it was an awesome tactic in MOO2. each ship had a number of marines on it based on size. an enemy ship had to be immobile to be boarded, and you needed to get right next to it.. starbases and such started out immobile, but ships would need to have engines damaged or something. when boarding you would choose to attempt to sabatoge the vessel and damage ship's systems, or to attempt to capture the ship for your self. and there was always a self destruct option. later tech would allow for assault shuttle to extend range, troops pods to carry more marines, etc.

Strobe wrote:
Or something like the faction being boarded, as well. The pirate captain isn't going to blow up his ship as a screw you to the boarders. The fanatic religious captain probably will.

Civilian captains would surrender. Military captains? Unlikely. Not only is it a compeltely different mindeset, but you dont' get to be a captain wihout proving yourself and being willing to die.

/me points TrashMan to the recent poll on the subject of the Pirates.



Crime lords and syndicates. You don't get as high as you do in those organizations without knowing when to not get yourself killed. Descretion is the better part of valor (and profit).

Nosferatiel wrote:
If there's to be any kind of "crew morale" and an externally triggered triggered self-destruct button, I'd like there to be a severe malus on morale for installing such a device, unless we're talking about a hivemind-crew or robots.

Would there need to be a "device" fitted, I was thinking more along the lines of a command to the computer to activate an overload in the engine to cause an expolsion. But if it had to be a device I do like the idea that some sort of morale test would be triggered on the ships crew to see if they would fly with it. Although related back to my first point, the ship which would be triggered to blow up would have any crew on it, hence being used as a decoy

THIS WOULD BE A COOL FETURE AND LIKE SOMEONE SAID (srry didnt realize i had caps on) like in starwars battlefront u could board but this should only apply to large ships (like the frigate or bigger in the HALO series) nothing smaller than a troop transport thats like the mellinium falcon from starwars. ( i know i spelled it wrong)

Boarding is in SOTS, and it works great. Hell, its even in Space Empires V.



And it works great damn it!



I think that pretty much any ship with a large enough interior could be boarded. Simply fire a few boarding pods after taking out weapons and defences at a certain angle, they dock and they immediately get cracking on taking the ship.



Of course, some races ships should be substantially harder to board then others. A human attempting to board a human ship, easy. A human attempting to board a aquatic ship, hard. A human attempting to board a solid state machine race ship with no interior?



Down right impossible.

Maulka wrote:
Would there need to be a "device" fitted, I was thinking more along the lines of a command to the computer to activate an overload in the engine to cause an expolsion. But if it had to be a device I do like the idea that some sort of morale test would be triggered on the ships crew to see if they would fly with it. Although related back to my first point, the ship which would be triggered to blow up would have any crew on it, hence being used as a decoy

Why would you sacrifice a capital ship to kill a few soldiers. That's just bad math.

Danne wrote:
Why would you sacrifice a capital ship to kill a few soldiers. That's just bad math.

Depends. Stuff a cheap ship full of explosive machinery or plain explosives, wait for an enemy ship to come close to board, detonate it... and watch two ships explode.

If a selfdestruct didn't do area-damage, it would be half the fun.

Strobe wrote:
/me points TrashMan to the recent poll on the subject of the Pirates.



Crime lords and syndicates. You don't get as high as you do in those organizations without knowing when to not get yourself killed. Descretion is the better part of valor (and profit).

Eh? Pirates aren't miltiary. And pirates don't engage military ships. They go after civilian ships.



Being a pirate in space would be next to impossible. You'll never be a match for any military ship. Spaceships will never be cheap and plentifull. Your "prey" will see you coming from a million miles away. You can't hide easily. You can't land on any planet or even approach it.

TrashMan wrote:
Eh? Pirates aren't miltiary. And pirates don't engage military ships. They go after civilian ships.



Being a pirate in space would be next to impossible. You'll never be a match for any military ship. Spaceships will never be cheap and plentifull. Your "prey" will see you coming from a million miles away. You can't hide easily. You can't land on any planet or even approach it.

All well and good to think, except you're ignoring the clear and irrefutable "Pirate" faction that we've actually been voting on a background for lately. Whether or not you dislike the pirates, they will exist.

