Boarding, Crew and Stations

posted on May 27th, 2010, 4:58 pm

yep some apsects on recrewing will change, but we will keep the current boarding system most probably

posted on May 27th, 2010, 5:47 pm

Those are some cool and interesting ideas.  Though I think its important to remember fun gameplay should always take priority over trying to make it more realistic.

Over crewing ships:  While it definitely adds to the realism what this really means in terms of gameplay is now in order to get the most out of your ships you have to manually beam crew over to every ship you build and every time they repair you have to do it over again.  In my opinion that doesn't sound fun.

Different crews when boarding:  This I agree with completely.  While I don't know if it's possible to change how boarding works, if it is that would make it much more interesting.

Re-crewing stations:  All this would really do is make stations re-crew slower not sure if I see the point.

Abandoning stations:  I love this idea.  In fact I think that it would be very cool to take it a step farther and remove the decommission option from all stations (if possible) and replace it with a abandon option.  Which would give you the resources of decommissioning it but also leave a derelict behind with all its systems completely damaged (as your crew would sabotage them as they left) so while you or your opponent could re-crew it, it would be very time consuming with out a repair ship.  Turrets and other unmanned stations could have a self-destruct option instead.

Stations start with no crew:  While I do like this idea it just seems far to exploitable for the reasons others have already given.

posted on May 27th, 2010, 8:58 pm

Just a thought  to  counter argument  the not having enough crew  argument , as  every Starbase is built  a  FEH is  also built.  Feild Expediant Housing modules  house all the crew  for the station as it  being built till more  private quarters can be finished. The FEH  houses the  Crew in a cavernious  Open Bay.  When the base is finished the FEH  can be  upgraded to a  hangar bay for the stations SC with a C&C module at the approiate  tech  station.

posted on May 28th, 2010, 8:23 pm

Perhaps for every station, instead of being completely empty when finished, could perhaps have a skeleton crew depending on the size of the station? and then a warp-in ship, perhaps a miranda or another old vessel, brings the rest of the crew in segments, not all at once, as i doubt the old ships had enough space for 400 civilians when they were in service.

[Ducky]

posted on May 30th, 2010, 11:05 am

Last edited by Ducky on May 30th, 2010, 11:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

Currently the boarding in FO is very simple, the boarded troops will always decrease the amount of the original crew till the crew count goes zero. So basically one boarder will kill one crew member and then get killed (typical situation).

The idea I have in mind would be that the ships could have "more than one crew at the same time". The ships and stations could have the boarders as second crew (some red text field below the current crew to indicate hostiles on board). The boarding behavior would also be somewhat to different to current one to one logic. As the boarders first board the unit, they would get the advantage of surprise and in the first second the defending crew causalities would be higher. As the ratio between boarders and defenders changes, the causalities will be higher on the side having less crew. When the amount of either group is below certain percentage of the other crew (15% perhaps), the causalities of that side get very small. If the original crew level drops below that percentage of boarder crew the ship will switch sides as that side would be able to gain control of the main systems. The crew left would sabotage the ship, so engines or weapons might go off-line for a long time if yard visit isn't performed. But as long there is the crew of the other side, the other ships won't fire on it. The crew causalities should also happen in bursts more than in linear way. And when the amount of causalities is slightly randomized it would allow more interesting outcomes for the boarding.

You gave me an idea about boarding! When these two ship crew percentages are displayed and they start fighting and the percentages randomly drop I had the idea!

When you click on the ship 3 buttons appear over-head of its selection box onn the left for boarding tactics: defensive, standard or aggressive. Defensive reducing casualty rates but also reducing rate they lose theirs due to defending. And aggressive, higher casualty rate for both sides. The top-right could have other buttonsfor race specific specials to make boarding even more interesting! Examples for the Federation:
Erect security fields which prevent enemy reenforcements from being beamed aboard the ship
Dampening field, takes one subsystem offline of the vessel
Borg with Adaptation - moderately increases causalty rate for 3 seconds then drastically reduces casualty rate for 10.

ofc these need cooldowns and/or some kind of costs

Stuff like that, what do you guys think?

posted on May 30th, 2010, 1:49 pm

When you click on the ship 3 buttons appear over-head of its selection box onn the left for boarding tactics: defensive, standard or aggressive. Defensive reducing casualty rates but also reducing rate they lose theirs due to defending. And aggressive, higher casualty rate for both sides. The top-right could have other buttonsfor race specific specials to make boarding even more interesting! Examples for the Federation:
Erect security fields which prevent enemy reenforcements from being beamed aboard the ship
Dampening field, takes one subsystem offline of the vessel
Borg with Adaptation - moderately increases causalty rate for 3 seconds then drastically reduces casualty rate for 10.

Hate to say it, but it seems extremely micromanagement intensive  . I'd prefer better mechanics for Borg boarding and troop ships as that is their "thing" - but never anything that requires a constant watch and you having to click several buttons, as it is just too ... distracting from the main gamefield, if you understand me  . It would work very nicely for a game that relied on very few units of course

posted on May 30th, 2010, 1:56 pm

The boarding system I like the most can be found in the X games from egosoft. Theirs works a lot like the one Ducky described.
Well, I know it's Fleet Ops here and not Boarding Ops but the reason why I don't use troopships or boarding is the dumb boarding system from A2 which is basically flooding an enemy's ship long enogh with crew until there's only your crew left. As Zebh already put it: "So basically one boarder will kill one crew member and then get killed (typical situation)." That doesn't make sense.
What would be cool instead would be a special ability "boarding party". You target a ship, send your troops and let them do their job. It might take some time until the targeted ship has been captured / your boarding party hast been defeated and depending on the experience of your marines (That's how it works in X3.) your chances of successfully capturing a ship increase or decrease. Of course you would have to recrew your troopship now and then as marines cannot be replicated  :sweatdrop:
Maybe this could work in FO for troopships via experience. The more ships have been captured the more experienced your marines would get until they can capture more valuable targets like battleships or even stations. The experience system for that might already be available as the Romulan Intelligence Center seems to work that way.
In order to protect your ships from being captured we could have additional technologies like "containment fields" or whatever which could be researched as permanent upgrades at science stations.

So, borading now: Beam over all you got till there's no one left.
Boarding then: Beam over a marine strike team and let them do their job. If they're experienced enough they'll succeed and gain more experience if they aren't they won't.

What do you guys think?

posted on May 30th, 2010, 2:01 pm

i like original post
i hate everyone elses post

[Nebula_Class_Ftw]

posted on May 30th, 2010, 2:06 pm

Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on May 30th, 2010, 2:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Sounds like a pretty good idea. I think the containment/security fields would need a chance to be disabled depending on the boarding party size and remaining crew size, so that a few boarders will have like a 5% chance of hacking the ship's systems to take down the fields if the ship has full crew, but if there are more boarders than crew they'll have 85-95% chance of getting the fields down and being able to take over the ship. Fields could also be tied to the shield subsystem unless they get their own.
For Borg they can just walk right thru the fields  :assimilate:. Also the Borg wouldn't have fields of their own, unless an EM module is installed, which would have a 90% or so chance of prevent boarding from even beginning (other 10% being if the crew of the boarder tried something really creative.)