Marine usage: no xp when you take down a ship?

[wrestless]

When using a marine in 1.017 to take down a ship, I'm not being awarded any XP. Is this a bug or as per design?

I'm really enjoying using a marine, but it is quite powerful so I can understand if the XP denial is intentional. As there is no minimum time limit between boardings and no range limit from what I can tell, I can use spacebar to pause the game and board all the ships on screen one after another. My marine kicks arse!

[Shadow]

I'll have to look at the code, but I don't remember not allowing XP on purpose.

[Tuidjy]

I would think that being able to send the same marine to board more than one ship at the same time is a bug...

[wrestless]

Originally Posted by Tuidjy

I would think that being able to send the same marine to board more than one ship at the same time is a bug...

If that's referring to my post, sorry if I gave the impression that you could do that. I meant that my marine can quickly take down a screenful of ships, not that he could take down more than one at a time. I can pause the game, board a ship, unpause, the ship goes down in less than a second, pause, board another ship, unpause, that ship goes down, etc. It's cheesy, but effective in tight spots, especially when compared to normal weapons that have reload times. Even more so when you have multiple marines. And you get more loot!

You also don't have to stick around - your marine returns to you as soon as the enemy ship is defeated. So you can perform ‘fly-in, board, fly-out’ manoeuvres, leaving the marine to take down the enemy ship offscreen whilst you wait out of harm's way.

[Tuidjy]

Thanks for the explanation. I have not used a marine for two patches now. In v1.16 they did not scale properly, and while I enjoyed them on early levels, I stopped using them on higher ones. Now they appear to have been fixed, but my current ship has no marines.

[wrestless]

Originally Posted by Tuidjy

In v1.16 they did not scale properly, and while I enjoyed them on early levels, I stopped using them on higher ones.

Yeah, I must admit that I don't have your expertise on crew levelling. I don't think I've had a marine level up yet. I don't know if that's because they don't level or I was too impatient.

[Tuidjy]

In patch 1.016 they leveled just fine, but were falling behind in terms of damage. Shadow gave them a boost afterwards, but the ship that had the marine blew up, and I have not found one since.

[Tuidjy]

I just found a marine... but it could not have happened on a worse ship: it's unlucky (fewer components), Fringe (no scavenger components) and a Command Zero challenger (few slots)

I still installed the marine, and have been playing with him for a while. One thing I can say, he is leveling just fine. Can't say much about his effectiveness, because as I said, the ship is not exactly the kind to get L337 L007.

[Tuidjy]

OK, I'm done with marines for now.

- Their damage still does not come anywhere close to matching the damage from my normal weapons. Once I get a dangerous enemy down to less health that my regular weapons would obliterate with one hit, the marine still needs a long time to chew through it. Time during which I am supposed to let that enemy threaten me, while making damn sure that I do not accidentally kill it while trying to hit something else.
- The marine can't even overwhelm the regeneration of many enemies. Enemies that I can easily blow up with an alpha strike.
- Much too often, the marine boards the enemy, and fails to do any damage whatsoever for minutes at a time. I do not know whether the enemy crew is resisting the marine, whether I've done something wrong, or whether there is a bug. And yes, my marine portrait does show up on the enemy status bar.
- Unless your target is not being attacked by anyone but the marine, the marine takes damage, which costs a lot to heal for a high level marine. When there are Shadows around, the marine better stay home.

Now I'll admit that I did all of my boarding with a ship particularly unsuited for it. (Small, fragile, poor, unlucky, hardcore) But marines would not match my normal style of play, either.

As they are, marines need love.

[wrestless]

Originally Posted by Tuidjy

(Small, fragile, poor, unlucky, hardcore)

Ouch!

What level were you at?
I probably play at a much lower standard than you do, so I may have a lower standard for what constitutes powerful or effective. But I was just wondering if it was also a difference of ship/marine level, as I think I've mainly used marines when my ship was around level 10-15. They did more damage for less energy cost than the beam or ballistic weapons I had at the time, and much more damage per second as there is no minimum time that must elapse between boardings.