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.