Boarding parties question

[Freyland]

quote:

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Originally posted by Instar:
And Freyland, the AI is always important, in every patch.

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Instar, you continue to hang onto misconception like a rabid pitbull, don't you? Allow me to quote one of your fellow beta testers (oh, wait, that's all of us!)

posted 19 January 2001 15:51

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ok,
There is a "misunderstanding" goign on about the patches I think. Currently the patchs are for things that are broken. It is possible that AI improvements may be included but I don't think that is the main focus. There are Posts that others have made showing small changes made to the AI files that improve them. You may want to consider using them untill we can get to the AI.

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Seawolf on the prowl



Does this not say, "we don't think there is anything really wrong with the AI and if you want it to work, fix it yourself"? I have combed the Shrapnel site head to toe and I cannot seem to find on the SE IV page a disclaimer: "AI: some assembly required". Then again, I never could find anything that warned the buyer, "Not intended for single-user play", or "Pardon our dust... game under construction", but that never stopped anyone from charging full price. An AI patch shouldn't be necessary, but it is.

Jonathan



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How does he type with his hands over his ears?

[Zanthis]

Baron M. wrote:

quote:

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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.

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I'm not trying to transport my troops into his ship, I'm trying to board it. I don't need cargo space. Much like, I suspect, if you try and drop troops on a planet that 100% of its cargo space full of enemy troops, there is no problem. Your guys don't take up space (until after the battle in the case of planets).

Suppose I have 10 raiders and board an escort with no cargo space at all (hence, no dedicated defending marines). The game resolves a ground attack against some default value (pretending the ship has 5 population per crew quarters maybe). If I win, my raiders come home (actually, they never left my cargo hold within the game code). If I lose, it just kills all my marines. If I only lose some marines, it only kills some of them in my cargo hold.

Sure, there should be rules for prize crews and capturing a ship shouldn't be instantanious (multi-turn battle) and I shouldn't be able to attack an escort with 10,000 marines (no room), but I don't feel those are terribly big concerns. If your boarding components only allowed 10 raiders to attack in a single boarding action, you'd for the most part eliminate the Last part. This would also mean boarding components would not be destroyed on use (you'd be losing troops every time you tried to board, so you're still limited).

quote:

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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.

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That would be my minimum request for a fix. If boarding is just a "if attacker's boarding strength is > defender's defense strength, ship is captured" then I don't even need a pop-up. Just use exactly enough BPs to take the ship.

[This message has been edited by Zanthis (edited 23 January 2001).]

[Zanthis]

Nyx wrote:

quote:

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I don't think that boarding parties should be used to capture planets or troops to capture ships. For one thing, how are 20 marines going to subdue even 1-million poeple? Presumably the police requires for a population that size could handle 20 marines.

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Well, if you used the "usable in boarding action" ability, you could make a whole separate set of unit bodies and components (notably weapons) for boarding actions that had really terrible damage values. They'd work just fine vs each other, but if you dropped your boarding marines on a planet they'd get their butt kicked.

Or, you could ignore the fact that some would be able to use boarding units in ground attacks as well. Although, say, all small shield and armor units not usable in boarding actions would seriously handcap them in planet assaults. Or, make all the best small weapons not usable in boarding actions.

Incidentaly, I've taken planets with 20 light troops. Actually, I've done it with 16 and lost only a tiny handful. Even if the planet had only one million people (the minimum), I'd find that pretty unrealistic, so I wouldn't worry about someone doing the same with boarding marines.

[Aegis]

Ok, first of all when boarding troop transports the nature of the ship needs to be taken into account. The changes proposed are for ships where the marines and the crew intermingle. The entire ship needs to be geared towards holding only a couple of hundred crew members some of the time, and thousands of marines at other times. Facilities like cantinas etc. need to be expanded, after all the regular crew needs these for long voyages, hence the troops, who share facilities will want them too.
The price I think is too high.
Presently it's different. The troops are isolated in the cargo hold. Personally I like this. In fact, the troops may even be cyrogenically frozen for long voyages with minimum hassle. This seems very sensible and cost-effective in the long run. Now, however only the crew is available to defend the ship. On a side note, I do believe these cyrogenically frozen marines are loyal to their empire, so if the ship is taken they should not be available to the border. Either they're jettisoned, or, for the more ethical of us, they are returned to thier families sans weapons. Gameplay-wise of course there would be no difference.

