Post
by Scoob » Sat, 10. Jun 23, 13:21
I've never heard of fly-by boarding until sometime last year, didn't quite believe it was possible...then I tried it! Sorta amusing at first, but it highlighted multiple issues:
- Sending Boarding Pods annoys the ship, but they get over it eventually - just like accidental fire.
- They're blissfully unaware of the HOSTILE MARINES boring their way through the hull.
- If a ship is at 100% hull, said boring takes well over an hour real time - I'd always previously damaged a ship first (to force a few more crew to bail), so initially though fly-by boarding didn't work.
- No rep loss when my Marines start killing the crew - do they not realise it's me? They know what Boarding Pods are for, right?
- When the ship becomes mine, so do ALL docked subordinates! We can assume my Marines took out the Pilots chilling in their ships... huge bonus though.
- Other ships of that Faction, perhaps in the same fleet, don't find it odd when their buddy wanders off under another faction's control.
Fly-by boardings are a good way to get a ship from a friendly, but it takes a LONG time if the hull is at 100% Also, the pods have to survive the trip - no neutering of turrets as I'd do in a regular boarding operation. Finding an already damaged ship can speed things up...
There are also several "buggy" side-effects of fly-by boarding in addition to the above (which I count more as omissions than bugs):
- Boarding Pods are the most dense objects in the Universe, able to stop a multi-megatonne Capital ship dead in its track, or knock it flying. Thanks Jolt lol.
- Boarding Pods often just vanish on the way to the target. They're NOT destroyed, they just vanish, but the game logs the Marine deaths.
- Sometimes ships go NUTS trying to shoot the already attached boarding pods, this can lead to mayhem with stray shots (ships cannot hit themselves) going all over the place.
- Allied ships will sometimes try to shoot the attached pods too, damaging the ship.
I imagine fly-by boarding goes like so:
- Target ship: What's that NUTTER doing, he's gonna hit us..oh, he missed, that was close!
- Did that lunatic launch something at us or did bits just fall off his ship? Red Alert.
- Oh, he's buggered off (out of scanner range) stay alert guys.
- Right, Tea break, stand down.
- Sometime later...
- Does anyone else hear that scratching noise from outside the hull?
- Just the hull heating / cooling sir, as we pass into the shadow of those asteroids and back out again...certainly nothing to do with that prior event at all, I'm certain of it.
- Has anyone seen Bob, he was here a moment ago...
- Hostile forces have boarded the ship... Marines!
- Shall we call for assistance sir, that speeding lunatic must have sent Boarding Pods!
- A bit busy a the moment, oh, there's Bob... and over there too, and on the ceiling, I'm gonna be sick.
- Sir, Sir? No time for laying down sir...Oh!
I'd suggest that, if the boarding is successful, perhaps all evidence that it was ME is covered up. Let say active Marines can block comms. However, if it's NOT successful, they'd be able to ID some of the corpses as affiliated with my faction - which would REALLY piss them off.
Also, surely the Faction knows the ID of their own ships... Really, there should be another step to "legitimise" the ship by changing the ID... But that doesn't only apply to fly-by boarding of course.
When talking regular "bail" ship capture of S and M-Class ships, the "I'm trying to save you, honest" method is, again, something I only realised last year. Basically, go to a conflict area where you're at least neutral with both side - ANT/ARG vs. HOP in Second Contact II - Flashpoint is a good place, depending on game start - and simply Comm ships that are close to death and suggest they leave, for their own safety (aka "Surrender!") then, through there's no actively hostile action on the player's part, ships might bail. Can get the player Fighters and Corvettes in the first few minutes of a new game, zero down-side. Well, other than ships close to death can often die seconds after the crew bails.