boarding is not fun

[alexbalex11]

this extreme timewaste and babysitting is just boring fix it

[CBJ]

How about explaining what is not fun about it, and how you'd like it changed in order to make it fun? Just rudely demanding that someone "fix it" without any explanation is not constructive.

[Falcrack]

My main issues with boarding are the following:

1. AI when boarding in low attention are too likely to kill the boarding target before boarding completes. Ships in a fleet that is ordered to board a target should stop shooting, main guns and turrets included, when the target ship health drops below a certain threshold.

2. AI factions will never initiate boarding attempts against others factions or player owned ships. I would like it if pirates did do boarding ops, and used the ships they stole.

3. No options exist for boarding stations. I'd like to be able to board stations for fun and profit.

I'm personally happy with boarding being abstracted with no actual fps combat. I don't want the X series to go the route of a first person shooter.

[Alan Phipps]

I don't see that great a difference in my boarding ops between release versions 6.20 and 7.00 in case that is what the OP meant. Perhaps the one thing that seems to happen more in 7.00 is that boarding pods seem more likely to get hung up on ship superstructure instead of attaching - and especially with the new E variant TEL models with complex tails and fins. Thread and another.

[gbjbaanb]

Boarding issues:

whilst the new mechanism is better, and allows you to fire off marines unattended, there are several shortcomings in the overall process.

My boarding game involves: flying up and shooting off turrets and engines. This is very easy, particularly M pulse turrets that I simply facetank with no appreciable damage to my shields (I use a Nemesis vanguard). Then I set the marines going and wait.. and wait... and wait... and wait... and wait... and wait... and wait... and wait... and wait... and wait... and wait... and wait. Then I win and I have a new ship. Occasionally I have to shoot a repair drone or damage the engines if they repair it.

Compare to X3. You had to shoot down the shields, and couldn't take out turrets so the enemy was constantly trying to shoot you, and your boarding pods down. You had to use wasp missiles and a lot fo flying and shooting to keep the shields down, but not too much to avoid damaging the ship. As the hull cutting would also damage it, and if you did too much then there was a chance the whole thing would blow. Only after the cutting stage was over could you relax and fly away to let the marines take the decks, with a lot more atmosphere than current boarding. The whole thing was exhilarating and fun.

So how to fix it.

Obviously the ability to de-fang a target is the primary problem, turrets should either hit harder, have a lot more health, or both. Maybe the main shields should protect the turrets, or maybe the turrets shields should be 5 to 10x more powerful. Pulse turrets will still be facetankable though, so damage must also be improved. (my suggestion here is to rework what turrets are for - pulse turrets seem useless for everything, there should be a turret designed to counter fighters, another for capitals, and one for missiles. eg. we have shard turrets that seem only there because there's a main weapon version of them)

Then, the hull cutrting phase must be improved. There has to be a reason to even have it besides wasting time. The player has zero agency during this time and zero gameplay involvement. So return the shield frying feature. I personally think this wouldn't work well as a player that has taken out all the turrets just needs to sit and fiure at the shields periodically and the main danger to the marines would be the player getting so bored they forget! Maybe instead delete this phase entirely - marines start fighting the moment they arrive. An alternative is that the marines require the shields to be reduced to zero in order to cut the hull. Boarding pods arrive in phase 1 and stay there until the player has shot up the shields to remove the 'protective film' from the hull to allow the marines to begin cutting (which then takes little time), or have the hull cutting depend not on marine skill but on shield strength, giving the player something to do to help progress. You can tie this into the overall battle too - the longer it takes you to get the marines in, the longer the enemy crew have to construct barricades. They should not be bothering repairing the engines, but getting ready to repel boarders.