Secondly though, I want to look at the nature of the crew. If there is no crew, but rather a master computer, then theoretically the ship could be built to be boarder resistant. There would be small engineering tubes for repair bots, or with nano-technology even these would not be necessary. To take control of a ship like this would require some sort of computer virus to change the computers character. I would like this, if computer warfare not just included destructive algorithms, but also subversive ones.
If we do have a crew however, then it seems unrealistic that they cannot fight to defend the ship. Here I would prefer if each living quarters was fitted with a defensive value. Ships with people would thus become more resistant to boarding the more living quarters, and hence crew, that were aboard. The defensive value could be set at 25% of the value of defensive lasers( so it would still be worth using these against human opponents, as they are twice as effective per kT), simply as a modification to the present tech. Any of the mod experts out there could do that with ease.

Third, the fact that boarding parties are destroyed after use is not too surprising if they need to crew the enemy ship etc. It would be nice however to decide how many boarders to send.

Finally, requiring ships to be immobile. Hmm. At present I see boarding parties as short-range assault shuttles that attach themselves to the hull and bore through (hence when shields are up their mini-lasers cannot breach them (high damage lasers, but very local => able to breach a hull, but not an energy defence system that moves energy to where the damage is). It would be interesting if low-level boarding parties did indeed require an immobile ship, (i.e. boarders ship needs to attach itself to enemy hull), mid-level could attack a moving ship if it was close range, (as now), high level could attack a ship at range 2 or even 3, and top-level could attack range 3 through normal (but not phased) shields (tranporter tech).

[E. Albright]

quote:

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Originally posted by Aegis:
Finally, requiring ships to be immobile. Hmm. At present I see boarding parties as short-range assault shuttles that attach themselves to the hull and bore through (...)

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The only problem with the above is that Self Destruct Device components take out both ships, no matter how strong the boarding vessel is, shield or no, etc. The only way I could rationalize this would be locked hulls or the like, else why can't SDD ships be used as Uber-Kamikazi vessels?

[E. Albright]

quote:

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Originally posted by Nyx:
If the enemy does not have a security station, unless you hit a bug, you will always capture them if you board. Security stations are more powerful than boarding parties. You need more marines than the enemy has defensive lasers to capture a ship. So at any given level of tech, a Security Station is worth 1.5 boarding parties.

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Actually, no. At least not in the demo, and I've seen no mention of changes to this in patch histories. I just ran a quick batch of tests in the ol' simulator and this is what I found: one level of Boarding Parties is sufficent to capture one Crew Quarter. Hence, to take a Battlestation, you need at least 1xBP IV (or 4xBP I, etc.). If, however, the Battlestation merely has a Master Computer, 1xBP I can take it over (yes, MCs make it easier to capture ships...). It is possible to fail in capturing a ship, but it's not easy...

Edit: As a further note, I don't think that the 1.5 effectiveness ratio for Security Stations cited is acurate. To wit: if I take a 1xBP III ship and try to capture a ship with 1xCQ & 1xSS I, I fail. If I try with a 1xBP IV ship, I succeed. And to confirm that CQ is still an issue, 1xBP IV fails vs. 2xCQ & 1xSS I. 1xBP V will capture this. Hence, I'm lead to believe that one level of SS is equal to 3 CQ (and thus it takes BP III to take out a ship w/ SS I, plus one more level of BP per CQ). This makes sense, as it means that 1xSS I (20kt, 3 "CQ") is more effective than 2xCQ (20kt, 2 "CQ").

Edit: All is not as it seems... I ran into an irregularity which I couldn't figure out. The above is true in most cases, but I had an instance when a 1xBP III failed to capture a 1xSS I. A 1xBP IV could do so, and could also capture a 1xCQ & 1xSS I. Something screwy is going on with this, but I can't put my finger on it. This weirdness only arose out of ships w/ Master Computers, but that may not mean anything...

[This message has been edited by ealbright (edited 23 January 2001).]

[Baron Munchausen]

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).]