Migration Assistant stuck on looking for applications and documents to transfer

Getting to a healthy Time Capsule backup and transferring the files Via Migration Assistant.

This may be of some help. I recently had to purchase a new MacBook Pro to replace my 2017 MacBook Pro 15" touch bar. Seems the touch bar hated living.

As life would have it, I was unable to get to the HD on my old Mac to do a Mac to Mac transfer. These are the issues that I had trying to get it to migrate from a Time Capsule backup and an eventual solution.

1. Finding the Time Capsule server password. It's a pain and thankfully, my wife had it in her keychain. Don't lose the password.
2. During setup assistant, the Mac found the backups but couldn't see volumes under the backup.
3. Continued setup assistant. Yay. New Mac! Boo no files.
4. Tried MA and it didn't find any backups under the sparse bundle.
5. Opened the sparse bundle (double click) and there were backups.
6. Tried again and MA found the latest backup.
7. The MA ran all night stuck on the 'Looking for Applications and documents to transfer". This was discouraging. Start over.
8. Pro tip. Don't create a Time machine backup for your new machine prior to doing this. Upon my second MA try, it only saw my new backup to select from. If anyone knows of a way to choose other backup files that would be helpful. I ended up having to turn Time Machine off and hide the new backup file. There is no easy way to select a different file.
9. MA insists on turning the WiFi on turning on even though you are direct connecting to the TC over ethernet and have already turned the antenna off. You have to be quick when MA is starting to stop the WiFi just after it starts or slow transfers are in your immediate future.
10. After viewing/opening my sparse bundle, the MA was able to see the backups. Pro Tip. Do not select the parent folder to continue. Drill down to the date of the backup to transfer from. I believe this confused the first MA to looking at ALL the backups available.
11. After selecting the backup folder, proceed with MA to select the applications / files you want to move over. Wait for the 'calculating size' to complete before proceeding. 500G will transfer at about 25 MB per second so it takes quite a while. (6 to 10 hours. Your mileage may vary).

OBSERVATIONS:

Migration assistant lacks a certain amount of intelligence one would need in a catastrophic restore. There should be an advanced option to choose another backup file in addition to the 'afp/server/file' That info might have been available for my time capsule, but I really didn't know where to go get it and it seems more like an Enterprise selection for a server that stores backups. This made it difficult to move to my new Mac and also gave me a little anxiety about whether I'd be able to get my files back.

My next step was to purchase another disk and copy the sparse bundle over and try a direct connection. This process would most likely be the fastest transfer rate. I haven't had to go that far. Hopefully the transfer will complete successfully.

I hope this if helpful to you if you are having Migration Assistance performance problems.