The fighting stage is, by definition, a passive one. It is possible to improve it so the player can assist - if the ship had targettable areas (eg 1 or more of each - dock, crew quarters, engineering, cargo bay, bridge) that could be shot at (but not too much) whilst the fighting progresses to those areas (eg the player provides artillery fire just before the marines arrive, with notice of where the marines are headed and when they arrive to stop shooting them) then their chances of success improve. Either way, the whole fighting phase needs to be buffed in how its reported and presented. Deck by deck was a good choice for X3. Split ships into sections and have marines take each section as they fight their way to the bridge, reporting as they go with background noise, gunfire etc as they go. Make the process take longer, allocate enemy crew to these sections, no crew is an quick win, lots of crew means a long battle. Add some damage to the ship from the marine action to give some threat that it might fail.

The UI could be improved too. The boarding UI is firstly, modal. You see it and nothing else, or you see nothing concerning the boarding op. I would put the current progress on one of the 2 mini screens. Players need to know: what phase is current, and like to see how many casualties there are. So running total of casualties on both sides would be the minimum to display.

The modal dialog is spread out too much as well, the casualties section is on the left and the phase 3 progress on the right. The enemy status is on the top right. These should be together in 1 place, and I'd say needs more info such as what enemy casualties there are and how many enemies are marines and their skill levels or service crew. If you provide deck or sections to fight through these should be listed and ticked off as they are secured. The rest of the dialog is a mass of empty space that could be better used. choosing boarding ships and marines require a lot of clicking through options - each one has to be told their behaviour and each phase selected. I have 3 ships in my boarding fleet, that's 3 clicks, 5 drop downs, and up to 9 sliders to get through. I wouldn't mind so much but I repeat the exact same process with the exact same options every time. Maybe I'm asking too much here though as these options are essential, I wish each ship could at least remember its last behaviour order though, and the UI remember its 2 phase effectiveness options.

And lastly, there must be a "stop shooting my boarding target" by default. NPC ships should turn off their guns during the process. They don't shoot my ships, so they should not shoot my marines either.

Extras:
* why not allow extra marines to board after the first wave, during the boarding op that is. Send in the reinforcements should be a thing.
* Have options for surrender, service crew at least should have a surrender option as their battle response, prisoners and passengers automatically surrender.
* Casualties could also not be dead but injured as well. Then we can have a whole add on for hospital, hospital ships and marine recovery (ie unavailable until time has passed). This can easily tie in to other missions and quests.
* Prisoners could be added. Some ships I board have prisoners listed in their crew. My marines appear to kill them all regardless. Rescue the prisoners is a good mission idea. Or enslave the crew, if you're split. YMMV. If you do get prisoners afterwards, the options could be kill, free or send off to the authorities to get rid of them, or buy their sedrvice as crew yourself, depending.
* Passengers. Similarly some ships have passengers listed. Capture and ransom them back to their faction.
* NPCs should try to board ships rather than drop cargo. then you have time to go rescue it/them. Gives meaning to having marines as crew to defend then. Also means NPCs can use ships other than the minotaur raider and behemoth/phoenix. you might need passenger (ie troop) transports added for this to be workable.
* allow M ships to be boarded too. It should absolutely be possible to board an M freighter or any other M class if you can catch it. Add a capture menu (like claim) that spits out marines from your current ship to make the attempt.

[jlehtone]

this extreme timewaste and babysitting is just boring fix it

Sorry, but you have to explain the "timewaste" and "babysitting" to us first. Most of us lack psychic abilities.

Posters above did list what they see, but you have to tell whether those items were what you do mean.

[humility925]

this extreme timewaste and babysitting is just boring fix it

Sorry, but you have to explain the "timewaste" and "babysitting" to us first. Most of us lack psychic abilities.

Posters above did list what they see, but you have to tell whether those items were what you do mean.

Most? I'm petty sure all humankind don't had psychic abilities. Beside, no one want to read humankind's dirty mind, LOL. Humankind's mind are so easy corrupted.

[birdtable]

Main long long long standing complaint was of friendly fire continually attacking the ship your trying to board, I did have a mod that stopped that but originator of the mod like Icarus flew too close to the Sun and had his wings clipped by CBJ.

