Marines should help prepare for boarding.

[Vicker3000]

With the new crew focus system, the marines act as an additional "subsystem".  The marines are effectively locked into being set as "marines", and don't help with any of the tasks on the ship.

 

For one thing, I don't believe this is historically accurate.  Marines would have helped with manning the guns and handling lines.  But let's ignore that for now.

 

The purpose of the marines is to help with boarding combat.  Shouldn't they at least help with the "boarding" subsystem?  If I switch on "boarding", a bunch of my non-marine, able seamen leave what they're doing (guns, sail handling, etc) to go and prepare for boarding.  The whole reason I turned some of my crew into marines is so that they would help me in boarding combat, so why aren't they included in the number of crew that's getting ready for boarding combat?

[Henry d'Esterre Darby]

I would also like to see marines on board act as a permanent positive number in the boarding category.

 

I would also like to see them potentially injured/killed with other crew.

[Nalyd]

They (the marines) actually help you to board the enemy ship.

 

Unless you haven't noticed, when you switch to boarding, you already have a set amount of preparation right off the bat instead of starting from 0 when you're equipped with marines, with my fine marines I start at around 40 preps and only need a few seconds to reach 50 before I can board the enemy.

 

And they also get killed when the enemy shoot at your vessel.

 

 

[Durfee]

I think Marines should be a complement (fighting complement) for the crew if your rank allow that.

I mean, right now, marines use an amount of your crew, so if I have 200 crew max, and I am sailing a cerb, if I use marines I will have some people that are there just for boarding, and never will going to have good sail or reload times because of that.

 

Now it is that way:

I am 200 crew rank, and I am sailing a cerberus with marines, so my crew is still 190 but from them, 70 are marines and 120 are original crew, and my perform in sailing is devastated.

It should be like this:

I am 200 crew rank, and I am sailing a cerberus with marines, then my crew raise up to 200 (ten more. 190 original plus 10 marines), even if with that upgrades I could have more than ten. And not in exchange of my first crew.

If I am 250 crew rank, and I am still sailing a cerberus, then I will have 190 original crew plus 60 marines (to the total of 250 I am able to cap)