Removing the chance to get no loot at all because of a ship escaping... good. Thanks. Now, two issues here:
First, I am getting the impression that blowing up a boardable ship does yield a lot less loot as well. On average. Punishes me for getting the random "chance" to board. Second, even if I send my marines and it says the ship was irreparably damaged I seem to get barely any weapons at all to collect. So first - am I just paranoid, is this intentional, or did someone miss something?
Second, if it's intentional, why? Blowing the ship up, okay. Making sure a heavily damaged ship does not get away, there is a good chance to accidentally obliterate it. But capturing it without it being usable later should at least get me "normal" loot, just... logic-wise...
Then the mechanic behind it is completely invisible. For example, I do not know how much damage a self destruct will do to my hard docked ships. Does it depend on the size of the boarded and boarding ships? On their general armor and hull? (I can't really just run lots of "tests" to figure that out, sorry, so I have to ask...) Also, if it does not, it should. Would make armor more interesting a feature as opposed to efficient shields that can be vented and reused in battle at will. Also it would finally give some meaning and sense to special "boarding transports" with thick hulls and massive crew capacity.
Finally I have to second that there should be a success/colatteral bar visible for boarding actions. Right now the chance to get a boardable "wreck" is rare and random. If I get the chance to capture something I actually want there should be a visible way to improve my chances not just by taking the risk of hard docking but by pouring in ressources.
Currently it's random (getting the boarding chance at all) x random (invisible, unpredictable success rates) x horrendous cost (how can marines eat so much anyway?). With these chances at hand I won't even carry marines when completely bored in the endgame. Please either remove some randomness, or better, give us a mechanic that reduces randomness by pouring in more ressources/specializing fleet and skills in boarding actions, or at least make the actual chances somewhat visible. Otherwise I'll just keep hitting that "engage" button and that would be sad. Really. Sad.
Also. Thanks for making the game I have been looking for since... uhm... ever. Awesome. Really.