As much as I love nid swarm domination atm Hulking is just far too easy for anyone with decent troop values.
Even as space marines you can hulk a majority of other players ships without even having to bother about counter measures.

I know the calculation occurs pretty much instantly once the troops make connection, but is there anyway to slow it down so players have a chance to react?
A battleship surely can't be breached and 100% wiped out after 1 second boarding action, there would be at least a delay/holdouts before the ship should be effectively hulked.

Also having only 3 levels of troops to go through before hulking really diminishes any response a player can have, sending a squadron of boarding torps/ships and its insta hulk most vessels, fighter screens and turrets do not have enough impact for me to even bother trying to counter them in the midst of combat.

Perhaps having a more staggered troops system, spread it out to 5 levels with adjusted penalty offsets, and perhaps a timer on the ship that has been "Invaded", hell even reinforcements for the inner ship battle from adjacent ships via assualt actions could make the gameplay more interesting and fun to deal with.

The amount of times you hulk the flagship and numerous cruisers sit right next to it unable to do anything but grant 1 troop back to the ship just to lose it again.

I tend to agree. I run Tyranids and damn they are strong. Won't complain about balance here, who knows, maybe buffing weak factions instead is the answer. But troop damage applying instantly definitely is an issue among many.

The problem is that opposing player doesn't have enough information (and often time) to react. Boarding craft is one thing - although when in melee you might just spawn them right beside your target - but normal boarding actions are almost invisible. During combat it's usually just "POOF - there goes your flagship" sorta thing. It's both frustrating to deal with and unrewarding to use.

What probably should be done is troop damage applying over time and boarding having clear indication (kinda like fire does).

only problem i see here is that if you turned boarding into a troop damage dot then SM would suffer greatly and they are by no means crushing it atm.

Crew and Morale is just...ruining the game right now honestly.

I can count the number of times on one hand that I actually lose a ship to actual death over the course of 10-15 games.

Meanwhile I cannot count the number of times I get Mutiny or Hulked over the same games, it's just out of control.

Add the stupidly easy chance to critically damage systems and I spend more time not using my ships than using them.

@dreadspectre i personally liked the system from the first game where boardings were unlimited by only cause crit damages if they succeeded and crew damage didnt exist.

@imptastic said in Troop Strength Levels:

only problem i see here is that if you turned boarding into a troop damage dot then SM would suffer greatly and they are by no means crushing it atm.

I think the countdown timer could be pretty awesome for Space Marines, provided there was a change to boarding:

• Using a boarding action should also remove the attacking ships' troop value.
• Boarding actions should be able to target friendlies to improve troop value.

Doing those two things, and buffing the ever-loving hell out of the Space Marines troop values could make a damage-over-time system interesting. Obviously too late for the game to change now, but would've been a really strategic way of handling it. As it stands, I think we should still be able to target friendly non-hulked ships with Lightning Strikes to restore their troop value, or the cooldown on the one that restores troop value should be slashed quite a bit. There's basically no defense against Tyranids, it makes them ludicrously dull to play with.