X4 boarding mechanics

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What kind of boarding you would like to see in X4?

X3 style
36
30%
XR style
53
43%
My idea
8
7%
Other idea
11
9%
Don't care / don't use boarding
14
11%
 
Total votes: 122

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Post by astreus » Sun, 8. Oct 17, 13:52

On XR I like the logical details as first to prepare for boarding well (if you wont have losses), destroy the turrets, engine,... not only put the shields down.
And if your crew apply to the needs (boarding strength) and you did all the mini jobs, you get it without any frustration unfair random faults, which result only in a frustrated reload as in X3.

...X3: safety is reinstalling - go swimming...! WHY? Marines are still on the place - should blow up that dam' computer and silence! Ok, have to repair it later..... Or that unexpected random losses when you have 20 5* 100% marines on board while target have NONE! Just a boring reload job!
After more than 10 days DID you have to be mad!

X-Series
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Suggestion: Boarding

Post by X-Series » Thu, 12. Oct 17, 00:07

How about making boarding more thrilling by being able to join a boarding party through an android/robot representation. Add a little bit of FPS shootout by killing the guards protecting the ship, roaming inside the enemy ship and protecting your hackers/engineers while they disable the doors/defenses.

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Post by Skeeter » Thu, 12. Oct 17, 01:09

Id rather scrap marines and boarding that way and instead just have a dedicated capture frigate or something like from say homeworld games where it latches on and takes over with a timer which is affected by ship type being captured and amount of damage been inflicted. Some ships like cap ships would require multiple capturing ships.
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Post by caleb » Thu, 12. Oct 17, 01:37

I know the idea appeals to many people, but I personally do not like FPS games. And I never buy an X game expecting an FPS in it... So I do not like the idea.

I would prefer a more strategic approach to boarding. Not sure if as simplified as SPGW

https://youtu.be/fXd13U58QfE?t=9m58s

Hard to find a good capture video... Basically, your troopers have certain strength, and you have to advance room by room. Each room zaps their strength, and you can raid shield rooms to lower enemy shield, or weapons room to disable their weapons. Or keep advancing to the command room to take the ship. At the end, you may fail or succeed depending on their remaining strength at the command room.

Quite simplified, but I found it to be workable enough for the type of game that it is, and it let me keep flying my ship, so I could keep fighting or run away, or whatever.

If there was a separate mini-game, what happens if your shiny new ship gets attacked by someone else and destroyed? Losing control of your ship seems like a bad idea on a space simulator.

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Post by caleb » Thu, 12. Oct 17, 01:46

Skeeter wrote:Id rather scrap marines and boarding that way and instead just have a dedicated capture frigate or something like from say homeworld games where it latches on and takes over with a timer which is affected by ship type being captured and amount of damage been inflicted. Some ships like cap ships would require multiple capturing ships.
We could scrap capturing altogether, and just have a different mechanic. A scrapper ship that hauls the wreckage for your labs to analyze (expensive! and long!). After getting X number of wrecks (5-6?) then you get the plans to build that ship.

So you *can* get any ship, but it would be pretty expensive and long.

The problem I have with boarding, is that normally you get waaaaay more than you invest. It's just too hard to balance.

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Post by MegaJohnny » Thu, 12. Oct 17, 01:56

caleb wrote:We could scrap capturing altogether, and just have a different mechanic. A scrapper ship that hauls the wreckage for your labs to analyze (expensive! and long!). After getting X number of wrecks (5-6?) then you get the plans to build that ship.

So you *can* get any ship, but it would be pretty expensive and long.

The problem I have with boarding, is that normally you get waaaaay more than you invest. It's just too hard to balance.
You know, I think you're right.

I think the cost of boarding has gone down, even, in XR. Strip all surface elements and damage hull as appropriate, initiate boarding, get a free destroyer. Put on a 5-star engineer and leave to cook for 20 minutes. If you want a Rahanas or something else with low base boarding power, you basically point at it and it turns green.

