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« on: May 14, 2014, 04:22:46 PM »
Hello! I'd like to present a suggestion that I've been thinking about for awhile: ship boarding before combat. For awhile I've been thinking that the current boarding mechanic needs to be expanded, and since in combat boarding is just too complex and messy something else needs to be considered. (and if you've ever played Space Pirates and Zombies before you'd see a live example of it's flaws.) If you think about it, the best time to try and capture a ship via boarding is before the ships have even started combat.
So this is how the new boarding combat would work: When you maneuver for battle with an enemy fleet you'd be given a new UI choice to pick from, "Organize boarding action". Selecting this option would prompt you to choose the ship you'd like to use for boarding, and then you'd choose which enemy ship you'd like to board. After that you'd be presented with two choices of tactical boarding with the enemy ship: "Send boarding shuttles to harass the enemy ship", and "Send boarding shuttles to assault the enemy ship". (Note: you would not be able to hard dock and attack ship to ship, as doing so would probably result in your ship being outright destroyed by the enemy fleet)
Harassing enemy ships: Taking this choice will order your boarding party to be defensive in their boarding actions and focus on damaging ship systems rather than taking out enemy crew. This would result in minimal marine and crew losses even if your boarding force was greatly outnumbered. It would also lower the combat readiness of the enemy ship significantly and if the ship was deployed into combat it would suffer some sever malfunctions. The drop in combat readiness would probably depend on the size of the boarding force and the enemy defense, but even when greatly outnumbered the harassing still should be and effective strategy.
Assaulting enemy ships: Taking this choice will order your boarding party to begin a full on assault on the enemy crew of the ship. Marine and crew losses would be significant if outnumbered and really only a viable strategy with an equal or greater amount of crew in the boarding party. If you manage to take control of the enemy ship you'd be presented with a few options:
Attempt to take control the enemy ship: Pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, you'd try to take the ship for your own use. This would be pretty unpredictable depending on the situation. Try to take control of a small ship in the middle of a huge enemy fleet? It will get intercepted by the enemy fleet and dispatched, killing your boarding force. Try to take control of a cruiser during an enemy retreat? A cakewalk, the enemy fleet is already maneuvering to retreat and can't do much about a large ship flying away without re engaging in combat. (Quick Note: A successfully taken over ship would not be able to be instantly deployed in combat, probably behaving like a mothballed ship.)
Engage the self destruct: Not particularly well named, there's probably a more techy way to put it, but you can probably guess what this does. Your fleet turns on the self destruct and gets the hell out. The resulting explosion would destroy the ship (and maybe depending on the size damage and lower the CR of any nearby enemy ships?). Might not be the best choice because accidents can happen, and some marines may rarely not escape in time.
Order them to leave the enemy ship: A risk-free solution, and the most boring. All deployed marines would return as quickly as possible and the taken over enemy ship would have it's combat readiness reduced to zero. Perhaps some CR regained for the ship you choose to operate the boarding action?
Failed boarding assaults would result in major losses for your marines, perhaps some would escape, but boarding assaults would be a risky and expensive maneuver, especially on larger ships like cruisers and capitals. Just think, your trying to take over a ship filled to the brim with crew, it should be risky. Failed boarding still should result in significant CR losses to the enemy ship.
Just a few final thoughts:
Maybe you could issue multiple boarding actions at once? As long as the marines used in one boarding action can't be used again in another it would be pretty balanced.
Maybe marines become a little bit more powerful because of this, but are also more expensive?
Enemy fleets should also be able to issue boarding actions onto your ships, just to be fair; it would also add another element to gameplay. Perhaps the player could consider buying self defense marines?
Well anyway, let me know what you think about these ideas.
