Boarding parties question

[Aegis]

Ok, first of all when boarding troop transports the nature of the ship needs to be taken into account. The changes proposed are for ships where the marines and the crew intermingle. The entire ship needs to be geared towards holding only a couple of hundred crew members some of the time, and thousands of marines at other times. Facilities like cantinas etc. need to be expanded, after all the regular crew needs these for long voyages, hence the troops, who share facilities will want them too.
The price I think is too high.
Presently it's different. The troops are isolated in the cargo hold. Personally I like this. In fact, the troops may even be cyrogenically frozen for long voyages with minimum hassle. This seems very sensible and cost-effective in the long run. Now, however only the crew is available to defend the ship. On a side note, I do believe these cyrogenically frozen marines are loyal to their empire, so if the ship is taken they should not be available to the border. Either they're jettisoned, or, for the more ethical of us, they are returned to thier families sans weapons. Gameplay-wise of course there would be no difference.

Secondly though, I want to look at the nature of the crew. If there is no crew, but rather a master computer, then theoretically the ship could be built to be boarder resistant. There would be small engineering tubes for repair bots, or with nano-technology even these would not be necessary. To take control of a ship like this would require some sort of computer virus to change the computers character. I would like this, if computer warfare not just included destructive algorithms, but also subversive ones.
If we do have a crew however, then it seems unrealistic that they cannot fight to defend the ship. Here I would prefer if each living quarters was fitted with a defensive value. Ships with people would thus become more resistant to boarding the more living quarters, and hence crew, that were aboard. The defensive value could be set at 25% of the value of defensive lasers( so it would still be worth using these against human opponents, as they are twice as effective per kT), simply as a modification to the present tech. Any of the mod experts out there could do that with ease.

Third, the fact that boarding parties are destroyed after use is not too surprising if they need to crew the enemy ship etc. It would be nice however to decide how many boarders to send.

Finally, requiring ships to be immobile. Hmm. At present I see boarding parties as short-range assault shuttles that attach themselves to the hull and bore through (hence when shields are up their mini-lasers cannot breach them (high damage lasers, but very local => able to breach a hull, but not an energy defence system that moves energy to where the damage is). It would be interesting if low-level boarding parties did indeed require an immobile ship, (i.e. boarders ship needs to attach itself to enemy hull), mid-level could attack a moving ship if it was close range, (as now), high level could attack a ship at range 2 or even 3, and top-level could attack range 3 through normal (but not phased) shields (tranporter tech).

[E. Albright]

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Originally posted by Aegis:
Finally, requiring ships to be immobile. Hmm. At present I see boarding parties as short-range assault shuttles that attach themselves to the hull and bore through (...)

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The only problem with the above is that Self Destruct Device components take out both ships, no matter how strong the boarding vessel is, shield or no, etc. The only way I could rationalize this would be locked hulls or the like, else why can't SDD ships be used as Uber-Kamikazi vessels?

[E. Albright]

quote:

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Originally posted by Nyx:
If the enemy does not have a security station, unless you hit a bug, you will always capture them if you board. Security stations are more powerful than boarding parties. You need more marines than the enemy has defensive lasers to capture a ship. So at any given level of tech, a Security Station is worth 1.5 boarding parties.

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Actually, no. At least not in the demo, and I've seen no mention of changes to this in patch histories. I just ran a quick batch of tests in the ol' simulator and this is what I found: one level of Boarding Parties is sufficent to capture one Crew Quarter. Hence, to take a Battlestation, you need at least 1xBP IV (or 4xBP I, etc.). If, however, the Battlestation merely has a Master Computer, 1xBP I can take it over (yes, MCs make it easier to capture ships...). It is possible to fail in capturing a ship, but it's not easy...

Edit: As a further note, I don't think that the 1.5 effectiveness ratio for Security Stations cited is acurate. To wit: if I take a 1xBP III ship and try to capture a ship with 1xCQ & 1xSS I, I fail. If I try with a 1xBP IV ship, I succeed. And to confirm that CQ is still an issue, 1xBP IV fails vs. 2xCQ & 1xSS I. 1xBP V will capture this. Hence, I'm lead to believe that one level of SS is equal to 3 CQ (and thus it takes BP III to take out a ship w/ SS I, plus one more level of BP per CQ). This makes sense, as it means that 1xSS I (20kt, 3 "CQ") is more effective than 2xCQ (20kt, 2 "CQ").

Edit: All is not as it seems... I ran into an irregularity which I couldn't figure out. The above is true in most cases, but I had an instance when a 1xBP III failed to capture a 1xSS I. A 1xBP IV could do so, and could also capture a 1xCQ & 1xSS I. Something screwy is going on with this, but I can't put my finger on it. This weirdness only arose out of ships w/ Master Computers, but that may not mean anything...

[This message has been edited by ealbright (edited 23 January 2001).]

[Baron Munchausen]

Observations on many peoples comments:

1) Yes, boarding combat is resolved too quickly. It ought to take more than a single combat round at least sometimes. The ship should be "neutralized" and unusable by either side while the combat is going on. In fact, it should not count as belonging to anyone while it is contested. This might lead to interesing tactics like the original owner firing on his own boarded ships in order to insure that technology is not captured.

2) I'm glad that crew quarters have SOME effect. I was going to suggest that we add a weak boarding defense ability to them. Glad that MM thought of this.

