Marines

See Also: Boarding

Ware Marines/Mercenary Cargo Class M Volume 8 Min. Price (Cr) Ave. Price (Cr) Max. Price (Cr)

Encyclopedia Entry

Marine

A marine is a simple creature. Feed it and tell it what to do and many things become possible. The marine's primary role now is combat boarding operations and for this reason, as well as being proficient soldiers, Marines are also well versed in either computers or engineering.

Mercenary

Trained in a variety of combat skills and technical specialisations, Mercenaries are developed for a wide range of tasks and are essentially sold on to pirate clans and guilds. Private security firms also make use of mercenaries for their own aims.

Overview

Marines are soldiers trained in boarding and defending ships.

A strong marine is a major investment of time and Credits.

Marines may be recruited from Military Outposts, Military Stations, Marine Training Barracks, or Mercenary Stations. Their cost varies depending on skill ratings. Sometimes another race's marines can be seen floating in space which is an opportunity to collect well-trained marines for free; there does not seem to be a reputation penalty for abducting them.

Marines are rated in several areas:

Combat

Marine combat rating indicates their fighting strength and will only increase through boarding operations.

It is the most important stat as it influences the survival of the boarding team and the suppression of onboard defenses. Or on defense it dictates how effective the marine is at opposing the boarding team.

Engineering

Engineering affects how much damage the marine does as they pass through the ship. A marine with low engineering skill will cause higher hull damage during a capture. If the ship has moderate to high hull damage marines with low engineering skill may lower the hull too far and cause the boarding operation to fail.

Hacking

Hacking is important for the final stage of the boarding operation, hacking the ship's core. A successful hack will grant you control of the ship. An unsuccessful hack means the boarding operation was a failure. Of the surviving marines who reach the core some must have hacking skill in order to succeed. As you cannot determine which marines may survive to reach the core it is important that a large number of the boarding party have high hacking skill.

Mechanical

The mechanical skill is the ability of the marine to cut through a ships hull, different ship classes have different minimum required mechanical skill to successfully breach the hull.

Min Mech Skill for Hull Breaching

Ship Class	Min Space Walk Mech	Min Boarding Pod Mech
M1	100	50
M2	100	50
M6	17	10
M7	50	35
TM	10	10
TL	85	35

Warning: If the target ship has hull polarization equipped then the required mech skill is much higher. e.g. A M1 with hull polarization will require 85 mech skill with boarding pods to breach.

Here is a table of equivalence between the five-star rating system and the actual skill values:

Rating	Skill
1 star	0 to 33
2 stars	34 to 50
3 stars	51 to 67
4 stars	68 to 84
5 stars	85 to 100

Training Marines

To reach peak effectiveness, Marines must be trained.

Engineering, Hacking and Mechanical

Engineering, Hacking and Mechanical skills can all be improved at training facilities which are typically the same stations where they can be hired: Military Outposts, Military Bases, or Marine Training Barracks, but also at Trading Stations and Stock Exchanges. Training duration, cost, and effectiveness is the same everywhere. Training these skills is expensive and varies between 20,000Cr to 500,000Cr per course and will take anywhere from a few minutes to several days. The training cost and duration depend on whether a Quick, a Normal or an Advanced training course is selected, and on the skill level the marine has when he starts training. The number of skill points gained in the training is random, but depends on whether a Quick, Normal, or Advanced course is chosen. The formulas (see: forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=362077) for the duration of training a single skill are as follows, where all divisions are truncating (i.e., rounding down to an integer):

Course	Skill increase (random)	Formula: time in minutes with starting skill level S
Quick	5–9	5 + (S / 5 + 1)^2
Normal	15–27	15 + (S / 5 + 1)^2 + (S / 5 + 3)^2 + (S / 5 + 5)^2
Advanced	25–45	25 + (S / 5 + 1)^2 + (S / 5 + 3)^2 + (S / 5 + 5)^2 +(S / 5 + 7)^2 + (S / 5 + 9)^2

Training "All skills" takes as long as the three separate courses for each trainable skill would take combined, plus 20% longer. The fastest training is achieved by training each skill individually with Quick courses, but this also requires the most player attention.

The actual numbers for the duration in minutes for the single-skill courses at different skill levels are

Starting skill	Quick	Normal	Advanced
0–4	6	50	190
5–9	9	71	245
10–14	14	98	310
15–19	21	131	385
20–24	30	170	470
25–29	41	215	565
30–34	54	266	670
35–39	69	323	785
40–44	86	386	910
45–49	105	455	1045
50–54	126	530	1190
55–59	149	611	1345
60–64	174	698	1510
65–69	201	791	1685
70–74	230	890	1870
75–79	261	995	2065
80–84	294	1106	2270
85–89	329	1223	2485
90–94	366	1346	2710
95–99	405	1475	2945

Fighting

Fighting skill can be trained only by successfully completing boarding operations. After each successful boarding, each marine that participated in the boarding increases his Fighting skill by a random amount between 5 to 9 points, like a Quick training course in the other three skills does. The success probability of boarding well-defended ships depends very greatly on the combined Fighting skill of the marines involved, so one should specifically train the marines' Fighting skill through practice boarding operations before taking on, say, Xenon or Terran vessels. Boardable pirate vessels and ships from Return Ship missions are ideal for this: the former are quite easy to board, and the latter spawn without shield, weapons, or equipment, making them sitting ducks waiting to be boarded. After the boarding, the ship can be returned to its owner normally to complete the mission. One should send the largest boarding party the target ship can hold, to minimize the risk of losses and to maximize the number of marines trained. However, low Engineering skill can cause a large boarding party to deal too much damage to the hull and result in the boarding being aborted; in this case, a smaller boarding party may have to be used, excluding those marines with particularly poor Engineering skill.

Aboard Ship

To transport marines, a Cargo Lifesupport System is required. Ships may only carry a limited number of marines:

Ship Class	Marines Allowed (TC)	Marines Allowed (AP)
M1 Carrier	20	20
M2 Destroyer	20	20
M6 Corvette	5	8
M7 Frigate	20	20
M7M Missile Frigate1	20	20
TM Military Transport	5	8
TL Large Transport	20	20
TP Personnel Transport	10	40

¹ M7M Missile Frigate Sirokos carries 30 marines.

For unknown reasons the maximum boarding party is one more than the maximum carriage limit. For example, 21 Marines can be fighting aboard a Colossus at once.

If the supernumerary survives the boarding attempt, that marine will leave the boarded ship to return home to the boarding ship. Boarding ships equipped with transporter devices can transport them back aboard when they pass within 5 km of the space walker.

See Also

Piracy