[alexbalex11]

sorry for the starter i was tired and frustrated and didnt explain well enough.
it takes forever to board and u just sit on it forever. i think there should be some timed modifiers to speed it up if u disabled it, has low hull, no enemies around. or researchable breeching charges to speed it up.
i think it took 30min for me even with seta on
u cant just board and leave the sector it will fail. u cant let ai sit on it because they will blow it up. im seeing my katana completely fail to shoot at it and get stuck.

its also compltely uninmerseive u just sit and wait forever. you could include a text based minigame ordering them around solving some puzzles to speed it up. highlight weakspots u fly around to shoot at to breach faster.
spawn in reinforcement ships and if u kill them causes demoralization speeding up surrender.

the issue here isnt difficulty its just a bad mechanic. shooting turrets and shields is easy. even having 10x the number of marines does nothing to breech time. or having hull at 20%

there needs to be some feedback. just waiting 20min hoping something happens in phase 2 is infuriating. show a % ticker or a notification popup.
offer a chance to speed up boarding by risking more marines like teleporting in specops into the bridge

[dayang]

Doesn't usually take that long for me and I don't use SETA.

Here's what I do.

Pre-boarding
1. How competent is the Captain
2. How many crew
3. What's the morale like
If any of these are stupidly high like 4 or 5 stars or a full complement of crew, I tend to give them a miss, I generally look for crew complements around 50% of full.

Boarding
1. First stage I set to Very Low, by that I mean destroy all the turrets.
2. Second stage I set to medium. Risk should be medium. You may want to equip something with hull piercing and allow the shield to recover or you can make the crew bail (takes way longer).
3. Third Stage. I send a full complement of marines and make sure the risk is very low, 80% 3-star, 15% 2 star and the remainder whatever.

Aside from the marine convoy (a bunch of Hermes Vanguards), I set every ship to destroy turrets, the marine convoy I set to maintain distance. No one is set to destroy engines or disable the ship, waiting for the engines to be repaired is a pita and disabling the ship just destroys the ship.

I'm usually sending between 40 and 60 marines.

Once the marines have boarded it normally only takes about 5 minutes to conquer the ship.

In fairness I'm targeting destroyers. Carriers may need even more marines.

[Alan Phipps]

"shooting turrets and shields is easy. even having 10x the number of marines does nothing to breech time. or having hull at 20%"

Are you totally sure about that? Depending upon how many turrets and hull points you reduce before starting the operation, you can choose lower risk levels that make pod launch immediate and hull breaching much shorter. I normally remove 2 or more turrets and take the hull to below 80% for my personal boardings so that I can use Strong, Strong settings on common capitals. Then boarding takes about 5 minutes rather than the about 30 mins needed for very strong, very strong (as in for solo fly-by boarding with no target preparation).

Sending more marines/pods than really necessary might even lengthen the process as they all have to attach or be destroyed before the hull breaching phase starts.

At 20% hull you could choose even lower risk setting and with very short hull breaches.

[jlehtone]

it takes forever to board and u just sit on it forever. i think there should be some timed modifiers to speed it up if u disabled it, has low hull, no enemies around. or researchable breeching charges to speed it up.
i think it took 30min for me even with seta on
...
even having 10x the number of marines does nothing to breech time. or having hull at 20%

The code disagrees. (Hearsay from the enlightened.) The 7.0 has different code than what was before 7.0, but in both there are two factors that affect the speed of breach (the Stage 2):
* State of hull. A 90% hull takes longer to breach than a 20% hull
* Skill of the worst marine. A 1-star needs more time than a 4-star and the other wait for the slowest member

30min of SETA would be three hours ingame? I don't use SETA, but I'm quite sure no board op has taken that long for me. (Although, I don't look at clock while in action -- they do not feel long.)


Sending one or 100 marines does not change the time of Stage 2, but the 20% hull should have it shorter. The number of marines does affect the Stage 3, in addition to their skill. Skill makes them do more damage and sustain more injuries. The extra marines help, if the first ones die.