3) It's _possible_ to build ships to be resistant to boarders but not easy. A ship that resists boarding as suggested will have to be a completely different sort of design than a ship originally designed for crew and converted. Perhaps this could be added as a "special ability" that can be purchased for extra cost somehow. This is a completely unexplored area of ship construction in SE. Hulls cannot be endowed with "abilities" of any sort outside of components. If we could have "abilities" that are not actual components as technologies we could have "stealth" races like MOO (cloaking as an inherent ability without having to create a seperate ship set and tech fields) and Organic/Nanotech races could have ships that regenerate without some particular component having to be present (and vulnerable to destruction). Also, "Propulsion Expert" races could have the option to purchase greater speed for extra cost, etc. Loads of possibilities!

4) I have commented before, as have others, that the Self-destruct device is unrealistic in several aspects. The first is that it ALWAYS works. This is a bit silly. Even the Antareans in MOO II only had a 50 percent success rate for their "Quantum Detonator". No matter how good your technology there is always a chance that someone will be able to figure out a way to neutralize it. This "guaranteed" function pretty much neutralizes boarding. There should be a chance for boarding parties to "defuse" a self-destruct device. Maybe it should be a flat chance (even 10 or 20 percent is better than none) or maybe it should be based on the tech level of the boarding parties. But there should be SOME chance!

Also, the "total destruction" that the thing inflicts is equally unrealistic as others have said. The damage ought to be relative to ship size, like ramming. AND, I must add, other ships adjacent should also take some damage. So, since we're 90 percent there already let's have "collateral damage" in combat like MOO II. When a ship blows up, whether from a deliberate self-destruct or enemy actions, adjacent ships ought to take some sort of damage. It doesn't have to be the same scale of damage as ramming, but SOME damage ought to occur.

5) Immobilization: It's a good concept but makes boarding much more difficult. Perhaps the chance of success should be affected if the boarded ship is immobilized, OR if the boarding ship has a tractor beam. Taking account of immobility would be good. Requiring it makes boarding too difficult to be worthwhile.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 23 January 2001).]

[Commander G]

I would like to see number of Boarding Parties to use per attack be part of the ship or fleets strategy rather than a popup, since a popup would not work in Strategic mode.

Here is another thing to consider: racial size. One race might be unable to navigate the corridors of another race because they are too big phyiscally to move around. A race of giants (plus 20% in ground combat, cannot move inside of a ship built for -50% beings). The same prohibition should also apply to giving ships away. The +20% race should not be able to use the transport built by the -50% race (unless it was custom built for them). How about having ship designs specify the maximum racial size that they work for (let the small races use any ships, they just need buster chairs). This would give those midget races an advantage in repelling boarding parties, even though they are pathetic in ground combat on a planet's surface.

[Daynarr]

quote:

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Observations on many peoples comments:
1) Yes, boarding combat is resolved too quickly. It ought to take more than a single combat round at least sometimes. The ship should be "neutralized" and unusable by either side while the combat is going on. In fact, it should not count as belonging to anyone while it is contested. This might lead to interesing tactics like the original owner firing on his own boarded ships in order to insure that technology is not captured.

2) I'm glad that crew quarters have SOME effect. I was going to suggest that we add a weak boarding defense ability to them. Glad that MM thought of this.

3) It's _possible_ to build ships to be resistant to boarders but not easy. A ship that resists boarding as suggested will have to be a completely different sort of design than a ship originally designed for crew and converted. Perhaps this could be added as a "special ability" that can be purchased for extra cost somehow. This is a completely unexplored area of ship construction in SE. Hulls cannot be endowed with "abilities" of any sort outside of components. If we could have "abilities" that are not actual components as technologies we could have "stealth" races like MOO (cloaking as an inherent ability without having to create aseperate ship set and tech fields) and Organic/Nanotech races could have ships that regenerate without some particular component having to be present (and vulnerable to destruction). Also, "Propulsion Expert" races could have the option to purchase greater speed for extra cost, etc. Loads of possibilities!

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I second that. I would like to see racial strength having impact on ship boarding too.
Boarding ship should mean close quarters combat which is very often done in hand-to-hand manner, where strenght of race can play important role. It will also increase the value of that trait which is a good thing (it is seriously underrated now). A race with 120% strenght would have 20% more defense from crew quarters and security stations and 20% more strenght for Boarding parties. That would make strenght a must trait for race that loves to board ships.

[Nyx]

Hmm, I've never failed to capture a ship, and I've taken both large transports and battleships with a single level 2 boarding party. I do tend to climb right up to level 5 boarding parties very fast (since its such and affordable tech once you get past the military science level 2), but in all my time playing, with the exception of testing security stations against myself, I have never once failed to capture a ship without security stations no matter how few or how weak my boarding parties. I guess it's just that I upgraded my boarding party quality faster than I paid attention to or something.

As for the 1.5:1 ratio, yeah it's an approximation, but not a bad one. If you know the enemy has 1 level 1 security, either bring a level 2 boarding party, or 2 level 1's and you should be fine. If you only use 1 level 1, you'll lose. If he's got 3 SS 3s, then you want about 5 or 6 boarding party 3s to take him. Or, you can do it my preferred way and just board the ship right back from him...

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[DirectorTsaarx]

ealbright: Good research work! A suggestion on the CQ weirdness (which you state happens w/ Master Computers): maybe the _size_ of the Master Computer affects defense? Or level of the MC? Just a thought...