again and saw how bad the situation was about to get. All 3 stormcarriers and both warmongers all seemed to be heading to the same spot. And I'm stuck chasing one of them.

Just before dropping out of hyperdrive I check perscan. 1 prisoner, 4 intruders, left. But the bastards killed one of my marines and one of my pilots! and another pilot was down to 17 LF. I quickly take the rest of the pilots off duty to get them away from the fighter bay area.

As I come out of hyperdrive way ahead of the Stormcarrier I was chasing. Unfortunately, the 2 Warmongers were waiting for me. I get into a twisting dogfight with them for a while and manage to avoid having my shields breached. Then the storm carriers started to arive. Shortly after I noticed that they were shooting at each other! Great there's 2 castes here fighting it out and I'm just a spectator who stuck my nose where it shoudn't be. I suppose any commander worth his salt would have ducked out at the earliest opportunity. I, however, am not worth my salt.

Within moments my radar exploded in red as the Stormcarriers launched all their fighters. I'm still gunning for one of the Warmongers which I've managed to nearly kill at this point. This is when the second batch of marines beamed aboard. A quick look at perscan shows I have 2 prisoners and 7 intruders, 2 dead pilots, 3 dead marines, and 1 dead medic. Just as I finish off the Warmonger, some of the intruders blow up one of my weapons pods.

I target one of the Stormcarriers and launch a volley of 4 or 5 Vagrants at it. It explodes before my missles ever arive. Apparently it took the brunt of the initial wave of fighters. Hoping that the remaining Stormcarriers will kill each other off, I target the other Warmonger. It's been gunning for me the whole fight and it's bound to get lucky sooner or later. I didn't bother to check if they were the same caste or not. oops.

The fight continues to worsen for me. The beep of multiple missle lock-on warnings sound like car alarms in a mall parking lot during an earthquake. Amazingly my shields haven't been breached yet. As I finishing off the 2nd Warmonger, I notice that my 2 Sentinels are ready. I assign a pilot and copilot to each and set my sights on one of the Stormcarriers. Somewhere in between missile warnings, I hear "A prisoner has escaped". Oh great. I check perscan again. 9 intruders, 1 escaped prisoner, 6 dead marines, 2 dead medics, 5 dead flight engineers, 2 dead pilots, and one severely injured pilot, and a bunch of wounded people all over the ship. And my remaining marines didn't look like they were in very good shape. I assign every remaining marine to search, and then go back to beating up on the Stormcarriers and dodging missiles.

After nearly getting killed by fighters every time I take a pass at one of the Stormcarriers, I decide to switch to killing fighters. I notice that one of my pilots seems to have made it to his Sentinel. I check up on em. Apparently the second pilot was killed on the way, but his copilot made it and only suffered superficial wounds on the way. I switch the copilot to the pilot position. When both fighters are ready I quickly turn on launch control, launch both fighters, and switch it back off. Someone managed to make off with one of my shuttles though. Oh well. At this point I look at it as just one less person to kill off my crew.

After what seemed like an hour of blowing up fighters, The situation appeared to be clearing up. My marines had beaten down most of the intruders, only 3 left. Unfortunately I'm down to 9 marines in various states of trauma, and the rest of the staff isn't doing much better. There is a group of 4 medics down in the detention hold though. Apparently they're fascinated by the prospect of disecting the two remaining (dead) prisoners, because they've been there for quite a while. Additionally the intruders have sabotages about 8 different systems. Both of my Vandal fighters decided to come online at one point and I even managed to get my last pilot to one of them. He seems to have had a run in with an intruder on the way, but a broken femur or two shouldn't keep him from flying right? I turn on launch control again and manage to launch him without losing any more craft.

I turn on the Stormcarriers again and blow one of them away. There's only 4 or 5 fighters left and I'm ordering my own fighters to gang up on them one at a time. Sometime before blowing up the last Stormcarrier I recieve yet more unwanted guests. 8 intruders, 14 dead marines, 8 dead flight engineers, 3 dead systems engineers 3 dead medics, and 6 dead pilots!. I check the fighter icons on the bridgeviewer and see that nobody is home on two of them. only the Sentinel with both a pilot and copilot is still kicking.

After cleaning up the remaining fighters, a few of wich ran away, I starget picking up my disabled fighters and headiing for the nearest friendly base. And still the intruders were raising hell within my ship.

3 or 4 jumps away I finally dock at a space station. The final toll. 17 dead marines, 9 dead flight engineers, 3 dead systems engineers 3 dead medics, and 6 dead pilots. In addition, almost every system on deck 3 was damaged by the abatours, with some additional damage done on decks 2 and 4.

