Problems with ramming

[QuarianRex]

I have found that strategic boarding parties work very erratically in this game.

I was recently testing out my Borg mod (they rely heavily on boarding parties) and encountered some odd problems.

I had a small sphere (550kt) that was equiped with a tractor beam, shield depleter, boarding cannon (only damaged security stations and all SDD's are given boarding defense), a boarding party, and support equipment (engines, armor, shields, etc.). Now the sphere would work beautifully in strategic combat, chasing down ships and assimilating them etc.

The problem occured when I got medium cubes (900kt). I carried over the design (same basic components, just more of them) and the thing wouldn't budge. The cube would just sit in the middle of the screen and twitch around. I tried messing with the attack priorities and such but it was no good. They just wouldn't chase anything down.

However, if an enemy ship came within range of a tractor beam it would get pulled in and boarded. THEN the cube would start to jerkily chase down other ships.

I just can't explain it. All other characteristics were basically the same (just scaled up), including the strategies. The little guy would perform as expected while the big one wouldn't. Can anyone explain this?

I also noticed something else. Boarding will only occur BEFORE weapons are fired. If the weapons have to be fired the ship will not board that turn. This means that a single shield regenerator will completely protect a ship from a single boarding craft. To capture that ship you need to tag-team it with two craft, one to knock down the regenerated shields and one to board.

I hope that some of this helps and/or someone can provide some sort of explanation.