Ship Capping

[Kantall]

Apologies if this has already been asked, but I couldn't find anything from a search, maybe looking up the wrong terms.

One thing I really liked about X Rebirth was the modular/component based nature of ships, being able to do things like disabling individual weapons, engines etc. was a great feature for capturing ships, and to me it felt much more satisfying than it did in X3 where it was "Launch a load of flail barrage missiles then some pods"

Has it been said whether we'll see this in X4?

[Solflame]

We haven't heard much on capping/bailing, but we do see components for all ships now, not just large ones! No clue if small ships will take component damage like large ones though.

[Kantall]

We haven't heard much on capping/bailing, but we do see components for all ships now, not just large ones! No clue if small ships will take component damage like large ones though.

It'd be fantastic if they do. If capturing fighters could be done by.... I don't know, knocking out a life support system or managing to disable the right components without destroying the hull itself, I'd be really happy.

[Solflame]

Or if the likelihood of an opponent bailing increases a lot when the lose all engines!

[Tenlar Scarflame]

Or if the likelihood of an opponent bailing increases a lot when the lose all engines!

I like that a lot - the old system worked well enough (basically just "roll to capture vs. target's chutzpah modifier") but a slightly more varied take would be quite welcome. Like, where the target takes more variables into account before deciding to call it quits... which of my systems are failing? Which of those systems are SUPER important (shields/drives/etc)? What kind of weapons is the target still able to bring to bear? Do I have allies in the area that can drive off my attacker and scoop me up if I decide to bail? How courageous/well trained/drunk am I?

[CorruptUser]

I had asked a while back about damaging small ship components, and they had said small ships were already hard enough to hit. I took that to mean that component damage is likely to be random for small ships, whereas big ships will be like in XR where you can focus on engines or weapons first or just go for the hull.

What I would like to see, but too late for any changes of course, is for "power cores" to be a component, albeit a hidden one deep in the hull that could only be damaged through sabotage or something like that; maybe randomly as the hull itself takes extensive damage, with "piercing" type weapons including missiles more likely to hit something internally. Remember in X3 how every ship had a shield and weapon recharge rate? So basically that, but shared for the whole ship, and unlike in X3, upgradeable. E.g., a core could provide 500 kilowatts of power, while your engines would only be 50% efficient and turn 300 kilowatts into 150 kilowats of thrust, and the remaining 200 kilowatts is split between the various shields and weapons which also have their own efficiencies. Not to mention a capacitator/battery or something, perhaps that would be targetable once the main shields were breached, which would provide extra juice during a fight. The races would vary in their own component's abilities, for instance the Split engines would be only 40% efficient but could use more energy from the core for more thrust, giving any ship with Split engines much greater speed but only a pathetic amount of energy left over for their shields and weapons, Paranid engines could be 60% efficient but cant use as much juice, if you wanted to create a super slow deathnaught that had plenty of energy to recharge shields and keep your pulse cannons firing nonstop, etc.

[reanor]

While not exactly power gens, the XR already had shield generators, you had to destroy on the ship you were boarding, before you could start boarding procedure. That could have been a mod though, but I really enjoyed having it. The way I usually captured ships on skunk, I would destroy the target ships engines, then destroy turrets, then disable the shield generator and launch my marines to board the ship. I usually had a pilot and an engineer to jump into the boarded ship. Later I would bring a few patrol ships of mine into the area, some of which had repair drones and fuel cells to transfer to the boarded ship, or made sure that there were no capital ships of that same faction the ship I was boarding patrolling the system. In many cases the patrol would just quickly jump into the system as soon as I attacked the ship I wanted to board and capture, which made it almost feel as if I was playing against a real player and made things stressful and fun. That was my favorite way of adding capital trader ships Tom my ever growing fleet .

[CorruptUser]

I think you mean "captain", not pilot. Also, remember a defense officer!

I played with the mod that gave me 16 passenger slots in the skunk, as well as the "show me your skills please" mod to save time. Always had 1-3 spare captains, defense officers, and engineers.

[fcth]

We haven't heard much on capping/bailing, but we do see components for all ships now, not just large ones! No clue if small ships will take component damage like large ones though.

I can't find it now, but I'm pretty sure someone said they had their weapons destroyed while flying a fighter. They said they couldn't shoot and then looked and saw their gun was toasted. I don't think it was clear if that was due to the gun actually being hit directly, or just a visual representation of the type of random system damage you'd see in previous games if you took hits with the shields down.

[Alan Phipps]

@ fcth: I can support that recollection; IIRC it was one of the devs and whose post seemed to show them as quite surprised and impressed by the discovery.

[Kantall]

Not sure if we'll get them due to the Boron not being in, but I wonder how Ion weaponry will work with disabling components. You'd imagine they'd get a bonus against component damage and they'd be a great way to preserve a ship when capturing/boarding it.

[CorruptUser]

If it's like XR, you would just destroy components with regular weaponry, and the components would be repaired over time for free. Perhaps this will no longer work this way, or require materials or a brand spanking new component to replace. Would be interesting, always having to reserve some cargo space for "engine components" and other wares, just in case.

[Solflame]

Well, you only got that repair because 1) you had an engineer on board and 2) you couldn't do it yourself.

[CorruptUser]

Destroyed or heavily damaged modules being repaired would, realistically, require replacement components. Even Scotty from TOS required spare components from something, even if he was able to make an engine run on hand-phasers.

The problem is when it becomes too complicated. I'd rather just have generic "spare parts" wares rather than every module requiring their own 5 unique components.

[Alci]

Spare parts? Now we use repair nanite paste

[ishmaeltheforsaken]

Spare parts? Now we use repair nanite paste

Complete with a smalltalk minigame to tell rando NPCs all about it

[csaba]

I wouldn't mind changes to the XR system a bit.

Although it was way better than previous iterations it was too easy to get rich off High-tech or Weapon dealer cargo ships. Sold a ship once full with turrets for 400 mill to a shipyard at the start of a game. Defense basically didn't scale with cargo value just ship value and Rahannas are some of the easiest targets to board.

Give more defensive options to capital ships. Make boarding high value targets require specified hacking gear somewhat like it is in EVE and include cargo value into the calculations. Marines should consume some wares, and require high explosives/specialized weapons for certain missions.

TLDR.; Make pirating interesting again!

[PabloRSA]

I liked the pirate teleporter in X3:R where you have to get extremely close to the ship and you can start beaming wares off, and the shield strength/time would increase the chance to get noticed and they would eventually turn hostile,
You could get 2-3 IRE weapons before they noticed. I know small chump change compared to a PBE profit but it gave me the feeling that i was a pirate just zooming along, pull along side beam of a few wares and run off.
This could be expanded using the shielded cargo bay, run the risk without shields leaves you vulnerable to the teleporter and as its a research thing it could be something we unlock as a research tree.