[Suggestion] Ship surrender and crew capture

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jmrc
Posts: 122
Joined: Fri, 11. Dec 20, 22:19
x4

[Suggestion] Ship surrender and crew capture

Post by jmrc »

I find very unrealistic (even in game terms) the boarding mechanic where the crew fights to the death, even when the attackers vs defenders ratio is very high.

So I suggest the introduction of the ship surrender and the crew capture mechanisms, which may provide interesting ways for missions and roleplaying as pirate/corsair.
In fact, this is already half-implemented and I stumbled in it when I had a bug tied to a mod removal, which left several ships stopped in space, in neutral state, with their entire crew inside but no pilot at the wheel. I just entered them, sat at the pilot seat and owned the ship. Also, it's possible to rescue your crewmembers drifting in pods and they become unassigned passengers, so why not do the same for the enemy crewmembers that bailed or stay inside the ship?

During a boarding action, if the attackers achieve a much higher advantage against the defenders, the crew surrenders: the pilot leaves the seat and the ship becomes neutral (small penalties towards the original faction). All crewmembers become passengers but cannot switch back to crewmembers, so they serve no purpose other than dropping them in a space station (and receive a fee proportional to their hiring cost). Now. 3 things can happen:

1. as happens now, if a pilot is assigned to the ship, the attacker becomes owner and gets full penalties towards the original faction
2. if no pilot is assigned to the ship, but at least 1 attacker remains inside, it continues neutral. In this state it's possible to eject the ship's cargo.
3. if all attackers leave the ship, the original pilot returns to the seat, all passengers become service crewmembers and the ship reverts to the original faction

What this can do:
- create missions to capture a specific passenger in a ship and drop him in a specific station, without taking ownership of the vessel
- the same as above but regarding the cargo of that ship
- using very high penalties for ship capture with ownership VS low penalties for ship surrender with no ownership, to allow different effects on the relation to the defender faction

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