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Author Topic: At last! What to do about ship capturing/boarding.  (Read 23696 times)

nomadic_leader

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Re: At last! What to do about ship capturing/boarding.
« Reply #45 on: July 26, 2015, 03:38:52 AM »

Yea if you read the earlier posts in the thread, there are tonnes of ways to balance it and tonnes of games since the 80s have managed to do so. So the balance/exploit concerns are kind of void IMHO.
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Requal

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Re: At last! What to do about ship capturing/boarding.
« Reply #46 on: September 23, 2015, 12:12:03 PM »

Sounds good!
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Zanfib

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Re: At last! What to do about ship capturing/boarding.
« Reply #47 on: October 01, 2015, 08:59:21 AM »

Is losing ships in boarding actions to self destructs realistic?
Yes. Yes it is.
Is it fun?
No. No it isn't.


I'm not sure it is realistic. How often do real world ships self-destruct in response to boarding actions? Almost never.
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SafariJohn

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Re: At last! What to do about ship capturing/boarding.
« Reply #48 on: October 01, 2015, 10:21:04 AM »

Self destructing spaceships are a staple of science fiction. Considering that they are almost always using very high power energy sources it isn't so far-fetched.

Also, real world ships aren't spaceships.
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machinech

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Re: At last! What to do about ship capturing/boarding.
« Reply #49 on: October 01, 2015, 12:29:36 PM »

Granted it could be considered a sci-fy "staple"...

As pointed out...the frequency is a bit less then fun for many. Also worth considering in regards to realism...

Being advanced enough to not only travel the stars, but wage war in them, why would a ship EVER consider simply sidling up to an enemy and attempt to board while simply praying the other doesn't blow up. The frequency with which it occurs via game mechanics makes it a VERY poor choice tactically for any but the most desperate, needy, or foolish. During such an action, it's worth considering, many steps would be taken to prevent such an occurrence in addition to taking any an all available steps to mitigate the effects of a self destruct.

Would be interesting, if possible, to see more options and stages for boarding actions to better reflect the choices and options one could employ.

Possible suggestions:

Options to allow for allocation of assault forces to better reflect the probable use of multi-pronged assaults on multiple critical ship components an key areas.

Ship module/systems for ships specializing in boarding actions that would mitigate the effects of a self destruct.

Varied types of marines allowing one to customize their assault via specialists

Allowing marines to garner experience, and through such a system, grow into various roles

Considering the above, ship boarding has the potential to become a interesting  mechanic. Granted this is all with the complete understanding that it's ultimately up to Alex, and any helping him, as to whether or not such things would enhance or simply complicate matters. This is all just rough idea's in raw form, and I have no doubt already been considered in some form or another.
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rex

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Re: At last! What to do about ship capturing/boarding.
« Reply #50 on: October 06, 2015, 05:36:25 PM »

Is losing ships in boarding actions to self destructs realistic?
Yes. Yes it is.
Is it fun?
No. No it isn't.


I'm not sure it is realistic. How often do real world ships self-destruct in response to boarding actions? Almost never.

Scuttling is a pretty common thing during wars, to prevent ships from being captured.

Ships don't sink too well in space, so being able to blow them up or do enough damage to make them useless is probably not much of a stretch. 
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: At last! What to do about ship capturing/boarding.
« Reply #51 on: October 06, 2015, 05:42:32 PM »

Scuttling is a pretty common thing during wars, to prevent ships from being captured.

Ships don't sink too well in space, so being able to blow them up or do enough damage to make them useless is probably not much of a stretch.  
When a ship is scuttled, it's often scuttled when in a non-combat situation - it takes a lot of explosives placed in specific parts of a ship to disable it well and properly.  The crew also usually abandons ship before they blow it as well.
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Ftlmaxpower

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Re: At last! What to do about ship capturing/boarding.
« Reply #52 on: October 17, 2015, 11:00:17 AM »

I apologize if this has been said already. I think having experience levels for marines and maybe officers that could lead them for even better results would be nice to have. If there could be some ship techs that you could add on or have built in for dealing with anti boarding operations that would decrease boarders chances. I mean lets face it taking over a tramp freighter should be a lot easier to board and loot then a top of the line military warship.
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Ftlmaxpower

