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[Tartiflette]

Imagine instead you risk your fleet for a higher purpose. A battle could be won by a hair's breadth and with heavy losses, but might still be an definitive success if it secures your control of an important star system or access to a strategic resource.

   Indeed, but it isn't the case now, and I don't think more nuanced outcomes would detract to that end either. Right now you have zero incentive to put your finger in the grinder, and I don't see that many things going in that direction either. I mean sure if your colony is besieged by pirates, you may need to take them on despite bad odds, but I'm more talking about all the times you are ambushed in hyper, or caught right after a battle by another superior force, or when you attack that deceptively small fleet only to discover it is filled with level 20 officers. Those instances beg for savesumming rather than buckling up and going through.

   My point isn't that there aren't some circomstances where loosing your fleet is preferable to not defending/attacking an objective, rather than in most cases it is not worth it and the punishement is too harsh for those.

Another batch of ideas to smooth those battle outcomes:
   An insurance system could help a lot: pay a monthly fee, get some of your losses back. The less losses you suffer over time, the cheaper your insurance get.
   Assassination missions that could pay half the money in advance, allowing you to buy a couple expendable ships.
   High level mercenaries could be hired for a fraction of the money the player make.
   Right now all the money the player make is dependent on their fleet operations (that might change next update though), thus losses cannot be replaced easily. But what about renting unused ships instead of mothballing/selling them? That could create a revenue stream that while quite inferior to what assignements and bounties make, can still help a lot when rebuilding a fleet. (With a tiered tax system to avoid exploits maybe?)

   To get back somewhat on the subject: That doesn't seems to be the direction Alex is going for, but paradoxicaly, very easy boarding or salvaging would incentive a lot the "make do with what you find" gameplay he is looking for. As long as the main way to get a ship is to buy it, every players will want the best their money can get. But far cheaper random findings in debris fields could be a worthwhile alternative, especially if new ships would get much more expensive at the same time.
   I remember fondly some playthrough back in 0.65 with the multiple boarding attempts in SS+ and expensive ships in the markets. Back then I would mostly rely on whatever I could get after the battles, only investing money in my flagship.

[Megas]

...or when you attack that deceptively small fleet only to discover it is filled with level 20 officers.

Or one that was near an endgame armada/detachment that was not visible until right before contact with the small fleet due to poor sensor range or small screen size.  (In other words, small scout fleet turns into 40+ ship endgame fleet battle.)  This happens occasionally in the early game.

[Gothars]

Those instances beg for savesumming rather than buckling up and going through.
Another batch of ideas to smooth those battle outcomes:

Mh, none of those ideas can prevent your fleet from being wiped if you mess up. And I think that's OK. You have to be able to lose in some way if a struggle is to have meaning, don't you?

I feel what you're getting at is more a certain unfairness in the campaign mechanics, i.e. the game doesn't properly telegraph all its punches, so you can get caught off-guard. That is certainly an issue, but I think it's separate from the "you can't take any losses" issue. (Although the latter is certainly exacerbated by the former.)

 I remember fondly some playthrough back in 0.65 with the multiple boarding attempts in SS+ and expensive ships in the markets. Back then I would mostly rely on whatever I could get after the battles, only investing money in my flagship.

Oh yeah, I did some "no buy" playthroughs, too. Lots of fun, especially as a pirate:) It's really not great that it ain't viable anymore. Mhh...

As it stands, the mechanic is a "rare drop" - a potentially nice reward that you don't have any control over. It's very much not suited for being used to acquire a specific ship.

You know, there might still be a way for boarding to function as a "random ship drop" mechanic. Just cut all the good ships out of it, so you can only board ships to use as cannon fodder. Say only Buffalos Mk.IIs, D-variants and such are boardable, but with a higher-than-now chance. That way you would not be tempted to abuse boarding as a "elite ship lottery", and at the same time your core fleet would gain a lot of survivability/losses to your cannon fodder fleet wouldn't really hurt. Would require restoration of captured ships to be fairly cheap. Oh, and it had to be very clear about which ships can be boarded, so no false hope is generated.

