solrac137 wrote:

Boarding should be a thing and the craver mod should give a huuge bonus towards boarding, maybe boarding torpedoes ? so you can board from long ranges? 

They already said no boarding, and to be honest, it does make sense not to. The logistics of it are rather silly.

Romeo wrote:

vahouth wrote:

Romeo wrote:

solrac137 wrote:

Boarding should be a thing and the craver mod should give a huuge bonus towards boarding, maybe boarding torpedoes ? so you can board from long ranges? 

They already said no boarding, and to be honest, it does make sense not to. The logistics of it are rather silly.

Why is it silly? Once in melee, grappling hooks or maned torpedoes. 

Because even in melee distance there's still several kilometres between them? A grappling hook would have to be ludicrously powerful, launched with utmost precision, capable of penetrating the hull of the craft and bypassing shields. Plus you'd have to store a few kilometres worth of cable. If you had a weapon that could do all that, why bother wasting space with cable? You'd just make hundreds of rounds that fulfilled those requirements.

Manned torpedoes would be even larger than missiles (Taking up way more space), would have to be non-lethal to preserve the occupent(s), would have to avoid being targeted (so as not to waste the cargo inside) and would have to have some method of breaching the other hull. Which, again, if you could do that, why even bother with the troop aspect? You'd just fill it full of explosives.

Devils advocate here is that boarding to capture a ship means you end the fight potentially with more power than you started with(or more tech).  It's not super realistic but then again neither is magic nanomachine currency.

Either way if it was added to the game it'd probably need a fully fleshed out system for it to actually make it interesting (since very few games with boarding have done it well), and as they've said it won't be on launch I don't think there's a huge point discussing it right now.

vahouth wrote:

Romeo wrote:

solrac137 wrote:

Boarding should be a thing and the craver mod should give a huuge bonus towards boarding, maybe boarding torpedoes ? so you can board from long ranges? 

They already said no boarding, and to be honest, it does make sense not to. The logistics of it are rather silly.

Why is it silly? Once in melee, grappling hooks or maned torpedoes. 

Because even in melee distance there's still several kilometres between them? A grappling hook would have to be ludicrously powerful, launched with utmost precision, capable of penetrating the hull of the craft and bypassing shields. Plus you'd have to store a few kilometres worth of cable. If you had a weapon that could do all that, why bother wasting space with cable? You'd just make hundreds of rounds that fulfilled those requirements.

Manned torpedoes would be even larger than missiles (Taking up way more space), would have to be non-lethal to preserve the occupent(s), would have to avoid being targeted (so as not to waste the cargo inside) and would have to have some method of breaching the other hull. Which, again, if you could do that, why even bother with the troop aspect? You'd just fill it full of explosives.

The Vodyani leech modules should be allowed to leech from allied and neutral planets, not just occupied enemy systems. Right now, it's just too inefficient considering that the essence costs scale up by 500 each time you build an ark! It doesn't make sense that they would make exceptions of not leeching from allies/neutral factions. Imagine your diplomat approaching one of them and says: "Give me all your essence and I'll not invade you, or refuse and I'll take every last system you have!" When it comes to implementation of faction traits, there should not be any discrimination regardless of diplomatic status.

I really like the idea of those!

I love this idea :D

Anything that makes factions more different from each others in terms of gameplay, cosmetics, etc. is a plus for me so yes, please consider adding more faction-specific ship modules, tech tree flavour text descriptions and more.

Romeo wrote:

solrac137 wrote:

Boarding should be a thing and the craver mod should give a huuge bonus towards boarding, maybe boarding torpedoes ? so you can board from long ranges? 

They already said no boarding, and to be honest, it does make sense not to. The logistics of it are rather silly.

Why is it silly? Once in melee, grappling hooks or maned torpedoes. 

One of the bigger game-changers for the Vodyani comes from their leech modules, which ends up becoming a pretty critical part of their playstyle. I hope the other factions get similar strategic options for fleets, because right now, there's little reason to field anything besides warships and colony ships once you've scouted all the anomalies.

Here are a few suggestions I have for other strategic, faction-specific modules:

-Sophons: Deep-space research module: Allows ships equipped with this module to passively generate bonus science when orbiting an asteroid field (or other celestial feature)

-Lumeris: Smuggler's hold: Parking a ship with this module in orbit above a system with exploited luxury resources lets it leech some amount of those resources. Pretty unpopular with the person you're leeching from!

-Cravers: Devourer module: Kind of an anti-colonisation module. Parking a ship with this module above a planet you own (or a planet that falls entirely under your influence) allows you to begin 'devouring' it. This destroys the colony and depletes its planets within a set number of turns (let's say 15) and, once done, generates global FIDS bonuses across your empire for a few turns. Also generates major approval penalties due to the terror caused by a faction strip-mining one of its own planets and killing the residents.

Boarding should be a thing and the craver mod should give a huuge bonus towards boarding, maybe boarding torpedoes ? so you can board from long ranges? 

Here's another vote for faction- and hull-specific modules.

You don't even need to be limited to one per faction. There could be an early game (tier 1) module and a late game (tier 3 or 4) module as well, either being an upgrade to the tier 1, or something that offers an entirely different ability. Or, you could divide it between 'passive/exploration' and 'military', so that, for example:

Military modules

Cravers: bio-bombs or whatnot

Vodyani: processor (absorbs essence from defeated manpower, population)

Lumeris: fifth column (spends Dust or Influence to convert enemy manpower to your side during the invasion)

Sophons: field testing (gain science from the invasion, depending on manpower, infrastructure, population destroyed)

Exploration modules

Cravers: devourer (strip mines the planet, which I think shouldn't be restricted to your own borders)

Vodyani: already have leechers

Lumeris: smuggler's hold (steals Luxury/strategic resource yield)

Sophons: deep-space research (very small science boost when moving along starlanes, bigger for free movement, bigger boost when exploring new areas, bigger boost when orbiting asteroid fields or neutral systems)

I think these are good ideas, but not sure about if this concrete examples will be balanced. but anyway, your general idea is good and want to see it in game release.

More race specific modules is always good, but that craver one is likely way way too good, especially since you'd likely make them stack for it to make any sense.  Maybe just jacking the numbers up would do it though (100 turns for 1 sort of thing with the boost being every turn, and much smaller, instead).

I also like the idea of hull specific modules to help differentiate the various era 3 hulls from each other.

This is a good idea! It really helps further diversifying each faction's playstyle by focusing on their stregth.

About the Craver module though, wouldn't it be more fitting if that was an invasion module instead? I was thinking something that either increases the ship's manpower or adds a new Craver specific invasion option, like replacing preemptive bombardment with biobombs.

Giving the Cravers the ability to destroy an enemy system and render it permanently uninhabitable in one swoop would be pretty OP (especially if you don't even need to win a ground invasion to do it).

What I envisioned the Devourer module being good for is sending a vanguard fleet after your main one to burn unwanted colonies you've captured in a war, and deny them to the enemy.

Agree with Soulinet - make the Cravers one beneficial against foes, and these all sound awesome!

The devouring module should work only on enemy planets. That would be a lot of fun. Aside from that, the general idea of faction-specific modules is a really good one.