Granted, the Stage 2 does not have much "action" in it. Granted, if you choose "Weak", then the breach timer does not even start before you damage the hull enough. What the "wait" does affect is how much third parties can meddle. If "natives" like the target, then they spend this time to shoot at you. If "natives" hate the target, then they spend the time to attack the target. So, boarding SCA near cops or almost any ship near Xenon gets more interesting the longer the Stage 2 takes. Small victories.

[alexbalex11]

thats even more horrible. why would i need to micro to make sure i dont have a single low skilled marine. either make it based on the highest or an avarage median

[jlehtone]

thats even more horrible. why would i need to micro to make sure i dont have a single low skilled marine. either make it based on the highest or an avarage median

Doesn't the board config already have three scrollbars: noobs, skilled, and elite? When you drag that bar for skilled to 20 marines, it is the 20 best of the "skilled" category. Same as in any ship to ship crew transfer; N best.

It takes much more micro to be able to excplicitly send the worst marines to the job. (I want them to train more, to catch the others in skill -- or die.)

[Aegir86]

Boarding is such a great concept, but pretty awful in execution. Its been a juggle of tedium and cheaty with very little gratification. Infact, think it has gotten worse over time.

There needs to be some degree of player input beyond shooting down surface areas and baby sitting your other ships to not blow up the target. Extending phase 2 duration does not fix the overpowering aspect, and it doesn't make it any more "involving".

I propose a ship type that has a special harpoon turret/gun mount? It tethers and slows down targets depending on size of ship. The physics are there. Target ship still has a chance to escape if it reaches a certain speed, but its acceleration is hampered depending on its size and amount of pirate ships harpooning and pulling it. I could see this being a ton of fun with a pack of ships - racing to disable surface elements and avoid losing harpoon ships before it gets away. The equivalent of roping a large animal. The bigger/more dangerous the mark the more ships and finesse you will need. Risk/Reward would be much more impactful.

Make this a PIRATE ONLY ship feature - boarding is their wheel house, and realistically this should be how their fleets amass in strength.

Instead of boarding pods launched like missiles maybe they can scoot across the harpoon lines. Eliminates the awful stray boarding pod getting stuck and speeds up time to hull. After all, pirates should be in and out before sector authority catch wind.

Also being able to aquire/manufacture some kind of disposable item like different grades of hull explosives that marines can use would be awesome to see and justify how stupidly long phase 2 is atm.

The culmination of all this would be to finally (in theory) allow AI pirates to board ships. In sector you have a great display of another faction struggling to save a destroyer to the pirates or its YOU rushing with a support wing to save your prized flagship from being claimed by the flotilla. OOS it would be calculated by amount of harpoon ships/ combat ships and strength of boarding target.

This would also give me reason to really start caring about my service crew/marine crew balance in all my ships outside of boarding transports.

I don't know about you, but i'd love to see a pirate fleet led by a stolen asgard or boron shark.

Just an idea...

[alexbalex11]

i think extending time and tedium isnt fun or good gameplay. if devs wanna balance it make it so more noob marine die during boarding or increase general crew numbers for large ships requiring more marines.
i rather be required to send 80 marines or 4 full dolphins of marines to capture faster with more losses than sit and wait forever because waiting in seta is not good gameplay.

[alexthespaniard]

i think extending time and tedium isnt fun or good gameplay. if devs wanna balance it make it so more noob marine die during boarding or increase general crew numbers for large ships requiring more marines.
i rather be required to send 80 marines or 4 full dolphins of marines to capture faster with more losses than sit and wait forever because waiting in seta is not good gameplay.

The best way to implement a mechanic is for it to be simple and require small micromanagement tasks that add excitement (for example, being asked to bomb/shoot an exact location on the ship to cause casualties since the conflict is in that area). The idea is not bad. I don't think it's terrible, but it feels like something is missing.