Ha, this is like the complete reversal of my initial suggestion...

[Megas]

Boarding dominated by com mons totally stinks.  I do not board at all early in the game when my enemies are pirates and raiders.  Only near or at endgame when nearly all of my opponents are major factions' detachments do useful ships get offered left-and-right, and I starting capturing a ship after nearly every fight.  (5% of 40 ships is two ships the game can choose from.)  Even then, I still see plenty of common ships like Lashers, Enforcers, and the like.  Some of them make the cut for the endgame (e.g., Lasher), and I board those unless they need cost too many marines.

I only save-scum boarding if I really want a rare ship I cannot buy, including from the faction I am commissioned with.

[Tartiflette]

Mh, none of those ideas can prevent your fleet from being wiped if you mess up. And I think that's OK. You have to be able to lose in some way if a struggle is to have meaning, don't you?

I feel what you're getting at is more a certain unfairness in the campaign mechanics, i.e. the game doesn't properly telegraph all its punches, so you can get caught off-guard. That is certainly an issue, but I think it's separate from the "you can't take any losses" issue. (Although the latter is certainly exacerbated by the former.)

   It's not exactly that, what I'm getting at is that it is easy to loose all your ships while making no mistake, and in the meantime hard to recover from any loss. In the previous post I focussed on preventing those massive losses. Mechanics that could make taking calculated risks viable instead of always going through the safe but grindy way (or the savescumming one). This time I was more thinking about the second aspect: making losses less of a massive setback and more of a bump in the road if you planned things correctly.

   In every suggestions, if you make a huge mistake or several small in a row you still get severely punished. But in the normal course of a game you should be able to take some moderate risks without having to start over in a Cerberus if you made a small miscalculation. And as Megas mentioned, the fact that you can get attacked by a small fleet faster than yours and it get joined by that huge defense force you were carefully avoiding feels like a game you can't win all the time anyway. Means to avoid total losses and/or easier recovery seems necessary to me.

[Megas]

Another thing about game difficulty:  Early game enemies - pirates and raiders - do not use transponders.  Player tends to not know of them until they are close.  Later in the game, your enemies are major factions and bounty fleets.  Everyone other than bounty fleets have transponders on and can be seen far away, and bounties usually camp at a planet.

In other words, player can get ambushed more easily early in the game, and almost never late in the game.

[Sy]

You know, there might still be a way for boarding to function as a "random ship drop" mechanic. Just cut all the good ships out of it, so you can only board ships to use as cannon fodder. Say only Buffalos Mk.IIs, D-variants and such are boardable, but with a higher-than-now chance. That way you would not be tempted to abuse boarding as a "elite ship lottery", and at the same time your core fleet would gain a lot of survivability/losses to your cannon fodder fleet wouldn't really hurt. Would require restoration of captured ships to be fairly cheap. Oh, and it had to be very clear about which ships can be boarded, so no false hope is generated.

rather than having a list of boardable ships, how about scaling chance and/or cost with the ship's base market value? it would likely require a rebalancing of current costs, but i agree with Tartiflette that that could be a good idea anyway. if properly tuned, it could both make using a couple Buffalo MK.IIs as cannonfodder worthwhile (through high capture chance and low cost), and still allow capturing ships you wouldn't otherwise have access to (with low capture chance and high cost). a boarding-related skill could then gradually improve the average quality of ships you get, and/or reduce overall costs.

might be a good idea to remove the limit of one ship per battle then, so that getting a Buffalo MK.II still feels like a small reward in its own right, rather than like you just lost the quality-lottery. would somehow need to be balanced to not completely flood you with ships in mid- to late-game though, when battles become a lot bigger. hmm.. :/

[FooF]

As has been mentioned, boarding is merely symptomatic of the deeper issue: lack of end-game. The fleet, as Alex said, is the end instead of a means to an end. A maximum number of officers also feeds into the idea of having the "perfect fleet" because high-end ships (from a skills perspective) are limited.