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Post by RAVEN.myst » Thu, 12. Oct 17, 03:45

Regarding FPS boarding: I think that this is one of those things that seem "cool" in the abstract, when daydreamed about, but which in fact would be less so if actually realised. Consider the following:
- How varied can the boarding missions really be? Probably not very - so pretty quickly, it would start feeling tediously repetitive, and at that point it becomes nothing more than an annoying, monotonous time-sink. Thus, it would have to be made optional so it could be skipped once it became tedious - ie. development time would be invested into a feature that would be getting disabled more often than not.
- If the player HAS to lead the boarding op him/herself, then it interrupts the flow of the game outside of this, and prevents the player from being able to support the op externally (for example, guarding the site from the target's friends returning, or from summoned reinforcements.) Therefore, again it would have to be made an optional feature, and likely one that would be getting skipped by most, and thus again development time would be invested into a feature that would be getting disabled more often than not.

There is, however, a possible way to add that "on-site, first-person" immersion factor with *relatively* little development (though the amount required may still not be deemed worth the trouble) - during a boarding op, have a small P-in-P monitor open up somewhere, showing "marine-cam", perhaps cycling between a few of them. This would be the video equivalent of the audio track that plays during boarding ops in X3TC/AP - highly atmospheric, but essentially nothing more. the problem is, while the previous audio track being the same track played every time was OK, having the same video sequence simply repeating every time would NOT - it would need to be live-rendered and based on the current ship and its toughness/crew/whatever, to some extent, even if somewhat simplified/abstracted. Hence, there would still be considerable development required (though far less than an entire FPS game-within-a-game.)

In any case, THAT is my pipe dream with regards to boarding operations in X.

MegaJohnny wrote:
caleb wrote:...
The problem I have with boarding, is that normally you get waaaaay more than you invest. It's just too hard to balance.
You know, I think you're right.

I think the cost of boarding has gone down, even, in XR. ...
There's no "think" about it :D It is possible to get a marine officer and a full 5 marines right out the gate (for example, take the Aspiring Merchant start and sell the starting freighter, or take Home of Light start and sell the economic analytics software and trade computer, or... well, you get the idea!), and start boarding immediately. Yes, the first few will be low-level ships while the marines (and possibly the MO) train up, but within an hour or two one can be boarding fight-capable ships. The cost vs reward is too low, and the improvement slope is too steep: one can be boarding the toughest ships within hours. (In fact, I think I may fire up Rebirth and do precisely that for a day or two, next time I'm THAT bored... :P Thanks for getting me to think of it!)

By contrast, in X3TC/AP one has to first get ship/ships capable of delivering marines, as well as the marines themselves (which are NOT trivial in cost) and then ideally train them up (if boarding for money, then engineering skill is important, and for success rates in general the other skills are advantageous) - so there is a whole lot more time and money investment required in order to even get started boarding. Then the marines' fight skill improves a lot more slowly, so it's not like the player will be boarding Js and Ks on the first day...
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Post by MegaJohnny » Thu, 12. Oct 17, 10:19

RAVEN.myst wrote:Regarding FPS boarding: I think that this is one of those things that seem "cool" in the abstract, when daydreamed about, but which in fact would be less so if actually realised. Consider the following:
- How varied can the boarding missions really be? Probably not very - so pretty quickly, it would start feeling tediously repetitive, and at that point it becomes nothing more than an annoying, monotonous time-sink. Thus, it would have to be made optional so it could be skipped once it became tedious - ie. development time would be invested into a feature that would be getting disabled more often than not.
- If the player HAS to lead the boarding op him/herself, then it interrupts the flow of the game outside of this, and prevents the player from being able to support the op externally (for example, guarding the site from the target's friends returning, or from summoned reinforcements.) Therefore, again it would have to be made an optional feature, and likely one that would be getting skipped by most, and thus again development time would be invested into a feature that would be getting disabled more often than not.

There is, however, a possible way to add that "on-site, first-person" immersion factor with *relatively* little development (though the amount required may still not be deemed worth the trouble) - during a boarding op, have a small P-in-P monitor open up somewhere, showing "marine-cam", perhaps cycling between a few of them. This would be the video equivalent of the audio track that plays during boarding ops in X3TC/AP - highly atmospheric, but essentially nothing more. the problem is, while the previous audio track being the same track played every time was OK, having the same video sequence simply repeating every time would NOT - it would need to be live-rendered and based on the current ship and its toughness/crew/whatever, to some extent, even if somewhat simplified/abstracted. Hence, there would still be considerable development required (though far less than an entire FPS game-within-a-game.)

In any case, THAT is my pipe dream with regards to boarding operations in X.
Totally agree. The point about reinforcements is a good one, as there really aren't any in XR, but having some RRF-type thing could really spice up the boarding.

