Boarding parties question
 

I noticed something odd the other day with boarding parties and I'm wondering if the behaviour is a bug or not.

I built a boarding ship that had three boarding parties on it, along with shield depleting weapons. During an assault on an enemy world, I sent the boarding ship to capture three freighters, loaded with enemy population, that were cowering in a corner. The freighters had no security stations and no self-destruct devices.

I approached the first one, knocked out its shields, and boarded it. All went well, until I discovered that all three boarding party components on my ship had been destroyed. I was expecting only one of them to be destroyed.

I played around with some different configurations, and it always seems that when I capture a ship, all of my boarding party components are destroyed. That seems wrong to me, but I am wondering what others have experienced.

Re: Boarding parties question
 

Is it just me, or does it bother anyone else that you can board any ship, no matter how "intact", as long as the shields are down? How do you board a ship whose engines are intact? And since the AI doesn't seem to build ships with security stations, even the baddest dreadnought is easily removed once its shields go down.

Of course, the AI is not considered a big deal for the next patch, so.......

Jonathan

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How does he type with his hands over his ears?

Re: Boarding parties question
 

In my experience that's exactly how boarding works no matter how few or many boarders you have. The more and better boarders you have the greater the chance for succes. I have failed to board ships sometimes. If you want to board more than one ship, bring more ships with boarders.

FYI, I don't really like how boarding works, but I can live with it. To make it work like I want it to crews would have to be added along with a bunch of other stuff.

Re: Boarding parties question
 

It is a bit annoying that you cannot choose to use just one boarding party at a time. I'm not sure how you could arrange this, though. If you want boarding to be a "special" function controlled seperately from standard weapons you cannot put the BPs in the weapon list with the others. They would be used on the very first ship that had its shields down. But having only a simple button is disappointing. Maybe it could pop-up a dialog and ask how many boarding parties to use?

Re: Boarding parties question
 

I have not used boarding parties, so I don't know the details of how they work. However, reading this topic raises the question in my mind "what if you board a transport whose cargo holds are full of troops?". Logically, you should be in trouble.

That brings up another idea. What if boarding parties were not a component but a type of troop? You would build them & carry them in cargo holds.

Re: Boarding parties question
 

Actually, I really like the idea of using the existing troops for boarding, Bill. I'd still like a "boarding" component that allowed you to perform the boarding action in the first place. Maybe the rating indicates how many KT of troops can be transported to the enemy in a single boarding "attack" and then resolve it just like attacking a planet. Should probably give ships some "free" defenders, like planets have, based on their size (rather than pop).

Re: Boarding parties question
 

Not sure but maybe the boarding party simulates breaching pods?

with the security station being the area where onboard marines/security personnel work from also house their armory?

Re: Boarding parties question
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Zanthis:
Actually, I really like the idea of using the existing troops for boarding, Bill. I'd still like a "boarding" component that allowed you to perform the boarding action in the first place. Maybe the rating indicates how many KT of troops can be transported to the enemy in a single boarding "attack" and then resolve it just like attacking a planet. Should probably give ships some "free" defenders, like planets have, based on their size (rather than pop).<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That's a very interesting idea. What it amounts to is changing "Boarding Parties" to a launch bay for troops. The component itself would represent some sort of aparatus for attaching to another ship and breaching the hull, I guess. If you've got one, you can "fire" some troops at enemy ships. If you don't have one, you're just a troop transport. Would it be worthwhile to have 'warships' with a boarding units like this, or would everyone start using troop transports for boarding attacks? http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif The cargo space might be better used for weapons in true warships.

Re: Boarding parties question
 

breaching pods used in B5 and some other places (I just can't remember where), so a change to thet or added component like that would be veerrryyyy nice.

