Alright, thank you for the positive feedback everybody
It's great that you like it Alex.
I will add some clarification and balance detail that would have cluttered the first post too much. Sorry if I misunderstand something, I was just out and am quite drunk (praise chrome for spell checking).
When would you make the decision to board the ship?
Just as it is now, after the battle. I would however suggest that the chance of a ship being boardable should be (much) higher than it is now. The current low chance is necessary to counterbalance the 100% success rate with enough marines. But if boarding is so dangerous that an attempt would be a hard choice, the player should indeed have the choice to try to board the ship he really wants. I feel a balance that leaves the initial rate of actually successful boardings lower than the current one, but could be augmented with character/officer/ship specialization would be ideal. For the magnitude of the danger consider the following:
because, let's face it, if the ship that boards takes damage, you're going to go to port and repair it, in most cases
That's true for the current one-system build. I expect things like damage and crew-loss to be much more relevant once you can venture in unknown territory, or even in hostile space where no station is near. If you think about the whole accident system (on which my suggestion is based) it doesn't make that much sense right now, all consequences can be compensated within the minute.
I'd like this to be how it worked, but only if it becomes possible to deliberately leave enemy ships in a boardable state during combat. make weapons that disable a target without destroying it
If you take my balancing idea of making boardability (pffrh^^) a likely state of a ship in the after action screen and combine it with
the fact that EMP weapons can kill crew without damaging the ship (I remember that right, yes?), you got your influence possibility and your weapon. Uh, and I got my concerns about the irrelevance of the Ion Cannon addressed. Wow, this meshes beautifully e/seems that the thing about EMP killing crew was a false rumor
I feel like another (added? It does mesh with your ideas) way to do this is to make marines more precious.
Definitely, and because you can only use a limited number of them, experienced marines will be especially valuable. I think the normal crew experience system would make sense for marines (right now it does not), except that XP should be gained in boarding actions obviously. I would not be opposed to higher standard marine costs either, that fancy armor can't be cheap.
You'd more likely send over boarding shuttles
If the lore is the problem, you can simply come up with a technical reason why boarding shuttles are not practical. E.g. no room for such shuttles in smaller ships, too few marines in a shuttle to board successfully, prone to destruction by sabotage etc.. Gameplay wise I see no advantage for shuttles.
wouldn't the valkyrie make boarding trivial? ~200 Spartans SPESS MEHREENS convicts with guns being prodded forward can easily overwhelm anything that isn't a paragon / astral.
The Valkyrie would indeed present a advantage, but then it has not much other use, so it would most likely be only a good ship for boarding specialists, pirates or the likes. Trivial should boarding be at no point, maybe my concept of balance is clear by now, but to recap: even if you outnumber your enemy 200:1 there would still be a significant possibility that the boarding fails and your ship gets damaged in the process.