For visualisation, how about a kind of AR overlay on the target ship showing the marines' movement? The rooms could be just cuboids and the marines colour-coded dots. Nothing has to correspond exactly besides the number of dots and their distance to a different cuboid representing the bridge.
RAVEN.myst wrote:There's no "think" about it :D It is possible to get a marine officer and a full 5 marines right out the gate (for example, take the Aspiring Merchant start and sell the starting freighter, or take Home of Light start and sell the economic analytics software and trade computer, or... well, you get the idea!), and start boarding immediately. Yes, the first few will be low-level ships while the marines (and possibly the MO) train up, but within an hour or two one can be boarding fight-capable ships. The cost vs reward is too low, and the improvement slope is too steep: one can be boarding the toughest ships within hours. (In fact, I think I may fire up Rebirth and do precisely that for a day or two, next time I'm THAT bored... :P Thanks for getting me to think of it!)

By contrast, in X3TC/AP one has to first get ship/ships capable of delivering marines, as well as the marines themselves (which are NOT trivial in cost) and then ideally train them up (if boarding for money, then engineering skill is important, and for success rates in general the other skills are advantageous) - so there is a whole lot more time and money investment required in order to even get started boarding. Then the marines' fight skill improves a lot more slowly, so it's not like the player will be boarding Js and Ks on the first day...
Always glad to help ;) although you've had the exact opposite effect on me. I've just packed away my plot game saves and am about to start a fresh no-boarding playthrough. All the stations just feel like ill-gotten gains now.

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Post by Cabrelbeuk » Thu, 12. Oct 17, 10:33

The idea is cool but well, I would far prefer Egosoft to focus on polishing main 4X gameplays aspect as automation and management.

This interactive map already give us what we were all waiting for very long time : RTS aspect to the game.
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Post by birdtable » Thu, 12. Oct 17, 13:05

All these ideas about boarding are fine and dandy "IF" there are no further ill conceived outcomes ..The prime example is the inability to stop friendly fire from destroying target, killing marines or destruction of repair drones.
Far better if Egosoft had yellow stickies everywhere reminding them of the games title ...."X4 Foundations" ...
All that is required is an adequate defence capability of the boarding target, escorts, weaponry or whatever but not my pet hate RRF's... :)

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Post by RAVEN.myst » Thu, 12. Oct 17, 14:48

MegaJohnny wrote:For visualisation, how about a kind of AR overlay on the target ship showing the marines' movement? The rooms could be just cuboids and the marines colour-coded dots. Nothing has to correspond exactly besides the number of dots and their distance to a different cuboid representing the bridge.
Oh nice, I rather like this idea :) It would give it a modern sci-fiesque look, too. And almost certainly considerably less work than even the semi-scripted interior trooper-cam.
MegaJohnny wrote:I've just packed away my plot game saves and am about to start a fresh no-boarding playthrough. All the stations just feel like ill-gotten gains now.
LOL! I completely understand :D In my latest plot game, I think I boarded all of three ships - and I'm not even sure what I did it for, as I didn't sell any of them. Oh yes, they got pressed into service, then thrown at the PMC Overwatch as cannon-fodder :twisted:

Cabrelbeuk wrote:The idea is cool but well, I would far prefer Egosoft to focus on polishing main 4X gameplays aspect as automation and management.

This interactive map already give us what we were all waiting for very long time : RTS aspect to the game.
I completely agree. At the end of the day, those boarding bits as suggested would be cosmetics for the sake of immersion - nice to have if possible, but not at the expense of any important stuff. (Hell, just record a boarding soundtrack a la TC/AP and that would already provide some atmosphere, with almost zero effort.)
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Post by Alan Phipps » Thu, 12. Oct 17, 21:01

X-Series' boarding thread merged with previous boarding mechanics thread.
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Post by Hassie » Mon, 23. Oct 17, 11:14

Most games just do some hidden calculations based on your boarding party and some stats you have, and you are told if you win or not. Recently however, some games have tried to expand on this, and made the boarding and capturing of ships more interactive, which is definitely should be. Naval Action for instance, has a basic fight system, where you choose from a variety of actions as your crew attempts to win the day for you, while still largely leaving it up to numbers in the end. Slightly more or less recently, depending on how you look at it, Starpoint Gemini: Warlords, created a tier based system where you can either choose to raid the current section of the ship you are on, advance to the next section, or to run away. This is again largely based on a numbers game though unfortunately.