Re: Boarding parties question
 

i dunno. troops would include tanks, ground support fighters, armored infantry, heavy weapons.. the kind of stuff the Bab-5 GROPOs had, or the stuff the colonial marines landed with in aliens. the kind of stuff from sci-fi novels like Armor or Starship Troopers.

boarding parties would have to be light enough to fit in cooridoors. they certainly would not have tanks or ground support fighters, they definitly could not use the kind of weapons you put on most troop units (bombs? ground cannons? come on.) and if they had power armor at all, it would probably be alot lighter (unless you have 40K terminator style boarding parties)

my 2 cents anyway.

Re: Boarding parties question
 

The boarding process has always been "all or nothing". This should be changed.
And Freyland, the AI is always important, in every patch.

Re: Boarding parties question
 

Puke wrote:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
boarding parties would have to be light enough to fit in cooridoors. they certainly would not have tanks or ground support fighters, they definitly could not use the kind of weapons you put on most troop units (bombs? ground cannons? come on.) and if they had power armor at all, it would probably be alot lighter (unless you have 40K terminator style boarding parties)
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, I don't really care if the exact same unit that you use to capture a planet can be used to capture a ship. Sure, it isn't very realistic, but it would be better than what we have now and it should be pretty easy for MM to implement.

However, if they wanted to make separate shipboard troops, add an ability called "Usable in boarding actions". Every unit used in boarding actions (offensively and defensively) must have this ability on every component in their design as well as on the body of the design.

So, currently their are small, medium and large troops. You could either make all three workable shipboard units, or make new designs, maybe small boarding, medium boarding, large boarding. Just make sure the cockpit and probably armor/shields are all "usable in boarding action" and then pick which weapons you want boarding units to have available.

Re: Boarding parties question
 

There is a problem with using real units for boarding. How do you board ships that do NOT have cargo space? Or if you allow boarding of ships without cargo, what happens to the units and how do you get them OUT of the ship? Essentially, they would be destroyed by boarding, which is the same thing as the component being destroyed in the current system. It's probably much simpler to just change the current boarding attack to check the ship for how many boarding parties components it has, and pop-up a dialog asking how many to use if it has more than one.

Re: Boarding parties question
 

1. Cool idea, Zanthis.

2. Getting back to the actual game: Can multiple, level 1, boarding parties (BP1) defeat a single, level 2, defense station (DS2)? How is that calculated? Would it be like this:
1 DS1 beats 1 BP1;
1 DS2 beats 1 BP2 or 2 BP1;
1 DS3 beats 1 BP3 or 3 BP1;
and so on?

3. Somebody claimed that boarding fails sometimes and that multiple BPs increase the chance of success. I don't seem to recall a BP ever failing against a ship with no DS.

Re: Boarding parties question
 

Nice ideas to all below. :-))

I never really liked how the current boarding
is handled. (and i did not like the pictures, but that´s just personal taste)

I would like to add the following ideas:

Give all "warship-hulls" a specific boarding +and+ security rating depending on hullsize, representing armed sailors on small ships and
specificly trained marine parties on larger ships. (I think this is an real world approach/18th and 19th century also).

+boarding only possible if one ship is shields down +and+ immobilized. (tractor / repulsor weapons could benefit from this)

+all normal troop types in cargo holds get only a fraction of their combat value, representing men armed with small arms and lacking shipboard training.But lots of warm
bodies can overwelm boarders. these troops can +not+ board other ships and take great
casualities in a boarding action.

+decrease the a.m. hull rating with damage,
to enable smaller ships to capture larger ones. (representing loss of personal to
combat casualitis, low morale, injured and
fatigued crew)

+add a new troop size/type. say a raider marine in space combat armour with some kind
of +small+ (say 10 kt)bay component for storing. with this you can create a small
specialized boarder ship and as it is small
can put this on larger /civil ships for
insurence and in case of war fill it with
marines. the marines can +not+ invade a
planet due to specialisation.

+an afterthought for this bay component.
create a special force type troop for this
also. make him quite expansive.
but this can represent saboteurs droped prior
to normal troops which can destroy military
installations (WP, shield generators, some
percent of troops). this can ease invasions,
and they are expansive enough (maintaince and building)only to be used for the hardest,
most valuable targets. and their transports
must run the gauntlet of fire to the planet.
therefore no sneak attacks as well defended planets will down their transports.
these sf can not invade the planet. thats
what normal troops are for.