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Re: At last! What to do about ship capturing/boarding.
« Reply #53 on: October 17, 2015, 11:38:13 AM »

I think boarding is a very fun part of this game as it is an option that would be available especially more so to pirate factions. You could even have bounty hunters get like double the reward for capturing a pirate alive as incentive for boarding. You could have bounties where pirates stole a ship and the owner wants it back. I think things like this would add more fun to combat as you have to make sure you use weapons that disable ships and not destroy them. Your reputation and fleet strength should be able to get a trade fleet that really has no chance to surrender. If they don't you would have to disable and board the merchant ships in order to get any loot. A pirate especially starting out as a nobody is going to be a very very poor pirate if he cant board ships to get at the loot. I think ultimately the best way to look at it is if you don't want to do any boarding of ships or mess with the boarding part of the game, don't play a pirate faction as they are the ones that rely on it to make a living.
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gruberscomplete

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Re: At last! What to do about ship capturing/boarding.
« Reply #54 on: November 01, 2015, 09:21:58 AM »

You would think that you would SCAN the ship you were boarding before you boarded it! So you have some information about its hull integrity. Also, custom hull modules can be equipped to prevent explosions(freeze the ship, drain its fuel, cut its power supply).

Then, when you actually board it and you know its not gonna blow up, the two crewmen on board probably will not be able to get the engines back up and running, so the ship will not simply enter hyperspace and run away from you.

The last problem is the crew fighting to their last breath, which shouldn't happen, as they are probably already injured from surviving a ship explosion(what happens when you disable a ship in combat). So the crew is not going to fight.

Lastly, your crewmen will probably be able to mothball the ship, even if it is beyond repair capability, and tow it to a hangar to have a total ship repair/replacement.
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mangalore

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Re: At last! What to do about ship capturing/boarding.
« Reply #55 on: November 01, 2015, 10:01:56 AM »

Scuttling is a pretty common thing during wars, to prevent ships from being captured.

Ships don't sink too well in space, so being able to blow them up or do enough damage to make them useless is probably not much of a stretch.  
When a ship is scuttled, it's often scuttled when in a non-combat situation - it takes a lot of explosives placed in specific parts of a ship to disable it well and properly.  The crew also usually abandons ship before they blow it as well.

The main question is why all those crews rather commit suicide and murder a bunch of guys than surrender? Also, supposedly the ships main means to self destruct exploded when you disabled the ship aka what we get are already hulls whose main reactor exploded so what precisely are the hapless crew members who just survived that just now blowing up next?

Though that begs the question if such hulls are worth salvaging at all as these explosions should pretty much ruin the internal structure of the ship making it questionable you'd even want to use that anymore. A buckled and warped hull could ruin a naval ship from a mine or torpedo without even sinking it. Even if it made it back to port it would be worth scrap and would be broken up.


Thinking about it ships blown up like this should be worth nothing, only some of their cargo and weapons salvagable and not really be able to self destruct anymore.

An interesting thing is if you could use ion canons and emp to disable a ship intact and then use marines to board in battle to actually take over a functioning ship. This would be great for pirating and very circumstancial for warships outside hunting freigthers.

I would still disable self destructing though. Except absolute lunatics in space said ship and the mercy of the other guys is the only thing keeping you alive so if you are not suicidal you would rather surrender and give them the ship intact because if you just murdered 100 marines you will not get a ticket in the brig but a shot in the head.
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Ranakastrasz

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Re: At last! What to do about ship capturing/boarding.
« Reply #56 on: November 01, 2015, 04:01:02 PM »

Vacuum had a far more reasonable boarding system, at least in that it went and set boarding as a Fact Accomplished after the battle, based on, presumably, marine count vs some comparison of enemy ships disabled but not destroyed (which was really easy to do in Vacuum due to insane damage values) and probably biased/amplified based on several boarding weapons.

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I could imagine in battle capture as you boarding enemy ships that surrended. If an enemy ship has less than say 10% health and your ships have enough firepower available to kill it within, say, 2 seconds, then it would surrender. Higher threshhold for mothballed ships when chasing, naturally.
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