Question on Boarding Operations

[Enigma]

I am in a life and death struggle with an organic race. I do not have the tech to defeat them. There ships have organic armor but no shields.

My question does this leave them vulnerable to boarding operations? Does the special armor have to be defeated before a ship can capture another ship?

Thanks

[geoschmo]

Nope, boarding is a great early defense against an organic race. Expect them to rapidly start putting security stations or self destruct devices on board to counter the threat. It might buy you some time to come up with a long term strategy though.

[Fyron]

Security Stations are quite expensive though, and cost minerals. This will reduce the number of ships the enemy can build, and make it take longer (one of the advantages of organic tech is that resource costs can be balanced between minerals and organics, thus greatly speeding up build times). Self Destruct Devices, on the other hand, are insanely cheap and small... They quite effectively eliminate boarding from being a useful tactic in more than a few isolated circumstances.

[Kana]

Yet...that will be one less ship for the enemy to use as well...because it will have blown up...so now your boarding ships are like big ugly missiles...



Kana

[Instar]

Kana said:
Yet...that will be one less ship for the enemy to use as well...because it will have blown up...so now your boarding ships are like big ugly missiles...



Kana

big expensive missiles...

[Arkcon]

Of course, a bunch of frigates with boarding parties will overcome a dreadnought's defence, and trigger the auto destruct sequence. A swarm of these sacrafice frigates will inflict some serious carnage on the opposing fleet. IIRC, the latest patch will have boarding ships suicidally board ships with self destruct devices.

[EDIT]

Dang, I'm slow today. But my comment still stands -- research a few levels of boarding parties, put them on your smallest ship, maybe with fighters armed with small shield depleters (shields will start appearing soon), can be a fair tradeoff against big expensive ships.

[ToxicSlurpee]

Instar said:

big expensive missiles...

Heh...depends on how you do it. If I knew somebody had a bunch of big ships with self-destructs on them, I'd be sure to try and capture them with stupid little ships.

C'mon...who wouldn't sacrifice a Frigate to take out a Dreadnought? (or something to that effect)

[geoschmo]

ToxicSlurpee said:
C'mon...who wouldn't sacrifice a Frigate to take out a Dreadnought? (or something to that effect)

Well, if I was on the frigate I might not be too keen on the idea.