[Suggestion/Gameplay] Medium ship boarding via torpedo-style capsules with marines

[azaghal]

The idea behind this is to make capturing medium ships a bit more player-involved with some additional game mechanics. This could be even kept alongside the existing process. Rough ideas listed.

Suggested mechanics:

• Player launches individual marines in high-speed ballistic capsules towards the targetted ship. Multiple capsules can be launched at the ship to improve boarding strength.
• Target shield must remain under 5% for capsules to be able to penetrate it. If target shield is above 5%, the capsules bounce off and remain stranded in space. Capsules that miss the target lose speed over time and end up stranded in space.
• Each capsule that hits causes 5% (flat rate) damage to shields. Excess damage gets transferred to hull (in percentage). For example, if ship with 3% shield and 87% hull gets hit by a single capsule, it will end up at 0% shield and 85% hull. The idea is that player must be careful not to overdo it.
• Player triggers the boarding process once satisfied with the number of landed capsules/marines. Boarding process is the same as for L/XL ships at this point (hull breach + assault).
• Lower hull value should make boarding safer/easier/faster. Something to entice the player to get closer to destroying the actual ship.
• Stranded capsules get "converted" into space-suits that can be then rescued per usual game mechanics (shedding the outer shell). Could be even a nice little animation for this.
• Capsules can either be a dedicated weapon type, or some kind of dedicated torpedo ammunition, probably only M-sized ships should be usable for this purpose or something like that.

Optional mechanics:

• Capsules need to hit a specific spot on the target ship in order to latch on. Maybe area around the hatch/airlock or something similar. Something that would require a bit more skill from the player.
• Operation might incur some kind of risk on killing the marine. Maybe there should also be a way to somehow negate this as well (through some kind of recurring cost).
• Drop the hull breach phase or make it super-short (more like the marines getting ready to burst out of capsules).

Pros:

• Makes the capture process for medium ships a bit more active/involved for the player, and also adds the skill component to it.
• Makes boarding operations with marines available earlier in the game against a bit weaker targets.

Cons:

• Might be a bit overpowered since now player has a guaranteed way to capture the medium ships.

P.S.
Not immersive enough? Capsules are filled with special nano gel that compensates the impact vibrations.