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.