From dozens of tough battles between giantic fleets in Exelerin I only got chance to board buffalo or its sister/brother from other factions, and maybe low tier frigate. While playing vanilla I've seen boarding dialogue only few times.
With how things are now, I either can't risk losing any resources and will prefer to shoot down ship. Or I already have millions of credits, full storage of supplies. And I am already not interested in any ship. With how game goes now It just doesn't seem possible to consider Boarding as a viable playing strategy. It is a very random and VERY rare game event. It's not somehing you can rely on, it's not something you can invest in, like fighter-based fleet with skills leveled for fighter-based fleet for example. It's just a very random event which brings very little to the table and you can't control anything about it. And it doesn't give you anything super special, unless you are maniac-collector.
In v.0.54 boarding was a consistent event. It was consistent enough to consider it as a part of your game decision making. I had few games where I started with pirate way and build my fleet by hunting particular ships from other factions.
Of course nor old, nor new boarding systems aren't perfect. Old was rewarding too much and player couldn't affect it much, to invest in it for example. New boarding system feels almost non-existent and there will be very few game situations when you really want to board ship AND this boarding will reward you greatly.
Even if I play faction-locked way, I will obtain perfect fleet first before boarding gives me any valuable outcome.
If in future stations will sell only 2-3 basic ships and resupply will happen very-very rarely, boarding may become valuable. But! It will not change the fact that current boarding isn't very good. Either boarding will stay a questionable and unimportant random event, or stations will sell ships very-very rarely. But in that case, if boarding will stay same, just imagine what a grindfest it will be. I certainly don't want to first grind resources, and then grind boarding chance relying purely on RNG, and then grind boarding success while waisting resources for failed attempts still relying purely on RNG. It's like a classical bad example of korean game.
So either boarding or game itself have to change considerably. Or both.
One of the ways to change boarding I imagine like this:
- battle rewards are only supplies, fuel. To get weapons from enemy you have to successfully execute boarding level 1. If you successfully executed boarding level 1, you have a chance to execute boarding level 2, which can reward you with ship. So we can have boarding level 1, which will happen often enough, and which will depend on players stats/skills/crew as much as on RNG. In other words even without boarding skills (imagine for a moment that we can level up such skills) and with low level marines it is possible to get weapons from enemy.
And we have boarding level 2, which will depend on RNG less and will depend on players skills/stats/crew more. It may be a rarer event. The trick with this system is next: if you didn't invest in boarding strategy, you will only randomly get weapons sometimes; if you invested in boarding strategy - you will have a random, but still considerable, chance to get ships.
Also its possible to link rewards with skills/stats/crew. In other words with skill "Marines enhancement lvl5" you get considerably higher chance to get large weapons, but to get higher chance for cruisers you need maxed skills and optimal crew - marines of certain level. And yeah, I imagine that we will be able to train marines in boarding events. And by this, even though boardings will happen more often, losing high level marines will hurt more than it is now.
And many threads about combat boarding suggestions. There good ideas too.
