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).]
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