Not once during the entire fight were my shields ever breached. All the damage was done by the intruders. I now understand why Resnig is so despised by the people of this forum. It's as though my marines were trying to fight off the intruders with pocket knives. I'm turning in the POS Mk 3 and getting myself one of them super carriers with 40 marines.

That said, it's probably the most fun I've had on a computer in the last 10 years.

But I guess if you're looking for advice on dealing with intruders, I'm not the man to talk to.

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LOL, and the fact that there's these things happening all the time . Talking 'bout some immersion factor here!

It's really like living in one of those my favourite scifi books.

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quote:

Originally posted by Schmendrick:

Not once during the entire fight were my shields ever breached. All the damage was done by the intruders. I now understand why Resnig is so despised by the people of this forum. It's as though my marines were trying to fight off the intruders with pocket knives. I'm turning in the POS Mk 3 and getting myself one of them super carriers with 40 marines.

If you're going to play like that, you need to carry irridium and lots of it. The other thing is that that Resnig seems to be forgetting to have the marines prep for combat. If your combat kit level doesn't drop you might want to issue a prep for combat order to all your marines before engaging in such fun. Personally, I always have at least ten marines on search duty. Any intruders board and the other ten get their marching orders as well.

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Schmendrick wrote:

quote:

But I guess if you're looking for advice on dealing with intruders, I'm not the man to talk to.

He he - on the contrary, experience counts, and yours is great, judging by your post! Thanks for the story - I think we all have experiences like this, but with so much going on at once I can never force myself to stop and document it as well as you have - thanks again for sharing that...

What do you think might have helped? Would it have been better to have stayed out of the ship-to-ship fight, gone to find a quieter corner of the system, and dealt with the intruders before re-entering the frey? Especially given that you thought at least most of the ships may have been fighting each other?

What about cloaking? I've read that this can make it more difficult for intruders to board, especially if their AI value is low. Any experience with this?

It's is also interesting that you noted the damage was concentrated on one deck/area - this is consistent with the earlier versions of BC and with what the SC has been telling us. I'd like to figure out some way of battling these guys tactically, especially once you know where they are concentrated, by ordering marines to specific locations on the ship. Any ideas?

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quote:


Originally posted by Soback:

LOL, I was really surprised when I found a whole lot of my cargo in the shuttles after the intruders were "taken care of". Never thought they would be that smart as to not only try to steal a shuttle but also take the cargo.


They steal all shorts of crap. In fact, we had a hilarious laugh session in the Beta program where we were trying to imagine how a particular group of intruders managed to steal and lug an entire engine from the cargo bay and into a shuttle. LOL!!!

I don't mind them stealing stuff because you can always nab them if you're quick. Its when then start damaging stuff (or planting explosives in the cargo bay), thats really annoying and a righteous PITA. Since you can't hear any internal explosions, the first hint of trouble is when stuff starts getting damaged.....and you're not in combat.

In XP1, they will have the ability to beam right off the ship btw, so, that launch control shutdown trick is not going to be very effective. But the consolation is that only the really smart ones (heh) will be able to do this.

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With all of these stories floating around, I'm surprised that there isn't more collateral damage when fighting intruders on board...

(That's both a joke and a statement.)

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quote:


Originally posted by Mitchell:

It's is also interesting that you noted the damage was concentrated on one deck/area - this is consistent with the earlier versions of BC and with what the SC has been telling us. I'd like to figure out some way of battling these guys tactically, especially once you know where they are concentrated, by ordering marines to specific locations on the ship. Any ideas?


I might finally add that option to XP1. This way, you can send marines to search a particular deck. It requires a major code change and thats why I never even considered tackling it. Ack!

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I keep at leat 1 marine on guard duty in each Shuttle. It seems one of the intruders almost always heads for the shuttle. I also keep a contingent of marines on search duty at all times.

During one memorable encounter when my beloved ship was boarded. A pesky intruder decided to charge the bridge. Before I realized what had happened my AE had been injured (down to 53%). The coward then decided he was going to flee. He managed to make it to a shuttle (Where I had a marine stationed). But I had forgotten to turn off launch control. The intruder was able to steal the shuttle with my marine aboard. I watched the shuttle fly around for a couple minutes while monitoring the battle in perscan. Imagine my surprise when my horoic marine was able to kill the intruder and then fly the shuttle back to the CC. The brave marine was awarded a medal and promoted to Sgt.

Ravonaf

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Wow. I've never seen that. I'd stopped posting marines in shuttles, because I've lost marines after intruders had launched with them. Perscan showed that the Marines lived, too. But that was all BC3k.

Now, I've noticed that sometimes I can see the intruders locations in perscan, and sometimes I can just see the number of intruders. Is this based on intruder AI, or is an officer's AI that's to blame?

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