I do not have a problem with numbers playing a large role in boarding actions, as it obviously makes the most sense, and I am all for mini-games being used for boarding actions, unless a game has a dedicated 1st/3rd person engine to go in with your troops and do the work, or some bird's eye view tactical mode to have your troops go in and capture the ship, Wasteland style. Those options seem beyond the boys at Egosoft unfortunately, so I would propose to use minigames that do not require you flying a ship around shooting turrets and other modules on the outside of the ship. I don't see the in game reason for this, and while it was fun the first dozen or so times, it does become exceedingly tedious after awhile. The fact that modules on the outside of the ship, would somehow allow your marine to advance further in the ship, has never made sense to me, while hacking a ship does have some in game logic.

I like to feel immersed in a game when I play it, and the X series above almost all over games to this effect. I want to feel like I am helping my marines, and doing mini-games similar to how some games use quick-time events during the CGI moments to connect the player with the action. There are SOOO many electronic lockpick, hacking and other mini-games that are both easy to understand and complicated at the same time. Being given puzzles like this, while sitting at the ops position, while you give the helm to an npc to fly your ship while you attempt to assist your marine by opening up passages for them, sealing off enemy combatants behind airlocks, as well as a dozen other options. You can very easily give the player the choice on what they want to do, and choosing to lock off enemies, without knowing exactly how many you will trap, or opening up a passage without knowing if you are leading your marines right into the main enemy defense force can be borth terrifying and immersive at the same time. This would also give a lot of benefit to advancing your sensors, so you can get a more detailed map of what if happening inside that ship, so as captain you can make the most informed choice to board and capture/raid that ship.

I really like this idea, and hope Egosoft looks into creating a more immersive experience for players, by building on the mini-games from other games that have really worked, and avoid the ones that most people detested. I of course would really like a tactical combat scenario where you control your squads of marines from a bird's eye view if you choose too, but I think that may be 3 or 4 iterations of the X series away from being anything close to a reality.

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hmm some good points here

Post by KRM398 » Tue, 24. Oct 17, 15:45

I see people say they don't like boarding one way because its too tedious (think too hard) that's exactly how boarding should be...its not easy and you will lose people. something XR doesn't take into account a lot. I boarded repeatedly and lost no one, not a single soldier...ridiculous. Every attempt, especially against a larger and more powerful enemy ship will cause losses, and should. Yes it makes it harder and more expensive...you're tryng to capture a ship after all. and attacking a cruiser with a corvette or frigate SHOULD be really hard, since smaller ships should have less room for marines.

Now soldiers should definitely be of more than one class, and should gain experience with each try. so buying green marines gets you bodies, but little experience, so you board freighters first, then bigger ships later. Experience needs to mean something, and also ship size...a corvette can NOT hold 50 marines and a Commander like in XR, BS. where did they sleep and eat? In the Commanders pocket? Be more realistic, a fighter has zero chance at boarding anything, a corvette can carry maybe a dozen people. frigates maybe 2 dozen, and so on. Having better tools needs to help to, buying handguns or salvaging them from battles adds +1 to your marines skills, get them body armor, +5. Grenades..+7 etc, no robots or AI fighters, its all us and our men and women.

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Re: hmm some good points here

Post by RAVEN.myst » Tue, 24. Oct 17, 17:14

KRM398 wrote:I see people say they don't like boarding one way because its too tedious (think too hard) that's exactly how boarding should be...its not easy and you will lose people. something XR doesn't take into account a lot. I boarded repeatedly and lost no one, not a single soldier...ridiculous.
I completely agree - that's a problem I also have with XR boarding, the fact that it's too controllable for a zero-loss outcome. Hell, I seldom have casualties in X3TC/AP boarding, even, except when I expect losses (for instance, when "selecting" recruits for further training... :twisted: )
KRM398 wrote:...a corvette can NOT hold 50 marines and a Commander like in XR, BS. where did they sleep and eat? In the Commanders pocket?
Maybe before the last boarding op before the player gets the Skank was the TARDIS, and now that's where the marines hang out... Or maybe, as I suggested at some point long ago, marines are actually blow-up dolls (hmm, well, they DO quite possibly blow up doors and such, once inside, so the moniker may be more apt than I intended...), and the Marine Officer's first task is to operate the air-pump... Yes, it IS absurd :D
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Post by Alan Phipps » Tue, 24. Oct 17, 18:01

If the maximum boarding party were more of the order of 6 marines and an officer (a bit more like X3 M6 boarding) then there could be these advantages:

The marines could have individual names (or nicknames) and you would get to know and take care of each individual as they gain experience and skills.