Additionally, it's a hassle when, after spending all that time assaulting (if you want to lower morale and make the marines flee, you're there for 30 minutes), an allied faction arrives and destroys the assaulted ship with the marines still inside.


The possibility of seeing pirates assaulting, raiding stations, and ships dedicated exclusively to transport are additions that would greatly enhance the enjoyment of the game.

I think they should ask themselves: "Is it a mechanic that attracts and entertains players?" For me, yes. "Is it simple?" Not entirely. "Does it explore all the fun it could be?" I doubt it.In this regard, just like in politics, they have a golden opportunity. It depends on them.

[gbjbaanb]

I propose a ship type that has a special harpoon turret/gun mount? It tethers and slows down targets depending on size of ship. The physics are there. Target ship still has a chance to escape if it reaches a certain speed, but its acceleration is hampered depending on its size and amount of pirate ships harpooning and pulling it. I could see this being a ton of fun with a pack of ships - racing to disable surface elements and avoid losing harpoon ships before it gets away. The equivalent of roping a large animal. The bigger/more dangerous the mark the more ships and finesse you will need. Risk/Reward would be much more impactful.

Make this a PIRATE ONLY ship feature - boarding is their wheel house, and realistically this should be how their fleets amass in strength.

We have EMP missiles for this already. No needd to grappling hooks, which I think would be an exercise in disaster for the devs. And pointless, as EMP missiles achieve exactly what you want. Boarding isn't just pirates though, police (or military) action should be all about boarding to bring those pesky pirates to justice without death and destruction.

[vvvvvvvv]

Compare to X3. You had to shoot down the shields, and couldn't take out turrets so the enemy was constantly trying to shoot you, and your boarding pods down. You had to use wasp missiles and a lot fo flying and shooting to keep the shields down, but not too much to avoid damaging the ship. As the hull cutting would also damage it, and if you did too much then there was a chance the whole thing would blow. Only after the cutting stage was over could you relax and fly away to let the marines take the decks, with a lot more atmosphere than current boarding. The whole thing was exhilarating and fun.

You've described pretty much every reason why I never bothered with boarding in x3. At release time it was unintuitive convoluted process, and it didn't help that marines were expendable. I think idea of "stars" for crew was introduced around the same time, and that's another mechanic I'm not a fan of. In x4 boarding could use some streamlining and simplification, but at least it is more obvious how to do it.

[Aegir86]

I propose a ship type that has a special harpoon turret/gun mount? It tethers and slows down targets depending on size of ship. The physics are there. Target ship still has a chance to escape if it reaches a certain speed, but its acceleration is hampered depending on its size and amount of pirate ships harpooning and pulling it. I could see this being a ton of fun with a pack of ships - racing to disable surface elements and avoid losing harpoon ships before it gets away. The equivalent of roping a large animal. The bigger/more dangerous the mark the more ships and finesse you will need. Risk/Reward would be much more impactful.

Make this a PIRATE ONLY ship feature - boarding is their wheel house, and realistically this should be how their fleets amass in strength.

We have EMP missiles for this already. No needd to grappling hooks, which I think would be an exercise in disaster for the devs. And pointless, as EMP missiles achieve exactly what you want. Boarding isn't just pirates though, police (or military) action should be all about boarding to bring those pesky pirates to justice without death and destruction.

EMP can be used to stop the target in order to allow anchor phase. Its not pointless if you make the harpoons the means for boarding pods to arrive to ship hull (this would also bypass the awful phase 1 glitching that I have had to switch OOS to reset constantly).

Otherwise, again we are looking at ways to make boarding more engaging.

Plus I don't think boarding should be a main function of organized factions - thats what shipyards/wharfs are for. Pirates need a fun form of power scaling as well, and introduce a legitimate player start for pirating. With/without harpoon boats I still think pirates need a way to have more agency in the universe. It would add more emergent experiences in the form of raiding threats and just having awesome organic flotillas formed from pirates actually stealing ships from the universe.