Any comments are welcome. (If this are
stupid ideas pls say so)
If they have some merit feel free to point
MM or others to them to include them in their mods.
Personally i think that the above can possibly implemented without to much
difficulty as component addition.
if the a.i. can handle them, that is a
whole other world.

Re: Boarding parties question
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>3. Somebody claimed that boarding fails sometimes and that multiple BPs increase the chance of success. I don't seem to recall a BP ever failing against a ship with no DS.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

If the enemy does not have a security station, unless you hit a bug, you will always capture them if you board. Security stations are more powerful than boarding parties. You need more marines than the enemy has defensive lasers to capture a ship. So at any given level of tech, a Security Station is worth 1.5 boarding parties.

I don't think that boarding parties should be used to capture planets or troops to capture ships. For one thing, how are 20 marines going to subdue even 1-million poeple? Presumably the police requires for a population that size could handle 20 marines.

In the other direction, how do you propose fitting hover tanks down the corridors of an enemy ship? Nah, leave it as is.



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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

Re: Boarding parties question
 

Actually, if MM used the same code as from SE3, crew quarters are factored into the boarding equation, so it's possible for a large ship to repel a boarding party (I know it happened to me once - I was boarding a large transport with only one boarding party...).

Re: Boarding parties question
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Instar:
And Freyland, the AI is always important, in every patch.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Instar, you continue to hang onto misconception like a rabid pitbull, don't you? Allow me to quote one of your fellow beta testers (oh, wait, that's all of us!)

posted 19 January 2001 15:51

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ok,
There is a "misunderstanding" goign on about the patches I think. Currently the patchs are for things that are broken. It is possible that AI improvements may be included but I don't think that is the main focus. There are Posts that others have made showing small changes made to the AI files that improve them. You may want to consider using them untill we can get to the AI.

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Seawolf on the prowl



Does this not say, "we don't think there is anything really wrong with the AI and if you want it to work, fix it yourself"? I have combed the Shrapnel site head to toe and I cannot seem to find on the SE IV page a disclaimer: "AI: some assembly required". Then again, I never could find anything that warned the buyer, "Not intended for single-user play", or "Pardon our dust... game under construction", but that never stopped anyone from charging full price. An AI patch shouldn't be necessary, but it is.

Jonathan



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How does he type with his hands over his ears?

Re: Boarding parties question
 

Baron M. wrote:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
There is a problem with using real units for boarding. How do you board ships that do NOT have cargo space? Or if you allow boarding of ships without cargo, what happens to the units and how do you get them OUT of the ship? Essentially, they would be destroyed by boarding, which is the same thing as the component being destroyed in the current system.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'm not trying to transport my troops into his ship, I'm trying to board it. I don't need cargo space. Much like, I suspect, if you try and drop troops on a planet that 100% of its cargo space full of enemy troops, there is no problem. Your guys don't take up space (until after the battle in the case of planets).

Suppose I have 10 raiders and board an escort with no cargo space at all (hence, no dedicated defending marines). The game resolves a ground attack against some default value (pretending the ship has 5 population per crew quarters maybe). If I win, my raiders come home (actually, they never left my cargo hold within the game code). If I lose, it just kills all my marines. If I only lose some marines, it only kills some of them in my cargo hold.

Sure, there should be rules for prize crews and capturing a ship shouldn't be instantanious (multi-turn battle) and I shouldn't be able to attack an escort with 10,000 marines (no room), but I don't feel those are terribly big concerns. If your boarding components only allowed 10 raiders to attack in a single boarding action, you'd for the most part eliminate the Last part. This would also mean boarding components would not be destroyed on use (you'd be losing troops every time you tried to board, so you're still limited).

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
It's probably much simpler to just change the current boarding attack to check the ship for how many boarding parties components it has, and pop-up a dialog asking how many to use if it has more than one.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That would be my minimum request for a fix. If boarding is just a "if attacker's boarding strength is &gt; defender's defense strength, ship is captured" then I don't even need a pop-up. Just use exactly enough BPs to take the ship.