This (boarding) is a great option to have in a space game, but it should be abstract, not direct control of the boarding party. MOO2 had a decent system for it, if maybe a bit over-simplified. There should also be weapons that do no damage, but kill crew so we can build ships specifically for boarding operations.

Maby the borading can be done only by the "boarding team" , a unit that you create specificly for this task. When you board the unit a statistic graph show you the health of the team and capture progress. You can send multiple teams (but they cost a lot of resources ) improving chances of capturing the ship. The better the ship its harder to capture it, because it has better defences bouth external and internal. Ships crew kills your boarding team, ships internal defences kill your team. You could boost your ships defenses threw the tech tree or individualy for each ship

you could make it like a bebuff? if bording is succesful it could get a debuff eg, weapon strength down or lower shield strength caused by damage from boarding party???

Anyone ever play Strat First's Man o War?



Sail of the line and boarding vs cannons was a constant decision process across the fleet. all you could do was give your fleet general orders and the fall out was determined by combat tactics. It was interesting... tough but interesting.



I like the idea of a slightly richer tactical combat model than just 2d rock vs. scissors... somehow this team gives me confidence they're thinking this part through

Strobe wrote:
All well and good to think, except you're ignoring the clear and irrefutable "Pirate" faction that we've actually been voting on a background for lately. Whether or not you dislike the pirates, they will exist.

I never said I disliked pirates.

The ONLY thing I said is that realistly, space pirates are hihgly improbable.

Master of Orion 2 had marine boarding parties...was irritating as hell getting bombarded by your own ships, lol. When you captured the ship it was disabled for the battle so the owner still has a chance to destroy it or recapture, if they lost the battle though the ship would secured by the captor and turned against its owner. :eek:

Ship boarding is always an interesting gameplay mechanic. I always got scared when the computer would bring in Marine frigates in Homeworld 2. Boarding an enemy ship to take control of it is a viable tactic, but only if the player's civilizations understands the enemy civ's tech (i realize this may be more realistic than necessary, but it seems like a cool idea). The pirate faction could focus heavily on boarding and controlling other faction's ships. Maybe the pirates could even lay traps for ships that immobilize or disable shields. If you've seen the TV show Firefly, I'm thinking of the lady the captain "marries" and she totally jacks the ship and takes it to her buddies, immobilizing the ship in the process. Pirates would have to be crafty in order to stay alive and shouldn't be able to stand up to direct military power, IMHO.

Also, what if boarding parties can capture enemy crew, which allows players to ransom the crew off to the enemy. If we want realism, every war has P.O.W.s. If we want realism. haha

Shazbot wrote:
Also, what if boarding parties can capture enemy crew, which allows players to ransom the crew off to the enemy. If we want realism, every war has P.O.W.s. If we want realism. haha

Well, but many wars had a cruel annihilation of leftover P.O.W.s in masses? Never been easier than flushing them out of the airlock in space, you know? XD

Nosferatiel wrote:
Never been easier than flushing them out of the airlock in space, you know? XD

Well, you've certainly got that right. Who would want to worry about feeding and housing thousands, if not millions of P.O.W.s? Especially if there isn't a button to push that makes the enemy give you money for returning those P.O.W.s.

Perhaps a simplification. There could be a battle action (from a hero) that uses the melee score of the Hero.



The battle action would involve one or more of the following on a success:

Prevent the some number of ship(s) from taking actions for 1 turn //while they fight of the invading party

Damage the ship //As the damage from internal fighting/sabotage

Capture the ship //The boarder succeeded, probably appropriate for a crit success.



Animation wise you would see a bunch of small, missile or shuttle like objects fly out and attach to the enemy ship.

maceman wrote:
This reminds me most of Sid Meiers Pirates. If you would go up against a Pirate with lots of men on board you would shellack him from afar. Now if you were said pirate with lots of men you would do your best to board and 'take' the ship.



Why can't we have space marines, tractor beams, boarding parties/away teams and a string of freighters we've captured to carry all our ill gotten 'Dust'?



After reading that incredible background 'Universe' posted in the stickys I can imagine several different levels of sub games fitting within the same universe... from a more CivAlpha Centauri focused (The Endless wars) to the Dust wars (I more and more like the potential of Dust being everywhere as an unknown/untapped resource) which would likely be more Galaxy wide with Jedi-like powered individuals running around?



