[MOD] Improved Boarding Difficulty

[NightFury]

Improved/Increased Boarding Difficulty to make the boarding of capital ships much more exciting! Perfect for the 'Fight' player type.
Nexus: https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/653/


This mod tweaks the "Stage III Assault" boarding phase, defending marine crew will now deal damage to attacking marines not only based on their combined skill but also based on the following things:

- Hull Percentage % of the ship being boarded.

- N° Number of 'operational' turrets ##

- N° Number of forward mounted 'operational' weapons ## (for destroyers or Asgard ect..)


This forces the player to reduce the target hull significantly and destroy every turret and weapon before attempting to board it in order to succeed, especially with recruit marines or weak veterans. This mod also affects marines skill experience, they will level up to elite faster than vanilla for every successful board.

As a result, the Asgard (CoH dlc) and the Raptor (SV dlc) are much more harder to successfuly board now.

Raptor: has ALOT of turrets, requires strategic planning and will take longer than usual coz of the N° of turrets to destroy.

Asgard: the main XL weapon is not destroyble, this means you will need higher tier marines to successfuly board it (at least marines with 3 stars on boarding and morale) and possibly making some of the defending crew bail before boarding it.


##WARNING##: Save the game before boarding the Asgard, as balancing of the mod is not final yet but easily adjustable.


#Combined skill: Is a value from 0 to 100 depending on the marine boarding and morale stars. [1 star = 10 combined skill ]



Differences with Vanilla & Mod Tests Results:

Vanilla: each defending marine deals damage based on combined skill, es. A marine with 2 stars in boarding and 2 stars in morale deals 40 dmg.

Mod: A marine with 2 stars in boarding and 2 stars in morale deals 40 dmg + 5 dmg (if hull % of ship is 20%) or 25 dmg (if hull is 100%) ect.. + 5 dmg for each 'operational' turret + 20 dmg for each 'operational' weapon.


Test Results:

(Boarded Ship: Osaka) Test#1: 75 attacking recruit marines with combined skill of 10 - AGAINST - 12 defending veteran marines with combined skill of 40 -- Ship hull% down to 20% -- 1 turret alive and 0 weapons.

Boarding Failed, killed some service crew and 4-6 of those veterans.


(Boarded Ship: Osaka) Test#2: 75 attacking recruit marines with combined skill of 10 - AGAINST - 12 defending veteran marines with combined skill of 40 -- Ship hull% down to 20% -- 0 turrets and weapons alive.

Boarding Success, lost 37 of my recruits.



(Boarded Ship: Osaka) Test#3: 75 attacking weak veteran marines with combined skill of 25 - AGAINST - 12 defending veteran marines with combined skill of 40 -- Ship hull% down to 20% -- 0 turrets and weapons alive.

Boarding Success, lost 26 of my veterans.

[Alkeena]

Hey, thanks so much for this. I was actually contemplating trying to set up something similar so this is just absolutely fantastic timing!

I might recommend my subsystem targeting mod to assist in stripping the weapons: viewtopic.php?f=181&t=435908

I do worry a bit that the maluses you've laid out might be a bit extreme though. If you look at the average marine as having a combined skill of ~30 (>75 combined skill personnel are _exceedingly_ rare and expensive) then a single active turret and 5% hull is basically a 33% damage boost. That's a very, very large bonus, especially considering the service crew and repair drones will constantly be trying to repair the hull and turrets. It's going to take a lot of concentration to keep it in the sweet spot without accidentally killing the ship during the entire duration of the boarding operation--so much so that it might go from challenging and fun to just frustrating?

Maybe just a flat +2 dmg as a defenders advantage plus 1 dmg for every 3% of hull/2 dmg for every turret? Enough where you still need to be on the ball and actively engaged in the process but it's not such a knife edge between total failure and total success with no middle ground?

[NightFury]

Thanks for the feedback and np.

I agree, my values were abit extreme, I just uploaded a new version to reduce the dmg per Hull% (now is 5 dmg if hull is 20%). Now it will be less tedious to keep the ship between 10% and 20% hull, instead of less than 5%.

I will probably never change the dmg per turret, as most destroyers and large ships don't have many turrets. The weapon dmg balancing will depend on test results on the Asgard.