[This message has been edited by Zanthis (edited 23 January 2001).]

Re: Boarding parties question
 

Nyx wrote:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>I don't think that boarding parties should be used to capture planets or troops to capture ships. For one thing, how are 20 marines going to subdue even 1-million poeple? Presumably the police requires for a population that size could handle 20 marines.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, if you used the "usable in boarding action" ability, you could make a whole separate set of unit bodies and components (notably weapons) for boarding actions that had really terrible damage values. They'd work just fine vs each other, but if you dropped your boarding marines on a planet they'd get their butt kicked.

Or, you could ignore the fact that some would be able to use boarding units in ground attacks as well. Although, say, all small shield and armor units not usable in boarding actions would seriously handcap them in planet assaults. Or, make all the best small weapons not usable in boarding actions.

Incidentaly, I've taken planets with 20 light troops. Actually, I've done it with 16 and lost only a tiny handful. Even if the planet had only one million people (the minimum), I'd find that pretty unrealistic, so I wouldn't worry about someone doing the same with boarding marines.

Re: Boarding parties question
 

Ok, first of all when boarding troop transports the nature of the ship needs to be taken into account. The changes proposed are for ships where the marines and the crew intermingle. The entire ship needs to be geared towards holding only a couple of hundred crew members some of the time, and thousands of marines at other times. Facilities like cantinas etc. need to be expanded, after all the regular crew needs these for long voyages, hence the troops, who share facilities will want them too.
The price I think is too high.
Presently it's different. The troops are isolated in the cargo hold. Personally I like this. In fact, the troops may even be cyrogenically frozen for long voyages with minimum hassle. This seems very sensible and cost-effective in the long run. Now, however only the crew is available to defend the ship. On a side note, I do believe these cyrogenically frozen marines are loyal to their empire, so if the ship is taken they should not be available to the border. Either they're jettisoned, or, for the more ethical of us, they are returned to thier families sans weapons. Gameplay-wise of course there would be no difference.

Secondly though, I want to look at the nature of the crew. If there is no crew, but rather a master computer, then theoretically the ship could be built to be boarder resistant. There would be small engineering tubes for repair bots, or with nano-technology even these would not be necessary. To take control of a ship like this would require some sort of computer virus to change the computers character. I would like this, if computer warfare not just included destructive algorithms, but also subversive ones.
If we do have a crew however, then it seems unrealistic that they cannot fight to defend the ship. Here I would prefer if each living quarters was fitted with a defensive value. Ships with people would thus become more resistant to boarding the more living quarters, and hence crew, that were aboard. The defensive value could be set at 25% of the value of defensive lasers( so it would still be worth using these against human opponents, as they are twice as effective per kT), simply as a modification to the present tech. Any of the mod experts out there could do that with ease.

Third, the fact that boarding parties are destroyed after use is not too surprising if they need to crew the enemy ship etc. It would be nice however to decide how many boarders to send.

Finally, requiring ships to be immobile. Hmm. At present I see boarding parties as short-range assault shuttles that attach themselves to the hull and bore through (hence when shields are up their mini-lasers cannot breach them (high damage lasers, but very local =&gt; able to breach a hull, but not an energy defence system that moves energy to where the damage is). It would be interesting if low-level boarding parties did indeed require an immobile ship, (i.e. boarders ship needs to attach itself to enemy hull), mid-level could attack a moving ship if it was close range, (as now), high level could attack a ship at range 2 or even 3, and top-level could attack range 3 through normal (but not phased) shields (tranporter tech).

Re: Boarding parties question
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Aegis:
Finally, requiring ships to be immobile. Hmm. At present I see boarding parties as short-range assault shuttles that attach themselves to the hull and bore through (...)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The only problem with the above is that Self Destruct Device components take out both ships, no matter how strong the boarding vessel is, shield or no, etc. The only way I could rationalize this would be locked hulls or the like, else why can't SDD ships be used as Uber-Kamikazi vessels?

