AI boarding, yay or nay?

[SirConnery]

Should the AI have capability to board ships as well. For me it's an obvious yes but I think some might object.

[builder680]

I'd be for it. Extra strategic depth is always welcome for me. I rarely even think about boarding after the early game and this would make it a consideration to have marine contingents on valuable ships. The ever-present issue is the AI and it's use of such a feature.

[Falcrack]

Yes, absolutely. They might need to work on the AI a bit to make it work (at least OOS), but it would not be impossible to make it work, and would add a lot to the game.

But I hope that if this is a thing, that each crew on ships being boarded should defend as if they were marines, using their individual boarding stats, whether they are assigned as service crew or as marines. Actually I think it might already works that way when boarding NPC ships.

I would not mind if pirates captured my ships because I was foolish enough not to equip my ships with enough crew to defend them.

[gorgofdoom]

I would say yes. But I don't like the idea of more mandatory clicking.

Perhaps there needs to be framework for automatically changing crew jobs or changes to how their skills are applied.

[Alan Phipps]

Maybe that would give some sort of defending role for those dozens of crew slots on your ships that you may not even bother filling through considering such action 'useless' expenditure?

Also maybe the defending crew could wrestle a couple of lasertowers from the cargohold into the corridors leading to the bridge citadel?

However, I cannot help feeling that there would soon be several complaints along the lines of 'I'm a new player only recently starting out and had just made a real breakthough when I gained a [fill in progressive abandoned or bailed ship], when along came a pirate and just took it away from me. I couldn't do a thing about it.'

[grapedog]

Currently in Vanilla no.

Recently they reduced the quality of marines you can find on your own defense stations.

Player crew leveling as a whole is still a big issue.

You can't just give the NPC's these veteran marines, the NPC's would have to start with the same 0 star marines players start with, and work them up somehow. We know the marines aboard NPC ships right now are not leveling like the player has to, by boarding of ships.

Notification system would need improvements. I already rarely know when a ship of mine was destroyed... i usually find out when I do an hourly check on my logbook for "destroyed". It's sad that I have to do that to even know I lost ships. Boarding would need some kind of fixed notification system, so the player can react.

Will I be able to send my own marines to help defend my ships? What is the counter-play to boarding ships? How do I interact with this mechanic when an NPC does it? If it's like station hacking, then no, never.

A lot of things would have to be adjusted/fixed or else this will feel like something else the player has no control over or counter-play with.

[Imperial Good]

I honestly think boarding needs to be revisited at some stage, including AI boarding, even if just between other AIs.

Ideally marine and service crew roles should be merged together to simplify the systems going on. This would have the benefit that NPC ships would be a lot more capable of defending themselves from player boarding than currently. There should also be other defences against boarding missions under way so just having marines in the cutting stage will not guarantee you success should you lose control of the area. It is possible that NPCs being able to board player ships should not be allowed as that creates an emersion issue of what to do if the ship the player is flying is being boarded, as the crew might Thanos snap out of existence in front of the player as they get killed.

[jlehtone]

What does NPC do with a ship they have taken? That is a crucial question. They don't use foreign ships in their jobs. The only option is scrapping the loot into resources. Where would SCA and FAF, the most "pirate" factions, do that?

[mr.WHO]

I honestly think boarding needs to be revisited at some stage, including AI boarding, even if just between other AIs.

Ideally marine and service crew roles should be merged together to simplify the systems going on. This would have the benefit that NPC ships would be a lot more capable of defending themselves from player boarding than currently. There should also be other defences against boarding missions under way so just having marines in the cutting stage will not guarantee you success should you lose control of the area. It is possible that NPCs being able to board player ships should not be allowed as that creates an emersion issue of what to do if the ship the player is flying is being boarded, as the crew might Thanos snap out of existence in front of the player as they get killed.

Alternatively, all ships should have separate crew capacity for normal service crew and marines.
It's really bad idea having to choose between service crew and marines in the first place - currently with no boarding danger, 99% of ships need service crew and only 1% of dedicated boarding ship use marines.
Than makes current shipyard default 50:50 service crew / marines split really anoying.

