Another counter to self-destruct devices are shield depleters and then escorts with boarding parties. The cheapo boarding ships can get enemy heavies to self-destruct.
I don't quite see why self-destruction devices should be made more vulnerable. If someone wants to make their ships set to blow up, and invest the resources and ship space to do so, it seems like it should be hard to "shoot it off." OTOH, the AI have a strategy setting for whether a ship design should attempt boarding on enemies with SD or not (since it's clear suicide).
The change I made in Proportions was to give crew quarters some boarding defense strength, and to reduce the cost of security stations quite a bit, and make some smaller Versions of it. Guards should be cheap.
SJ, I don't understand why you wrote:
quote:
"where ships without SD become more powerful then those with, but those with SD can defeat boarding ships"
It sounded to me like suggestion (SD defeats SD and SS) would just be "ships with SD can capture other ships with SD."
PvK