quote:
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!
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.