While I feel removing boarding is not the right answer, I'm still of the opinion that intentional acts of the player (that have opportunity costs attached) is superior to RNG. I'd rather have "rules" to boarding that a player can elect to pursue or not than a skill-based or chance element. The requirements would be taxing on a pure-combat fleet (i.e. construction rigs, marines, extra tugs, perhaps slower burn speeds if towing a hull, etc.) but the results would be more or less guaranteed if all the elements are in place. While it would nix any chance in the early game, I haven't found myself in the position to want to board ships until I'm already wealthy enough to buy most of the ships I want (but just don't have access).

I do agree with Tartiflette that the pain of losing one of your prized ships is not offset by anything else in the game currently which is part of the impetus of wanting a specific hull. Losing an Enforcer or Wolf may not be so bad but losing that XIV Dominator is an immediate reload. I'm having a hard time coming up with a scenario where losing a ship of that kind is "worth it." The reward would have to be significant: like capturing an entire planet or wiping out a rival faction.

Perhaps thinking outside the box a bit but what about manufacturing your own ships via blueprints? If there was an alternative to boarding that still allows the player to get "what the hull they want" but via acquiring the blueprints (perhaps limited use), gathering the raw materials, building/hiring out a manufacturing center, etc. Rather than just be a bunch of fetch quests, perhaps the blueprints are with named bounty fleet, a shipyard boss will only build your ship if you cause disruption at [location] or assassinate so-and-so, and the like. Keep it combat-focused and yet part of the overall progression of the game. By the time you get that Hyperion, you'll have felt you earned the damn thing. Obviously, more common ships would be much easier to obtain and military-grade/high-tech stuff would be...difficult. However, if there was profit to be made and/or replacement ships for the ones you lose in battle, a player might be willing to lose some of their prized ships without resorting to save-scumming.

[Weltall]

Totally removing the boarding would be most sad. I speak for myself and I am sure in place of others that love boarding like I do. Removing a function does not feel like moving forward, but backwards. Making it better, is what moving forward. I do not see how it currently it makes the game bad or in general worse. You cant really use it to make an income, so people can use it as an easy way to make money and with 5/10% chance to get a random ship, it can be a rare occasion for anyone playing normally to get a specific ship.

I am a person that cheats in such cases, as in I have raised the chances to 15/30%, but that is because I am not in the same mindset as people that feel that reloading for hours until they get a ship, is not cheating (I do not reload to  get ships I want. I just let that percentage get me lucky. If not, touch luck.)

But some people see Starsector as a game and some some more, although I feel the ones that want to truly RP, play Ironman mode. I have reloaded at times when I lost specific ships, so I can't say that I did not feel bad I lost a ship I loved, but usually I think "Since it did not manage to survive, I need to look for a better one."

As for manufacturing, I think a lot of people want to get blueprints and be able to make their own ships.. blueprints that should be IMPOSSIBLE to get. Ok, not 100% impossible but really hard. That or/and manufacturing these ships would need a lot of sources, time and money.
 
BUT, I think such thing should be thought after the industry skill tree will kill in and in general Industry as an idea.

[Megas]

I would like to have the industrial capacity of a faction, which has no problem spewing as many ships of any type it has as it wants.  This is why I would like blueprints and an autofactory.

Tempest is relatively hard to come by (i.e., too rare to build a burn 12 Tempest-only fleet), but they are present in many Independent, Lion's Guard, and Tri-Tachyon fleets.

Of course, even with industry, I probably still want (easy) boarding.  Especially since I suspect that even if we get Industry, we may not be able to crank out faction specialties like XIV ships.

[Deshara]

Wile I agree in principle, and have argued the same in the past, I'd not expect it to totally cure the fleet optimization craze. If you look at almost any RPG, there's a high (or at least vocal) proportion of players who are focused on optimizing their character (sadly just in-game ) regardless of how that relates to the rest of the game. Even in story-heavy games like TES or Fallout many people would rather deal a few more DPS than unlock new dialog options, despite their combat strength being long since "suited for any given job". I'm not saying that's wrong, I'm just saying that character (and that is what your fleet is) optimization will play an important role long after it is no longer the exclusive long term goal of Sector. It's just what players want. So exploits in relation to it will stay relevant just the same, and need to be addressed.

