Boarding parties question

pathfinder · #1 January 21st, 2001, 11:41 PM

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?

Baron Munchausen · #2 January 21st, 2001, 11:53 PM

quote:
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).

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?

The cargo space might be better used for weapons in true warships.

pathfinder · #3 January 22nd, 2001, 12:49 AM

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.

Puke · #4 January 22nd, 2001, 02:51 AM

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.

Instar · #5 January 22nd, 2001, 03:51 AM

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

Zanthis · #6 January 22nd, 2001, 05:12 AM

Puke wrote:

quote:

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)

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.

Baron Munchausen · #7 January 22nd, 2001, 06:59 PM

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.