[NightmareNight91]

Yes, all for it

[flywlyx]

Their AI is bad enough, less bug is more appreciated than a new buggy feature.

[Imperial Good]

It's really bad idea having to choose between service crew and marines in the first place - currently with no boarding danger, 99% of ships need service crew and only 1% of dedicated boarding ship use marines.

All player ships only have service crew until the exact moment the player wants to board in which case they swap them to marines just for the duration of the boarding mission before swapping them back to service crew. Micro intensive but optimal. Hence why removing "marine" would seem to make sense since then players no longer can do this and it effectively happens automatically. Boarding setting window would automatically show the skills of the available crew based on their boarding performance rather than service crew performance.

[Insects]

Yes I think so.
Running a ship with zero crew should suffer a penalty for such foolishness.

It would also make pirates better if they didn't just demand cargo and then chase runaway ships for 5 seconds. Piracy should involve an actual boarding.
Dont have to always steal the ship, mostly just board to disable ship while it's cargo gets taken.

[Insects]

Ideally marine and service crew roles should be merged together to simplify the systems going on.

But then it takes even more micro management to avoid sending your high level service crew into combat and wasting them.

The two sections are easier to manage and it makes you make a choice between crew efficiency and boarding resistance.

I think Marines is good, but for the purposes of ship defence they should get a bonus vs the service crew, ie they are in heavy armour.

Simplify NPC's boarding by making the pods work as missiles, instant count of crew kills and a status of death vs victory.
NPC's respect the ship boarding limits by ships having a cooldown on being boarded.

On the flipside of a NPC boarding you, that ship has now weakened it's boarding resistance by offloading crew. So they are ripe for the player to recover their ship or board the attacker.

[grapedog]

How would it work anyway...

As players we can game the system or play it straight up. The AI can't game the system, waiting for a ship to turn or slow down, launch pods super close, ignoring turrets or blocking turrets with the launching ship while pods land and we fly away. AI can't do that.... or we can do it the normal way, take out engines, take out turrets, weaken hull, launch marines.

So will the AI then go through the process of trying to take out all the turrets and engines, without overall destroying the players ship? and once stripped of all hardpoints, and sitting dead in space, then launch marines. I don't see that happening....

[Insects]

So will the AI then go through the process of trying to take out all the turrets and engines, without overall destroying the players ship? and once stripped of all hardpoints, and sitting dead in space, then launch marines. I don't see that happening....

Why would it need to happen?
Mostly just about if you run half a crew of marines the AI will fail, less than half if you have ranked up marines.

It's just silly right now that player ships can run with zero crew because they have zero threat of boarding.

[rubahax4]

I'm in favor of AI capturing and plundering the player's ships by boarding. This is believable, which means more immersion in the game. You also need to remove the universalism of the team.

[Gavrushka]

I love the idea of player ships being put at risk of capture, but as has been said elsewhere, much improvement needs to be considered around boarding and the skill level of crew, marines and service...

There would need to be improvements in responses, including an immediate urgent message to the player and every asset in their empire from the captain of the player ship being boarded, with military-capable vessels responding. - I think it would need to be a 'reasonably' rare occurrence, and perhaps only in less secure sectors.

I think it essential that a successful pirate capture should leave the player with the ability to scan and locate their captured ship with the possibility of recovering it if they can find it.

I think marines on any player vessel should very slowly level by default as their start ability is non-existent, and capture would be all-but automatic. Perhaps they should have the chance of skilling during non-boarding military engagements too.

My fear would be that complicating the boarding system would mean the playing community going through a very long period of pain as it is tweaked. - On the surface, it would appear a lot more complicated than mining, and we know how that went awry for quite some time. And I guess there's only so many processor clock cycles that can be expended on this.

[budforceuk]

Yes but not Xenon ar Khaak.

[builder680]

Yes but not Xenon ar Khaak.

Being boarded by the Kha'ak would be amazing. "Quick, where's the bugspray?!"