Boarding Parties

New Vessel?

I would like to see a new vessel, possibly of the new corvette class, that specializes in sending boarding parties to enemy corvettes, frigates and cruisers in order to forcibly take them over for your use.  

It could work out something like this:

The vessel's primary goal is to rendezvous with enemy corvettes, frigates and cruisers, attach themselves to the hulls of each vessel, spend a few moments cutting through the hull (allowing enemy some time destroy the "leech"), and send in a boarding party to take over the ship.  

Once this is action is completed successfully, the boarding corvette is scuttled and in return you have a new corvette/frigate/cruiser.  

The time it would take to successfully board a vessel would vary based off of the targets size.  Corvettes would take a few moments to break into, where a cruiser's thick armor would take much more time.

The vessel would be extremely fast, and cheap, but would be relatively weak and aside from its hull, armor and shields, defenseless.  

When I say weak, I mean it would be suicide to send these against a 700 supply fleet, but it would be strong enough and swift enough to be able to last long enough to be usable early game.

These corvettes would be extremely powerful early game, allowing a player to take over neutral ships around a new planet, bolstering your forces early on,  and they would be extremely effective when used in swarms to take over a purely light frigate attack force, but as the game progressed, it would become easier to counter these corvette swarms.  

However it would be foolish to say these are purely early game craft, as these cheap and swift craft can wreak havoc on a group of unprotected LRM and Support cruisers that the enemy "tactically" positioned away from the main battle.  An unobservant opponent would pay dearly from these.

Upgrades could include speed boosts, faster hull cutting rates, or even stealth that would be countered by scout frigates. 

12,583 views 16 replies
Reply #1 Top

Liek the idea.  it worked pretty well (IMO) in supreme commander 2 so dont see why i t wouldnt here.

Reply #2 Top

Well considering this is pretty easy to mod, I'd rather IC focus on unique content that is currently impossible for modders to make.

Reply #3 Top

Quoting SwerydAss, reply 1
Liek the idea.  it worked pretty well (IMO) in supreme commander 2 so dont see why i t wouldnt here.

 

Don't mention that abortion of a game. There is only SupCom and SupCom: FA.

That said, boarding would be kind of cool. Might be too hard to accomplish with this engine, though. Think about how mucked up it can get late-game when you have hundreds and hundreds of ships flying about - adding boarding operations would probably be like driving a nail into the game's coffin.

For SINS2, however... ;)

Reply #4 Top

You can make this as an ability quite easily, I gave this ability to my experimental Pirates. When raiding a Players Planet, they would take over any nearby enemy fleets along with any orbital structures. You can mod the ability so they can only take over certain objects, I just let them take everything, they are Pirates after all ;)

Reply #5 Top

I once was thinking of a similar idea for a mod, but I used a ship class called Troop Transport that had far more capabilities than just boarding.  The idea was that they could be used to capture structures, ships, or planets.  Now, there's a problem with balance when dealing with ship capture...

You make Domination obsolete.  Now, in your case, its not completely because you did make the ships destroy themselves, but you still run the risk...  The only way I see to maintain the supremacy of the Rapture is to make Domination an AoE.  Do you realize how impossibly overpowered that is?  Now only that, but you are getting into Clone Frigate territory by getting extra free ships, not just one.

 

Now, something that could be done by the devs and not by us modders is make it a conditional capture, for instance, it would only work if the shields were offline, or if the shields were down and it had less than 500 hull remaining.  I don't know of any way us modders could do that, but the devs certainly could.

 

The other thing about this kind of capture is that they have to take a while, but there is some advantage gleaned, for instance, it takes 30 seconds to capture an enemy ship (though after half that time, all systems on the ship go offline and don't come back online for like 20 seconds after capture).  The same sort of thing would apply to structures.  Now, I see no reason why Starbases should be vulnerable...  I suppose you could make them deal a DoT if the target has too much hull remaining (ie soldiers are sabotaging critical internal structures, but know they can't take over the ship itself).  You send a few of these down to a planet, and perhaps you could capture it with minimal loss of life since its invasion rather than bombardment.

 

So, true, modders may be able to do this to a limited extent, but the devs could make troop transport-like ships far more advanced and engaging.

Reply #6 Top

It isn't needed, an Advent Capital already in game has this ability to capture other ships ;)

Reply #7 Top

True, but there could probably be some variation that wouldn't make it seem like it was replacing a level 6 ability.

Reply #8 Top

Actually, a while ago I ran into what I think was a little bit of unused content (now removed ;) ) while modding, probably from Rebellion, that suggests at least one more ship will feature boarding operations.

Reply #9 Top

Well, I've seen the unused images in the icons files, but I just figured they were for abilities/researchables that never made it in...

Regardless, if a troop transport/boarding vessel was a corvette that would be kind of cool..

 

Speculation aside, having boarding parties on ships I think is a somewhat risky move as you could replace Domination if you aren't careful.  Probably the best way to go about it would be to make boarding parties deal a DoT of say, 12 DPS to hull only for 30 seconds (since they wouldn't really be hitting shields lol) until the ship hits less than 200 hull and 10% total hull health at which point, they are actually captured.

Any ability like this would have to have a monstrously large cooldown/AM count so it doesn't get abused...

 

But anyways, back to what I was saying about troop transports...  They would have abilities such as the following:

Boarding Party: deals 12 DPS (can stack twice) for 30 seconds.  If at the end of this, the ship is below both 200 Hull and 10% hull, it is captured; captures logistic structures if less than 20% health and you have control of the planet around which it orbits.  Costs 200 Credits to use.

Marine Reinforcement: used on friendly ships; negates use of boarding parties and can be deployed preemptively.  Costs 250 credits to use.

Invasion Force: can be used to capture planets with infrastructure only dropped to half its current level.  Costs 350 credits to use.

 

Just something to throw around...  Respond however...

 

Reply #10 Top

I like the idea of having a capture ability. I think there are ways you could easily distinguish this from "Domination" for the Advent. I would propose the following:

1- Boarding party ability could only capture Frigates & Corvettes. Domination could also capture Cruisers.

2- Boarding party would be high AM and takes a period of time to capture the ship. Domination is mid level AM and instant.

3-Boarding party targets 1 at a time. Domination would have a small AOE and capture limit: for example 1 Cruiser or 2 Frigates or 3 Corvettes. ( I like this one mainly because it is somewhat difficult to get a level 6 Rapture so I like the idea of making its ultimate ability a bit better.)

Reply #11 Top

Quoting gamerlamb, reply 10
1- Boarding party ability could only capture Frigates & Corvettes. Domination could also capture Cruisers.

Cruisers and Frigates are coded as simply frigates in game code.

Reply #12 Top

Quoting Ryat, reply 11
Cruisers and Frigates are coded as simply frigates in game code.

That's what I get for knowing nothing about the code. My other suggestions still stand though and really, they are the better ones anyways. :)

Reply #13 Top

You could mod the effect of the ability to make it look like little shuttle craft are docking with the target ship, kind of like the ability of colonise.

Reply #14 Top

necro...

That aside, that's kind of what I was thinking would happen anyways...

Reply #15 Top

Unless you made this ability have a goodly range, pathing would destroy it. As for the shuttles flying out? Memory issues... imagine someone w/ 30 ships trying to board simultaneously in a battle that has over 125 ships on each side. You'd see a slide show.

I'm all for the ability being done, I just don't think it can be done properly on this iteration of SOASE :(

Reply #16 Top

Yar matey, Play the Rogues in 7 Deadly Sins Mod.  Modify things so you get an entry mod flying at the enemy vessel.  Hell, we might do this...