I'm sure it's already been talked about to death, from what I've read SS+ increases the chances and I've read some rumbling that the system might be due an overhaul. Since I'm new though and ship capture has been my number 1 gripe about the currently implemented content, I wanted to detail some of my thoughts on improving the system WITHOUT simply increasing RNG chances.
As it currently exists in game, in order to capture a ship you need to
- Find that ship in an enemy fleet (RNG)
- Disable that ship and win the battle
- NOT completely destroy the ship
- Chance the enemy powers back up any ship(RNG)
- Chance they power up the specific ship (RNG)
- Chance of boarding/capture success (RNG with critical failure)
Basically there are 4 separate RNG mechanics working against you. If you want to capture any specific non-common ship without savescumming, you need on order of 1 in 10,000 rng luck
So lets break down each RNG component and see how we can put more player agency on that factor, rather than simply bumping up the chances:
Finding the shipIncrease the information available to the player before he can see the enemy fleet. For military ships, this could be a good function for the secure comm relay (sniffer). With a sniffer in place, fleets for that faction could display their full composition on the map screen. For pirates, bounties could be expanded to provide some more information, which would also go a long way to help those people who don't think fighting onslaught bounties is worth it.
Chance of ship powering upThis can be improved with specialized weapons and skills. Perhaps EMP damage can be expanded to disable ships with higher power levels, or additional damage types could be invented. This could also work in reverse, where the base chance is raised significantly but say, explosive damage drastically reduces the capture chance.
Further, the location of damages to the hull can affect this stat. Targetting the engines specifically and doing a majority of your damage there could increase the probability, or perhaps simply a surgical strike where all the damage is concentrated in any single section of the ship.
Chance the specific ship powers up In the current implementation, only one ship per combat has a chance to enable boarding. This could be eliminated entirely, allowing the enemy a chance (based on the above) to attempt to flee with any or all ships disabled. Then the player can be given a choice of which ships he wants to board, even allowing boarding of multiple ships at the same time (requiring a different boarder ship for each one).
Chance of boarding/capture successThis could be improved based on the number and type of crew/marine sent over to board, as well as a new skill governing boarding, as well as (with the above) the number of ships you attempt to board at the same time. When using hard-dock, the class of ship used for docking could also impact this result. Special troop-transport boarding ships could be put in the game to facilitate easier boarding
Boarding with too many OR too few troops should decrease your chance of success. A large boarding party may be slower than a small one, giving the enemy time to self destruct, or else damaging the ship unnecessarily with overkill. The type of ship used for boarding and the size of the target ship can both impact this, how many connecting points on the hull can troops be inserted?
The end result should be that a player who does NOT specifically intend to board and capture ships has roughly the same probability of capturing any random ship as they currently do, but one who DOES intend to capture ships could have better than 50/50 odds of taking their desired ship intact, if they play the combat right.