Then again boarding in pirates was only half the fun. Can't see a 4X breaking down to the cutlass to rapier level of combat.

Why not. Was capturing ships all the time in MOO2. May have been capturing crap ships, but you could refit the hulls with your own tech. Way to work stealing tech into a game too.

TrashMan wrote:
Civilian captains would surrender. Military captains? Unlikely. Not only is it a compeltely different mindeset, but you dont' get to be a captain wihout proving yourself and being willing to die.

Military mind set not to the last man. If a battle is lost and it pointless to die they surrender. That kinda why they have terms like POW, prisoner exchange, wave the white flag. They been surrendering in hopeless situations since they have been making armies.

TrashMan wrote:
Eh? Pirates aren't miltiary. And pirates don't engage military ships. They go after civilian ships.



Being a pirate in space would be next to impossible. You'll never be a match for any military ship. Spaceships will never be cheap and plentifull. Your "prey" will see you coming from a million miles away. You can't hide easily. You can't land on any planet or even approach it.

Umm, right. It's kinda hard to see a speck from hundreds of thousands, never mind millions of kilometers away. Is why it so hard to find even asteroids coming toward Earth now. Sure, you have sensors, but then you have light-speed lag. And there is also flying doggo so you keep your emissions down. And not engaging the military presupposes the military ISN'T actively hunting them down. Which happens to be a primary job of any military throughout time.

And given that you have to travel by string, you have bottlenecks to patrol, not every angle of approach. Sure, you have the tech that lets you direct warp, nice big fancy expensive engines, that the pirates wont be able to afford, in theory, and practice since have yet to see them fly straight anywhere.

This thread is the origin of all boarding vessels/abilities discussions.

Other threads about this have been archived:

/#/endless-space/forum/29-archives/thread/13143-suggestion-boarding-vessels

/#/endless-space/forum/29-archives/thread/13203-suggestion-ship-capture

/#/endless-space/forum/29-archives/thread/13175-suggestion-boarding

/#/endless-space/forum/29-archives/thread/13729-suggestion-boarding-parties



Feel free to post here about this topic here and inform yourself about the variations the threads listed above have already discussed, but don't open new suggestion threads for anything alike.

IT'S A GREAT IDEA THAT HAVE BEEN FOU UP IN THE FORUMS SERVEL TIMES HOPE THEY WILL USE SO WE CAN CATURE ENEMY SHIPS CHECK OUT HERE /#/endless-space/forum/29-archives/thread/13672-some-ideas

I like it here already At least you are going to try (at some point)!

Obviously, there is gonna be a lot of ships in an armada. Maybe the board feature only applies to mother ships???

Create terrestrial units ?

It may be a good idea. If a pilot died in his ship, the ship could be automatically destroyed easily by enemies !



And on another view, a unit could control or capture an enemy ship !!

In my opinion you can just board a ship after destroying its engine.

When he flys at 0.1 or 0.05c. You can't board it without destroying the two ship. And he can easily dodge by making random movement.

But board battle can be fun.



escuse me if my english is quite aproximative.

it may be difficult to add in our current battle system, but it is too cool not to add it at some point

definitely added to our wish list!

Well, we have the hopes you guys wil make it sooner rather than later.

Just do remember to have the self-destruct-button ready as an available counter...

Is there any 4X that is this feature ?



In X3:TC you can actually board a ship, but it's a really difficult move.

In my opinion you can just board a ship after destroying its engine.

And the shield. I do not think your little soldiers will love being shocked by an high-density energy field



Ion cannon ftw.

If you can conquer planet or colony why not ship or space station. This is not FPP. All you need is proper equipment and opportunity.

If you've disabled a ship and shields, you should be able to board and take whatever cargo the ship has. However... upon stealing said cargo, there should be a random chance that you trip a self destruct and are blown to bits

If you've disabled a ship and shields, you should be able to board and take whatever cargo the ship has. However... upon stealing said cargo, there should be a random chance that you trip a self destruct and are blown to bits

Yaaaaaaa...... rather not have that feature. It's impractical that a ship has a "cleverly concealed self destruct button" somewhere, unless it's the bridge. And even then, it would be like a star trek self destruct.