Re: Boarding parties question
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Nyx:
If the enemy does not have a security station, unless you hit a bug, you will always capture them if you board. Security stations are more powerful than boarding parties. You need more marines than the enemy has defensive lasers to capture a ship. So at any given level of tech, a Security Station is worth 1.5 boarding parties.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Actually, no. At least not in the demo, and I've seen no mention of changes to this in patch histories. I just ran a quick batch of tests in the ol' simulator and this is what I found: one level of Boarding Parties is sufficent to capture one Crew Quarter. Hence, to take a Battlestation, you need at least 1xBP IV (or 4xBP I, etc.). If, however, the Battlestation merely has a Master Computer, 1xBP I can take it over (yes, MCs make it easier to capture ships...). It is possible to fail in capturing a ship, but it's not easy...

Edit: As a further note, I don't think that the 1.5 effectiveness ratio for Security Stations cited is acurate. To wit: if I take a 1xBP III ship and try to capture a ship with 1xCQ & 1xSS I, I fail. If I try with a 1xBP IV ship, I succeed. And to confirm that CQ is still an issue, 1xBP IV fails vs. 2xCQ & 1xSS I. 1xBP V will capture this. Hence, I'm lead to believe that one level of SS is equal to 3 CQ (and thus it takes BP III to take out a ship w/ SS I, plus one more level of BP per CQ). This makes sense, as it means that 1xSS I (20kt, 3 "CQ") is more effective than 2xCQ (20kt, 2 "CQ").

Edit: All is not as it seems... I ran into an irregularity which I couldn't figure out. The above is true in most cases, but I had an instance when a 1xBP III failed to capture a 1xSS I. A 1xBP IV could do so, and could also capture a 1xCQ & 1xSS I. Something screwy is going on with this, but I can't put my finger on it. This weirdness only arose out of ships w/ Master Computers, but that may not mean anything...

[This message has been edited by ealbright (edited 23 January 2001).]

Re: Boarding parties question
 

Observations on many peoples comments:

1) Yes, boarding combat is resolved too quickly. It ought to take more than a single combat round at least sometimes. The ship should be "neutralized" and unusable by either side while the combat is going on. In fact, it should not count as belonging to anyone while it is contested. This might lead to interesing tactics like the original owner firing on his own boarded ships in order to insure that technology is not captured.

2) I'm glad that crew quarters have SOME effect. I was going to suggest that we add a weak boarding defense ability to them. Glad that MM thought of this.

3) It's _possible_ to build ships to be resistant to boarders but not easy. A ship that resists boarding as suggested will have to be a completely different sort of design than a ship originally designed for crew and converted. Perhaps this could be added as a "special ability" that can be purchased for extra cost somehow. This is a completely unexplored area of ship construction in SE. Hulls cannot be endowed with "abilities" of any sort outside of components. If we could have "abilities" that are not actual components as technologies we could have "stealth" races like MOO (cloaking as an inherent ability without having to create a seperate ship set and tech fields) and Organic/Nanotech races could have ships that regenerate without some particular component having to be present (and vulnerable to destruction). Also, "Propulsion Expert" races could have the option to purchase greater speed for extra cost, etc. Loads of possibilities!

4) I have commented before, as have others, that the Self-destruct device is unrealistic in several aspects. The first is that it ALWAYS works. This is a bit silly. Even the Antareans in MOO II only had a 50 percent success rate for their "Quantum Detonator". No matter how good your technology there is always a chance that someone will be able to figure out a way to neutralize it. This "guaranteed" function pretty much neutralizes boarding. There should be a chance for boarding parties to "defuse" a self-destruct device. Maybe it should be a flat chance (even 10 or 20 percent is better than none) or maybe it should be based on the tech level of the boarding parties. But there should be SOME chance!