(I've got to say, removing boarding as it is right now is looking fairly appealing. Regardless of what it's intended to be, it's definitely something un-fun in terms of how it seems to be mainly being used.)

Wouldn't be a huge loss, atm I never use it anyway. I still think turning it into the thing for which player "abuse" it anyway, i.e getting specific ships, would be the best use.  (Besides pirate roleplaying

re: the "players frequently want to get to break the game, even to the detriment of the fun of the actual gameplay".
The solution to this has already been found by games like far cry 3 and Metro LL (which lets you play as a nazi heavy stormtrooper, after a stealth-based game): let them. How?
Unlockable campaign scenarios. Make normal campaign play unlock missions over time to reward long-play, make stopping RP'ing in the game's main mode to play through the Sim missions they've unlocked reward them with campaign scenarios-- missions that take place on the campaign scale, locked to one or two star systems with historical changes (from where they are in the normal game's timeline) and given pre-set fleets to play through a scenario.
IE get to play through the offensive campaign that rendered the entire system if Dhuzak barren or handed the reigns to the fleet of auxiliary civilian craft that turned back the Tritach war machine at Chicomotzoc and get to throw the populations of nation through a meat grinder playing that losing fight

[MesoTroniK]

While I could sit here and write a bunch on this, in the end others have already stated the same opinions that I would do so... Instead I will just say.

Alex, please do not remove boarding.

[borgrel]

re: the "players frequently want to get to break the game, even to the detriment of the fun of the actual gameplay".
The solution to this has already been found by games like far cry 3 and Metro LL (which lets you play as a nazi heavy stormtrooper, after a stealth-based game): let them. How?
Unlockable campaign scenarios. Make normal campaign play unlock missions over time to reward long-play, make stopping RP'ing in the game's main mode to play through the Sim missions they've unlocked reward them with campaign scenarios-- missions that take place on the campaign scale, locked to one or two star systems with historical changes (from where they are in the normal game's timeline) and given pre-set fleets to play through a scenario.

unlockable campaign senarios is probably the game mechanic that i hate the most.
it has stopped me playing more games than any other contrivance ever ....... and i'm not the only person!

the number of games that i have given up on because i have to replay the stupid mega booring completely unchallanging first senario for the TENTH time because of PC upgrades/OS reinstalls/hard drive failures/etc/etc/etc/!!!!! have stopped me playing several games ever again .... and the very fact that i tried *10 TIMES* shows how much potential those games had.

if only those games didnt punish ppl for having a life as well as being a gamer!

[Deshara]

re: the "players frequently want to get to break the game, even to the detriment of the fun of the actual gameplay".
The solution to this has already been found by games like far cry 3 and Metro LL (which lets you play as a nazi heavy stormtrooper, after a stealth-based game): let them. How?
Unlockable campaign scenarios. Make normal campaign play unlock missions over time to reward long-play, make stopping RP'ing in the game's main mode to play through the Sim missions they've unlocked reward them with campaign scenarios-- missions that take place on the campaign scale, locked to one or two star systems with historical changes (from where they are in the normal game's timeline) and given pre-set fleets to play through a scenario.

unlockable campaign senarios is probably the game mechanic that i hate the most.
it has stopped me playing more games than any other contrivance ever ....... and i'm not the only person!

the number of games that i have given up on because i have to replay the stupid mega booring completely unchallanging first senario for the TENTH time because of PC upgrades/OS reinstalls/hard drive failures/etc/etc/etc/!!!!! have stopped me playing several games ever again .... and the very fact that i tried *10 TIMES* shows how much potential those games had.

if only those games didnt punish ppl for having a life as well as being a gamer!

I'm talking about using them essentially as an alternative to skip the early or mid game of the over game campaign to play a scenario as a bonus, not making the central rpg game depend on them