Ship Capture Thoughts
 

Hi!

I haven't played the game since about patch 1.1x. Is ship capture still not a particularly viable approach to combat?

Another idea I was having, as I just was starting a game with the newest patch, is that the "physical strength" racial trait ought not to only "give you a +5 to resist ship capture," but should also give you a +5 to ASSIST ship capture. Makes pretty good sense I think. Does it function that way in default and its just that the text isn't clear? Does it function that way in the balance mod from Kwok?

okay, thanks http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Ship Capture Thoughts
 

I don't know how the trait works but I have a game where I have been designing and testing ship capture stuff. The one problem is the enemy needs no shields, however there is the extremely remote possibility you may find shield imploders in ruins. If you know of it, think of the Breen weapon from DS9. One shot and the enemy shields, no matter how strong, simply disspear. You can then easily capture the enemy ship. This is so absurdly overpowered a weapon I wonder if it is bugged or something.

Re: Ship Capture Thoughts
 

I know what you mean! I think that "game ender" technologies like that need to take into account more than just the device themselves; obviously, it would require huge stores of energy to use such an exotic device, and a game could be balanced by requiring an enormous ship with relatively little protection of its own, for the sake of having enough room for generators and supplies to make multiple uses of the weapon viable.

Anyway, thanks for your response!

Re: Ship Capture Thoughts
 

It's fairly simple to balance this by increasing the size of the component and/or increasing the firing recharge time. You can 'rationalize' this any way you please. Large 'capacitors' needed to power the weapon, for example.

But I haven't had the chance to use it in-game yet. Isn't it supposed to be doing damage somewhere? It isn't just a nullifier from the description. I thought it would send the damage of the shields at the ship, but maybe it selectively 'burns out' the shield generator?

Re: Ship Capture Thoughts
 

It says it does damage. When I found it I thought maybe it did damage to the shield generators. Once I tested it all I saw was the enemys shields vanish. I don't think the actual generators take any damage. By the way this is a BM game, I don't know if Kwok changed them. I checked the data files for any other new super weapons but I didn't see any. Perhaps the damage is in seconds, although throughout my tests I never saw the shields return. incidentally there is a reload weapon that works in microseconds from what I see. Useless.

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i1..._2006/SESI.jpg

I just ran a long test. As you can see it is short ranged. Perhaps its one drawback. Anyway it hit with the second shot. 1040 pts of shield simply vanish. I then stopped both ships. With the weapon reload weapon I mentioned the ability of the ship says something like "All weapons have an increased reload time of 6ms" (Useless). There is no effect stated for the shield imploder and the shield generators are untouched. I don't think there was any other damage at all. The shields never came back before time ran out 2.5 minues later