Welcome to Shedovv's StarSector Suggestions box, part one.
So as the title suggests I would like to propose Mid-Combat boarding, that is not a mini-game. What do I propose if not a mini-game then? A WEAPON! Or a line of weapon's rather. And' an additional bar on the ships stats (in combat) above/bellow/in-between the Flux and Hull bars. These weapons I propose would be akin to Missile Launchers. BUT they would use your MARINES for ammo. Your job as a Captain/Pilot would remain the same, but you'd get the ability to essentially fire your marines at the enemy (something along the lines of Space Marine Assault Rams/Pods/Whateverthose are.) in order to board their ships, what's next? A tug of war. The bar I mentioned earlier would now come into place. If you MANAGE to land a HIT that is. As in you managed to bring your opponents shields down and hit them with the projectile (the pod) from the Boarding weapon. Now then, back to the bar. At this point a portion of the bar would change it's color to green(players UI color) and the following which can be done in two ways will occur.
#1 The Easy but less cool option.
It plays out randomly until one or the other side manages to push the opposite out of the bar.
#2 The StarSector way, which is complicated though.
It takes into the account how many marines were inside the projectile (determined by the individual weapon's stats more on that below) then weights them against Combination of Marines and Crew belonging to the ship in question. Then a similar tug of war happens. But obviously if your marines outnumber the enemy's and their crew they will be more likely to win and vice versa. Further more the effectiveness of BOTH Crew AND Marines is determined by rank (Green, Normal, Veteran or Elite) yes that means Marines will finally have a reason to level up.
Now then that's said and done, what's next? This is rather simple really. Depending on the outcome of the above of course.
#1 We Lose!
Nothing happens, the enemy ship continues to function but if they sustained any losses during the "Tug of War" period, they may begin to suffer from the "Not Enough Crew to Operate" debuff, which is the part of the game (the debuff I mean) already.
#2 We Win!
The ship becomes disabled for the rest of the combat. BUT it remains intact (well as intact as it was when our Marines won the Tug) AND crewless, which means we will be able to safely scuttle it and/or add it to our fleet (that is if we win the battle) post combat.
BUT WAIT? What happens if WE get shot by the same weapon?
The answer is simple, the same thing. Only this time (note this is sort of optional in my opinion) we get a big bonus to "Tug" for our Character being present if it's the Piloted ship. With similar results. The exception being if it's the Piloted ship, we get auto-transfered to another one as if it was destroyed. Or we loose and restart if it was our only ship. HOWEVER if we lost a ship in such manner but won the battle we get post battle screen option to attempt boarding in order to take it back (pretty much like the one we have now for disabled ships) except this time only the "It explodes/We take it" outcomes can ocure, marines CAN'T fly away on a space ship they aren't trained for that.
Now as promised I will go a little bit more in detail regarding the so called "Weapons" that we shall use in order to deliver our "Ordnance" on-board an enemy vessel.
They would work as any normal weapon would with the fore-mentioned exception of them using your Marines for ammo and the fact that it's stat's determine NOT how much DAMAGE it deals BUT HOW MANY Marines a single projectile can deliver to the enemy and the robustness (again drawing similarities with missiles here) of said projectiles. This in turn means that unlike most Missile/Projectile weapons right now, these weapons will have limited ammo and can only be installed on a ship that can carry the said "Ordnance" in sufficient numbers.
As for the implementation.
I believe it is down to simply (simply, metaphorically speaking of course) making the fore-mentioned weapons then scripting in, the usage of Marines as ammo, the tug of war logics, the disabling of the ships in case of Boarder's winning the tug without being (turned into a husk) destroyed, the dialogue option and finally making the necessary HUD adjustments.
There are of course concerns such as what happens while the "Tug" plays out does everything freeze? And while the fore-mentioned is (in my humble opinion) simple to answer a no, there may be other points to discuss further.
Which I invite you to do if you do have any that is.
P.S. After seeing some of the "responses" please, I would rather discuss how to make it work and or anything that is wrong with the idea rather than argue over the petty "FAQ says it's bad" quotes and messages that do not seem to originate from people who even bothered to read the topic from start to finish.
