EDIT 2: New Interface Screenshots on
Page 4!EDIT: Further details and clarifications on
Page 2!I think the current boarding system suffers from a major problem: it offers no relevant choice. When it was new, Alex wrote:
The “board or scrap” choice doesn’t come up all the time, but it does have a cost – the player is likely to lose marines every time they do it, so it has to be an explicit call on their part.
But this choice is not real, because the possible costs involved are negligible. You get 100 marines for 3600 credits. If you capture for example a Medusa class destroyer you are likely to lose about 10 of those marines, or 360 credits. The Medusa sells for 12000 credits! So to not attempt a boarding would almost always be the wrong choice, even if you have so few marines that they are not likely to succeed. And to have few marines is another non-choice because of the huge gap between investment and possible benefit and because many marines guarantee a 100% success rate.
So here’s my suggestion to make boarding a real choice: Presume boarding in Starfarer was executed via ship-to-ship docking, the
old fashioned way. The player chooses one of his ships to perform a docking maneuver on the target ship. The ship will then only be manned by a skeleton crew, all other space is taken by marines (provided enough are available). E.g. a Hammerhead destroyer could carry 50 marines. After docking those marines commence boarding and try to capture the target.
Your causalities and the likeliness of a positive outcome depend on the ratio of marines on the docking ship vs. remaining crew and possible modifiers like character skills, officers, marine experience or even docking ship special properties (think Valkyrie-class Troop Transport).
Possible outcomes:
- The marines successfully overwhelm the crew and the ship is captured. Possible acts of sabotage or malfunction on secondary reactors, airlocks or ammunition depots may lead to explosions on the target and thus to light damage (and crew loss) on the docking ship.
- The marines overwhelm the crew, but the heavy fighting and sabotage have damaged central systems irrevocable. The ship can only be scrapped. Light damage on the docking ship is possible due to the reasons stated above.
-The marines are to few or to weak, they have to retreat and the docking ship has to disengage. Marines have heavy causalities, light damage on the docking ship is likely. The player can make another attempt at boarding.
- The enemy crew activates the self-destruction. The marines don’t manage to defuse it in time, the ship blows up. The marines suffer heavy causalities and the docking ship is severely damaged or even destroyed (depending on relative ship sizes).
- The marines are vastly outnumbered, the enemy crew manages to overrun the airlocks and capture your boarding ship. They escape with it, there’s a new enemy fleet on the campaign screen with that stolen ship. This is only likely to happen if you try to capture f.e. a battle cruiser with a frigate.
Here's a visualization:
This way boarding would be a dangerous undertaking, and the player would really have to consider if a ship is worth the attempt. And even then there's still the choice how much he wants to invest: it is enough to send a frigate, or do you risk damage on your cruiser?
Opinions?