Easy boarding

[Cabrelbeuk]

Despite the new balanced difficulty, capturing a ship, even a Taranis, is still far too easy. The devs have said that the Sconse should not be able to fight a destroyer alone, but if you just sit in the engine it's just easy peasy.

The problem is that the board team never die (could be the solution), never fail, just the time is changing. With 20 beginners soldiers and 5 veteran i can board everything in the known space, even military ships like Taranis.

Is there any balancing scheduled for this ?

[CaptainRAVE]

Personally I think there are much, much more important things for the devs to focus on.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

I would say no, especially as of V2.0 where there can be a substantial impact on reputation with a given faction for doing boarding. No more selling Arawns, boarding them, then selling them back again.

The process is simple, but favourable results are not guaranteed in the main (especially with military ships). That however is fine since a trained military force would be expected to take a non-military vessel with comparative ease.

Would like to see promotion of Recruits to Veterans and Veterans to Elite given they survive enough boarding operations. Casualties of individual team members during the taking of the ship would be a nice twist for military vessels (so even in successful boardings there could be losses other than shot down boarding pods).

[CuriosityKillsTheMADCat]

Personally I think there are much, much more important things for the devs to focus on.

MFG

CKTMC

[Cabrelbeuk]

Personally I think there are much, much more important things for the devs to focus on.

True, but it doesn't change the problem. Winning a free Taranis (which have 66 weapons slots) in few minutes shouldn't be that easy.

Would like to see promotion of Recruits to Veterans and Veterans to Elite given they survive enough boarding operations. Casualties of individual team members during the taking of the ship would be a nice twist for military vessels (so even in successful boardings there could be losses other than shot down boarding pods).

If i trust the description, should be already implemented.

[Cabrelbeuk]

Another solution could be that capital ships (our and NPC's one) can have their own soldier on board. A cargo L can have 20, a XL 40, a military ships 80 (it's random number, has to be thought and balanced).

I mean, how a 2 km long military destroyer can fail against 20 recruits and 5 veterans ?

If you have some ideas...

[dougeye]

would make the drone foundry stage of campaign almost impossible if boarding was harder but I do agree its too easy.

[burger1]

The only thing that makes boarding difficult is drones. Once you destroy the drone bay on any ship the ship is yours unless there's other ships around then you have to do some other stuff. You can also snipe with novadrones so blowing up the rear guns and sitting in the engine is an advantage but not one that's needed. You can clear out a safe area on the hull. Carriers should have force fields or closing doors on their drone bays. I think the arawn does.

The drone foundry does require quite a bit of credits.

[laminblake]

I agree it's way too easy to board a ship. IMO the solution would be the addition of flak turrents. Turrents that do an AOE damage effect instead of a ship-to-ship damage, that way 1 or 2 flak turrents can cover an entire side/back/front of a ship. They would have limited range but the range can adjust depending on where the enemy ship is at the time.

[MegaJohnny]

Another solution could be that capital ships (our and NPC's one) can have their own soldier on board. A cargo L can have 20, a XL 40, a military ships 80 (it's random number, has to be thought and balanced).

I mean, how a 2 km long military destroyer can fail against 20 recruits and 5 veterans ?

If you have some ideas...

I was poking around the code for boarding the other day and IIRC it does even add to the defender's strength if they have any marines - just that currently no ships spawn with them.

[burger1]

I agree it's way too easy to board a ship. IMO the solution would be the addition of flak turrents. Turrents that do an AOE damage effect instead of a ship-to-ship damage, that way 1 or 2 flak turrents can cover an entire side/back/front of a ship. They would have limited range but the range can adjust depending on where the enemy ship is at the time.

Would AOE weapons also damage the ship firing them? The current weapons can be pretty accurate. The astrobee missile turrets on destroyers can be dangerous.

[Cabrelbeuk]

I agree it's way too easy to board a ship. IMO the solution would be the addition of flak turrents. Turrents that do an AOE damage effect instead of a ship-to-ship damage, that way 1 or 2 flak turrents can cover an entire side/back/front of a ship. They would have limited range but the range can adjust depending on where the enemy ship is at the time.