You would actually feel a loss when you lose one and they could be far more expensive to replace. Loss chances would obviously scale appropriately for the participant numbers and operational situations. There should be some risk of losing the officer too.

Taking reckless chances or lack of preparation and so perhaps losing marines or the officer carelessly would be far more of a lesson.

Each marine could be individually trained in specialist skills as with other NPC crew.

Boarding pods could be replaced by manoeuvrable marine combat armour.

It might even be possible to have the officer address individual marines by name/nickname and so help immersion.

The Skunk-Tardis situation (should it still apply) would be much reduced.
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Ability to act as a marine

Post by Arsynth » Tue, 31. Oct 17, 20:23

I like XR style boarding, but it would be nice to capture ships with other marines together

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Post by gbjbaanb » Fri, 3. Nov 17, 15:38

Alan Phipps wrote:If the maximum boarding party were more of the order of 6 marines and an officer (a bit more like X3 M6 boarding) then there could be these advantages:

The marines could have individual names (or nicknames) and you would get to know and take care of each individual as they gain experience and skills.

You would actually feel a loss when you lose one and they could be far more expensive to replace. Loss chances would obviously scale appropriately for the participant numbers and operational situations. There should be some risk of losing the officer too.

Taking reckless chances or lack of preparation and so perhaps losing marines or the officer carelessly would be far more of a lesson.

Each marine could be individually trained in specialist skills as with other NPC crew.
So mainly X3 boarding, which was very good all in all, but with a bit more colour to the voice-over, not just "we have secured the deck", but more "Vasquez, Hicks, secure that bulkhead", and "man, this is a bughunt, I knew it was going to be another bughunt".

Shooting off bits from the enemy ship is a worthy addition to X3 boarding, but ultimately it should still be able training your marines and sending them in to fight the defenders and the ships computer with the chance that not all of them make it back.

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Post by Rabiator der II. » Sun, 5. Nov 17, 12:20

On mini-games vs. "comfortable" boarding in general:
I think it would be desirable to have several options ranging from hands-off to doing things yourself, but with the chance of better results from personal involvement. Possibly for several different aspects of the boarding action.

A few suggestions and examples...
1) For preparing the boarding by taking out defenses on the surface of the ship, you have two options:
  • Tell the ships in your fleet to "suppress defenses". They will start shooting specifically at turrets and drone bays of the target, but try to leave the hull alone. Unfortunately, their skill in that is limited, so you may end up with a badly damaged ship or even a complete wreck.
  • Do the suppressing with your own fighter. Depending on your skills, you may get a much better relation of defense suppression to hull damage.
2) For the actual boarding, you can
  • just dump your marines near the target ship or tell your fleet to do so
  • organize the boarding by planning the operation in more detail, such as assigning the marines to the boarding ships yourself and sending them in a sequence that makes best use of their skills. For example, first the hull breachers, then the hackers who can disable internal defenses.
  • or even personally fly your marines to the most suitable entry point.
The latter might require some extra work on part of the devs, because they would now have to do at least some modeling of the different routes through the ship and the resistance encountered there. Plus maybe some overview of each ship in the in-game database.
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Post by bugkill » Mon, 19. Mar 18, 22:02

I'm a bit late to this topic, but I'll share my thoughts. I believe that there should be a mixture of both x3 and XR boarding actions, but you have to create 2 separate types of "marines". The first type of "marines" (prefer naming them Assault Troops or Assaulters) should be the forces that you would use to seize large ships and they would be launched in breaching pods (much like in XR). Their sole purpose is to go in large numbers to battle strong enemy spacecraft and control it.

The other type should be called Special Forces/Commandos. They would be featured like the astronaut/marine in x3 where they can exit your ship and use a thrust pack to get to the target (a stealthy approach). They would only be able to be used on small to medium sized ships for specialized missions like gathering intel, rescue, or even assassination. They would also seize the ship as well. Hell, they could be used on certain stations. I know it would require a number of ships and stations to have scripts supporting this, but I think it would be worth it.

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