I would love to have a "Board" feature. You could also have fighter ships that are full of troops that can be sent to attempt to board. (Think BF2 style space gunships)

This reminds me most of Sid Meiers Pirates. If you would go up against a Pirate with lots of men on board you would shellack him from afar. Now if you were said pirate with lots of men you would do your best to board and 'take' the ship.



Why can't we have space marines, tractor beams, boarding parties/away teams and a string of freighters we've captured to carry all our ill gotten 'Dust'?



After reading that incredible background 'Universe' posted in the stickys I can imagine several different levels of sub games fitting within the same universe... from a more CivAlpha Centauri focused (The Endless wars) to the Dust wars (I more and more like the potential of Dust being everywhere as an unknown/untapped resource) which would likely be more Galaxy wide with Jedi-like powered individuals running around?



Then again boarding in pirates was only half the fun. Can't see a 4X breaking down to the cutlass to rapier level of combat.

Boarding is a nice option for fights, true enough.



Albeit I rather expect boarding to be something else than ships matching velocity and going at it. Perhaps something more along the lines of a technology (Boarding torpedoes) with an extra-prerequisite in ship-building (more life support due to the boarding troops).



That being said, that is for me a nice to have feature and not a must.



P.S. : In Pirates, I also usually favored boarding.

Danne wrote:
Yaaaaaaa...... rather not have that feature. It's impractical that a ship has a "cleverly concealed self destruct button" somewhere, unless it's the bridge. And even then, it would be like a star trek self destruct.



I would love to have a "Board" feature. You could also have fighter ships that are full of troops that can be sent to attempt to board. (Think BF2 style space gunships)

Well perhaps the chance of tripping the self destruct would lessen if your crew had invested in "engineers" of some sort... as an outfit to your ship... thus making boarding another ship not just a click of a button or key but rather something you have to invest time and money into. I know from past games, once you're able to board ships, its really easy to get into the habit of just pirating the galaxies and forgetting about the rest of the ways in which to earn a living, amass an empire...

Hey. New member, like your idea a lot. the thing i as a gamer would like to see the most in a space orientated game that i have yet to see done properly in a game would be boarding battles. The closest that springs to mind would be star wars battlefront 2 (space battles). for me its the most fun part of any space battle. imagine your ship in a dog fight with a much bigger ship a fight you could never win with projectile weaponry alone. your loosing the fight and decide to risk boarding the enemy ship. you get into a fighter class or smaller ship, anything around you really. you manage to safely reach the enemy ship during all the chaos caused from two ships firing upon each other. you enter the hangar, navigating your way through these alien corridors, some with enemy troops in that you have to skirmish with. gun fights in these narrow corridors. where there is danger of flanking troops. after fighting your way past all that, then to finally reach a vital area of he ship plant an explosive devise. Not wanting to risk an enemy discover your device and disarm it. you decide to hold off until it detonates. winning the UN-winnable battle!







You could add boarding ability to the 'skill tree' and depending on how high your level is you may or may not succeed. If your afraid your enemy might attempt to board your ship you could invest in interior security (turrets, more guards) and less on your ships gunnery. think star wars and star gate. I've seen various clips in the films and series when the good guys are on the bad guys ship trying to take it down from the inside as its their ownly option. or in starwars case the rbels desperately trying to hold off the storm troopers in the narrow confinements of a ship.

boarding ships should not be an easy task. I would set a parameter of xperience. Your ship has to hove a certan amount of xp to be able to board an enemy ship, regardless to your upgrades. Investing money in developing boarding technology is the first part, your ships crews must be trained ( enough xps) to board ships. After enough combat xps your ship crew unlocks the capibility of boarding. A ship that is light in combat mode , after enough xps , can be alterd to boarding mode.

Maybe, create a new small spaceship which can be improved.



It will be difficult to communicate with the men in the enemy spaceship (if we want change their objectives).



We can obtain information from enemies who have invaded us.



But if, in this game, there are shields, we can invade spaceships only if the shields are switched off (outside of a battle) or break down (in a battle).