Also, the "total destruction" that the thing inflicts is equally unrealistic as others have said. The damage ought to be relative to ship size, like ramming. AND, I must add, other ships adjacent should also take some damage. So, since we're 90 percent there already let's have "collateral damage" in combat like MOO II. When a ship blows up, whether from a deliberate self-destruct or enemy actions, adjacent ships ought to take some sort of damage. It doesn't have to be the same scale of damage as ramming, but SOME damage ought to occur.

5) Immobilization: It's a good concept but makes boarding much more difficult. Perhaps the chance of success should be affected if the boarded ship is immobilized, OR if the boarding ship has a tractor beam. Taking account of immobility would be good. Requiring it makes boarding too difficult to be worthwhile.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 23 January 2001).]

Re: Boarding parties question
 

I would like to see number of Boarding Parties to use per attack be part of the ship or fleets strategy rather than a popup, since a popup would not work in Strategic mode.

Here is another thing to consider: racial size. One race might be unable to navigate the corridors of another race because they are too big phyiscally to move around. A race of giants (plus 20% in ground combat, cannot move inside of a ship built for -50% beings). The same prohibition should also apply to giving ships away. The +20% race should not be able to use the transport built by the -50% race (unless it was custom built for them). How about having ship designs specify the maximum racial size that they work for (let the small races use any ships, they just need buster chairs). This would give those midget races an advantage in repelling boarding parties, even though they are pathetic in ground combat on a planet's surface.

Re: Boarding parties question
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Observations on many peoples comments:
1) Yes, boarding combat is resolved too quickly. It ought to take more than a single combat round at least sometimes. The ship should be "neutralized" and unusable by either side while the combat is going on. In fact, it should not count as belonging to anyone while it is contested. This might lead to interesing tactics like the original owner firing on his own boarded ships in order to insure that technology is not captured.

2) I'm glad that crew quarters have SOME effect. I was going to suggest that we add a weak boarding defense ability to them. Glad that MM thought of this.

3) It's _possible_ to build ships to be resistant to boarders but not easy. A ship that resists boarding as suggested will have to be a completely different sort of design than a ship originally designed for crew and converted. Perhaps this could be added as a "special ability" that can be purchased for extra cost somehow. This is a completely unexplored area of ship construction in SE. Hulls cannot be endowed with "abilities" of any sort outside of components. If we could have "abilities" that are not actual components as technologies we could have "stealth" races like MOO (cloaking as an inherent ability without having to create aseperate ship set and tech fields) and Organic/Nanotech races could have ships that regenerate without some particular component having to be present (and vulnerable to destruction). Also, "Propulsion Expert" races could have the option to purchase greater speed for extra cost, etc. Loads of possibilities!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I second that. I would like to see racial strength having impact on ship boarding too.
Boarding ship should mean close quarters combat which is very often done in hand-to-hand manner, where strenght of race can play important role. It will also increase the value of that trait which is a good thing (it is seriously underrated now). A race with 120% strenght would have 20% more defense from crew quarters and security stations and 20% more strenght for Boarding parties. That would make strenght a must trait for race that loves to board ships.

Re: Boarding parties question
 

Hmm, I've never failed to capture a ship, and I've taken both large transports and battleships with a single level 2 boarding party. I do tend to climb right up to level 5 boarding parties very fast (since its such and affordable tech once you get past the military science level 2), but in all my time playing, with the exception of testing security stations against myself, I have never once failed to capture a ship without security stations no matter how few or how weak my boarding parties. I guess it's just that I upgraded my boarding party quality faster than I paid attention to or something.

As for the 1.5:1 ratio, yeah it's an approximation, but not a bad one. If you know the enemy has 1 level 1 security, either bring a level 2 boarding party, or 2 level 1's and you should be fine. If you only use 1 level 1, you'll lose. If he's got 3 SS 3s, then you want about 5 or 6 boarding party 3s to take him. Or, you can do it my preferred way and just board the ship right back from him...

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

Re: Boarding parties question
 

ealbright: Good research work! A suggestion on the CQ weirdness (which you state happens w/ Master Computers): maybe the _size_ of the Master Computer affects defense? Or level of the MC? Just a thought...