No, you just have to destroy them, and it's really easy. Just hide behind the engine 'till your shield is ok, then send massive waves of missiles on turrets (don't forget to move, if not the missiles will be destroyed).

This problematic exists only in 1v1 anyway, but lonely Taranis is quite common.

[burger1]

Maybe a rapid response fleet timer? Any thing you can change can be overcome. Ships in a fleet with fighter escorts might help. If you hide/protect the drone bays then a fleet of 3 or 4 ships + fighter escort should be harder to cap till they run out of drones and you space them out. My guess is the skunks 170 missile cap might be useful in making a decision unless you use player capital ships. You could also make the damaged ships jump out if their jump drive comes back online or they take x amount of damage.

[pref]

It would be nice if there were losses, and we could minimize losses by attacking certain ship modules as Yisha tells us.

Also RRF was really nice in AP. Would be a most welcome feature in XR as well.

Skill-up for marines, along with a considerable price increase for better trained ones would help (maybe elites should not be available for purchase).

Sounds kinda X3ish, i know...

[werewolves?]

Escorts is the answer including frigates and fighters and RRF for a bit of pressure. Like the old ATF fleets that had a Skirnir or 2...


At the moment in the scheme of things a corvette loaded with high tech munitions to disable key systems and marines, kind of should be able to jump unsuspecting and isolated bigger ships – I think it actually fits. If 50 special forces landed on a naval ship with 100-200 normal sailors on board they'd probably win too.

What ever they do they shouldn't do X3, that was such a pointless time waste training marines it wasn't even funny.

[Shenzo]

Despite the new balanced difficulty, capturing a ship, even a Taranis, is still far too easy. The devs have said that the Sconse should not be able to fight a destroyer alone, but if you just sit in the engine it's just easy peasy.

The problem is that the board team never die (could be the solution), never fail, just the time is changing. With 20 beginners soldiers and 5 veteran i can board everything in the known space, even military ships like Taranis.

Is there any balancing scheduled for this ?

Boarding is just fine as is. You could put a turret on every section of the ship, it wouldn't matter. You can create your own blind spits using nova drones killing the turrets.

Boarding in this game is 100000x better than x3. If anything they should add some non drone escorts, Balor's and such. But even then all you have to do is kill those using traitor drones which is easy enough.

[wwdragon]

It's NOT at all easy!
Hacked ship times are now crap.
Combat ships XL can easily tear appart the skunk with guns & drones are now deadly effective across the board!

Also, looking at thread title, I think this is another troll thread.

[DaddyMonster]

Boarding is just fine as is. You could put a turret on every section of the ship, it wouldn't matter. You can create your own blind spits using nova drones killing the turrets.

Boarding in this game is 100000x better than x3. If anything they should add some non drone escorts, Balor's and such. But even then all you have to do is kill those using traitor drones which is easy enough.

Using novadones against a cap ship is proper strategic gameplay - and with more hard points / defence drones (or non drone escorts as you say) - there's every chance of it being shot down en route. Sheer weight of numbers will eventually make it hard.

I think sitting in a blindspot from the off with the cap ship defenceless is pretty unacceptable. Some people have said this is low priority but being able to cap at will in a boring way (even though the mechanics of capping are one of the strengths of Rebirth) to get all the ships and money you want is a broken element to the game. I for one largely stay away from capping because it's too much of a hack - at least your rep suffers now. It's only because the UI / Menus / maps are so bad and the economy has sinks that we're considering working on other things first. However, with this, you're not talking about a redesign, only adding more hard points, more drones and spawning a ships with "defend cap ship" orders. Might be a lot easier to do.

[Santi]

There should be a black market trader to sell boarded ships and with a different price scale (lower) as to the normal ship builders, same for stolen wares, either from ships or from hacking. The problem is not how easy or difficult is boarding but how much money you get from it.

[wwdragon]

There should be a black market trader to sell boarded ships and with a different price scale (lower) as to the normal ship builders, same for stolen wares, either from ships or from hacking. The problem is not how easy or difficult is boarding but how much money you get from it.

I like that idea. They'd have varying states of damage and turrets functional or destroyed.