Well perhaps the chance of tripping the self destruct would lessen if your crew had invested in "engineers" of some sort... as an outfit to your ship... thus making boarding another ship not just a click of a button or key but rather something you have to invest time and money into. I know from past games, once you're able to board ships, its really easy to get into the habit of just pirating the galaxies and forgetting about the rest of the ways in which to earn a living, amass an empire...

Or, just not have a self destruct. Bear in mind, i really oppose this idea, because even if you lessen the odds, there will always be a chance of blowing up for no reason. I do think it should be difficult to board, and i stick with my idea of troop carriers.

So long as there are counters like security stations, options to add extra marines to a ship design, and so on, I think boarding actions will be a great feature.



I'd go so far as to add I would love seeing some minigame/detailed boarding action added ... ala Star Fleet II, though admittedly, that's getting a bit more into the ship simulator side of things rather than strategy.

If you're going to have boarding by enterboat, direct connection of two ships, perhaps even teleport and are going to have internal automated and manual defenses and external defenses like shields, then don't you need some kind of external weaponry to ease your way inside?

MOO2 had some weaponry like the neutron blasters designed for killing the crew before destroying the ship. From torpedoes with toxic gasses to radiation warfare and even nanite boarding you'd basically have a very wide range of options to soften your target even internally before boarding.

The catch might be that toxic gasses and radiation won't work against very large ships effectively. Too many airlocks and armor between the outer hull and the crew in the core parts.

Zep' wrote:
Is there any 4X that is this feature ?



In X3:TC you can actually board a ship, but it's a really difficult move.



And the shield. I do not think your little soldiers will love being shocked by an high-density energy field

As it should.

Space is a harsh enviroment and boarding a military ships is next to impossible. Not only considering all the hazzards once you actually get there(venting the room, internal automated defenses or god-knows-what), diffculty in geting there (your boarding pod getting easily shot down by point-defense systems), and the whole thing about enemy knowing their ship and having the means to blow it up rather than surreneder it....

No matter how difficult it should be in the middle of combat, it should still be an option to undertake, especially if you want to capture the ship or even just parts of it intact after a fleet action. Not everyone wants to die like that, and I'd wager that more than a few would sooner surrender their ship if it meant they lived than willingly blow it up in spite.

Strobe wrote:
No matter how difficult it should be in the middle of combat, it should still be an option to undertake, especially if you want to capture the ship or even just parts of it intact after a fleet action. Not everyone wants to die like that, and I'd wager that more than a few would sooner surrender their ship if it meant they lived than willingly blow it up in spite.

So you think any chance of the crew self-destructing the ship should scale with sth. like nicety? If you're playing the good guy, always letting the enemy soldiers free instead of executing or enslaving them, the message will go around and ships boarded by you will be more likely to surrender?

Or something like the faction being boarded, as well. The pirate captain isn't going to blow up his ship as a screw you to the boarders. The fanatic religious captain probably will.

Boarding ships would be nice, not only to capture but also to reduce the efficiency of the enemy ship. But as I can see it in few vs few battles, I somehow cannot imagine it as hundreds of ships send marines to board hundreds of ships

any boarding/self destruct options should only be available in multipule vs multipule battles, any side with one ship could be some what pointless to have option as no one would want to blow up there ship without any spares.



I would agree with NO to boarding forces being able to trip a self destruct option. But I would raise the idea of the force who controls the ship that is being boarded having the option to send a comms to activate a self destruct option. For example, the ship that is being boarded could be a decoy and be rigged to blow from the start, you could lure the enemy to try and board your ship and once they are close enough blow them up and take them out. Possibly have the option to put additional skills into this "decoy" option to increase the blast radius to damage/take out surrounding ships/units

Maulka wrote:
I would agree with NO to boarding forces being able to trip a self destruct option. But I would raise the idea of the force who controls the ship that is being boarded having the option to send a comms to activate a self destruct option. For example, the ship that is being boarded could be a decoy and be rigged to blow from the start, you could lure the enemy to try and board your ship and once they are close enough blow them up and take them out. Possibly have the option to put additional skills into this "decoy" option to increase the blast radius to damage/take out surrounding ships/units

If there's to be any kind of "crew morale" and an externally triggered triggered self-destruct button, I'd like there to be a severe malus on morale for installing such a device, unless we're talking about a hivemind-crew or robots.