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« on: March 21, 2021, 04:51:37 PM »
We've already got a tracker for crew/marines killed by hull damage, and we've already got crewed kamikaze fightercraft (though I think that's from a mod only). I think boarding could be as simple as putting the two together:
A fighter or missile that is crewed by marines preferably over crew, that if it hits an unshielded, low armored section of hull, it does little hull damage but kills a lot of crew (unless the other guys have a lot of marines too).
After that, a ship with low crew already has reduced combat rating so that's benefit enough no new effects necessary. I don't know that it's ordinarily possible to kill all the crew through hull damage before the ship explodes thou (again, maybe through mods; I can think of one ship ability that repairs half hull damage received in diable avionics mod), so maybe a line of code for that; a ship with no crew is disabled and can be recovered after the battle (no, marines alone cannot pilot the ship, no changing sides mechanic) without added d-mods, but costs more supply (there was a firefight in all the halls, place is torn up inside) or can be salvaged for more.
So there you have it. No FPS hallway shooter minigame, just piggybacking off the crew casualties, missile/fighter, and salvage/recovery systems already in the game. It doesn't have to be complex. In the meantime marines are expensive and kamikaze fighters are also expensive (in a different way) and point defense is still a thing, and shields, and armor, so you've already got your give and take for the mechanic laid out for you. (and no explosion on contact, instead burrow in like WH40K boarding pods, easy enough to do; just have the missile sprite move out of sight under the ship's sprite instead of over before it disappears)
Idea's over, the rest is extra:
One of the things I love about Starsector is how most systems serve multiple roles: the intel saying a trade convoy is moving from a to b carrying c goods there and bringing d goods back, provides many ways to interact with it: you can get there first with your own goods, you can wait to buy up their goods cheap from a saturated market, you can lay in wait and ambush the convoy, you can follow the convoy and counter ambush (that one isn't always effective of course), etc etc. It's just raw information about the system and the use of it is up to you. Nexerelin's mining does the same kind of piggybacking off of the colony resources and hazards, and mating them with the salvaging system, all already in the game. (btw nexerelin make mining use the salvaging screen rather than text boxes, after every mine I've got to open the menu to make sure I didn't auto pick up more than I can hold and manage them if I did). So the idea of piggybacking off of existing mechanics to provide a lot of new options with very few additions appeals to me a lot. It's the main thing that's impressed me about starsector, in a AAA game there would have been miles of code and mechanics for each new system implemented, and here's starsector opening up whole new playstyles with a single added mechanic.
What do you all think? I'm fairly new to starsector by it's 10 years of life, so if I've said anything stupid, point it out for me.
