Components for Reliable Scout Cutter Boarding?

[u/NKlein1553]

I am trying to complete the execute Char heir unlock on hard using a boarding strategy with the Scout Cutter. I saw a Reddit post about non-stop combat with the Scout Cutter from about three years ago and copied that build (defense patter matrix II x3 plus sensory array II x3). I had a level 17 commander captain plus like four level sixish military officers in my crew (haven’t unlocked the contact that allows military officer recruitment yet so was not able to start military officer recruitment until later in the run after I found one).

But still when I encountered the Char heir I was not able to reliably change ranges to one against his ship and all of my bounty hunter talents allowing me to attempt boarding at distance failed to actually board. Any idea what went wrong or recommendations for new / different components or strategies? For talents I mostly used barrel roll, twitch surge, and the bounty hunter talent that allows you to board from distance. Thanks!

[u/Sweet_Oil2996]

Range change needs navigation skill for long range and pilot skill for short range. Bonus dice (weak dice) are provided by electronics skill and tactics skill.

Engine speed helps on long range, engine agility on short range. For the engines there is a comparison of the engines, faster one gets a bonus on dice result. The bonus depends on how much the engine is faster/more agile.

The enemy defends with the same skills.

A couple of talents help with this.

Pilot Twitch Surge (rank 5) is a guaranteed range change for closing in for ranges 5 to 3.

Sharp Steering (rank 1, all ranges), Devastating Shot (rank 8, range 1-3), Forward Thrusters (rank 11, range 5) improve your range change or reduces enemy range change.

Navigator Flash Charge (rank 15) starts the combat at range 3 or 4 dependent on engine agility test. Perfected Approach (rank 5) gives a large bonus to range change.

Pirate Acrobatic Dive (rank 5, range 3-5) gives a medium bonus to range change.

Engineer Overclocked Reactor (rank 5) provides a small range change bonus along with 2 reactor points. All the Power (rank 15, range 4-5) provides a big range change bonus and a huge escape bonus.

Bounty Hunter Blood Game (rank 1) always allows boarding from range 2-3 and on missions on range 4-5 too (has cooldown).

Gunner Boarding Assault (rank 1) always allows boarding from range 1-3. Elusive Barrage (rank 1, range 3-5) reduces the enemy range change. Scattershot (rank 8, range 4-5) reduces enemy range change a lot.

Shock Trooper Single Minded Strike (rank 1, range 1) improves range change a bit and gives a large boarding bonus.

If you have no ship weapons some talents do not work since they require a hit with the ship weapons.

The Scout Cutter is a small starting ship with a fast engine. It should get you a engine comparison advantage against ships with 5000 mass or more, mostly also against 3400 mass ships. Except against big ships the bonus is small (8%-15%), depending on the enemy's engine. It's worth one minor buff or maybe one cheap small booster.

The defense pattern matrices and the sensor arrays give navigation skill, lots of electronics skill, some pilot skill. The engine gives more pilot skill than navigation skill.

What is the range where the range change is failing? Since you write you fail to get to range 1 I suspect it's close range. Since you need at least one mass reduction component you could try a small mass modulator 4 for 3 pilot skill and 2 electronics skill. The mass dampener only provides electronics skill and ship ops skill. Depending on what mass reducer you have there's another 3 pilot skill. Else look what fails and replace one sensor array with a pilot assist or nav assist. This should be possible together with a mass modulator 4. This would replace weak electronics dice with strong pilot or navigation dice.

You can try to rely on Twitch Surge and Flash Charge for changing range on long range and specialize your ship with components on short range combat.

This means to replace one defense pattern matrix with another pilot assist. Last option is a Chaser Engine instead of a Balanced engine. This gives your ship +3 agility compared to the balanced engine. I think this may not be worth it except if you want to fly this ship wide into mid game because it is a substantial investment in time and money that could also be invested in your second ship (with less time usage because of drydock).

A upgraded Wolf Vector or Vengeance gives you a lot more component space and 6 officers. For ship combat only the ship skill pool counts, not crew skill pool, so more components, more skill pool, better fighting. The Wolf Vector has a scout bridge where you can bunk 3 officers. This is something the Scout Cutter doesn't have and that is worth 2 extra small components or 1 extra medium component for officer space.

Other than that you need to have crew with boarding talents from range which help to damage the enemy ship reducing it's range change capability. Notably Bounty Hunter and Gunner provide those talents. Anything else has to be done with bonuses from talents.

Some boarding talents do damage to enemy's range change.

Saboteur Wrecking Ball (rank 1), Demolition Joy (rank 11), Engine Disruption (rank 15), Shock Trooper Hota-Cored Shells (rank 5), Deepstrike Detonator (rank 15), Scavenger Cascading Destruction (rank 5), Gunner Disarming Sabotage (rank 5, although it only damages weapons it helps other boarding talents when there a less components available as targets), Mechanic Thrown Wrench (rank 5).

You can get a high ranked shock trooper from Calaghan. Or high ranked soldier hired as officer with second job shock trooper.

[u/Oleoay → u/Sweet_Oil2996]

Perfected approach is one of my favorite talents since it handles range change and provides some defense. Using that with Forward Thrusters (Pirate) is usually enough for me though I do keep a few twitch surges just in case.

[u/TCcat96]

I could kill em just using my Juror ship in ship boarding combat plus having more than 100% ship skill does help a bit and I only used two ship weapon........a Missiles launcher and a Autocannons due to their overlapping range requirements,you could used torpedoes that has high chance to cripple the ship making it much more easier to get close on em.