Idea for boarding modification

[Q]

Until now I hardly ever used boarding because I did not find it worth the effort: it is so easily prevented by self destructing devices and you can only destroy these by blindly destroying half the ship you want to board.
But if you give the self destructing device a small security station ability you can construct a "boarding cannon" with the damage type "security stations only". Then you have the possibility to selectively knock out the self destructing device and any security stations. However you still have a counter measure: Boarding parties can also defend a ship and will not be affected by the above mentioned "boarding cannon".
I tested this and in tactical combat it works perfectely. In strategic combat the boarding ships sometimes do not attack as they should for reasons I do not understand yet.

[Suicide Junkie]

Another option is to make the self destruct device heavier. If it has more hitpoints, it will be more likely to be destroyed early.
It will also make for a rock-paper-scissors problem, where ships without SD become more powerful then those with, but those with SD can defeat boarding ships, and boarding ships can defeat ships without SD.

[PvK]

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:

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"where ships without SD become more powerful then those with, but those with SD can defeat boarding ships"

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It sounded to me like suggestion (SD defeats SD and SS) would just be "ships with SD can capture other ships with SD."

PvK

[Phoenix-D]

"I don't quite see why self-destruction devices should be made more vulnerable."

Other than a SDD being much cheaper and half the size of a security station, much less a security force capable of defending the ship?

It should be cheaper, and somewhat smaller (after all, you loose the ship!) but not THAT much, IMO.

Phoenix-D

[Suicide Junkie]

PvK:
If you had a large SDD (say 40KT), then the ship that spends those 40KT on extra guns will win a slugging match.

So, NoSDD defeats SDD defeats BP defeats NoSDD.

[PvK]

I think the problem with SS's versus SDD's is that SS's are way too expensive - it should cost hardly anything to put a bunch of guards on a starship (compared to the cost of the starship itself), and it shouldn't take much space, either.

In my mods I keep boarding parties more expensive though because they need to include equipment to break into the enemy ship and to survive inside the alien ship, and to be able to take over its controls.

If a SDD is able to knock out enemy SDD's reliably, then the chance to capture enemy ships (even ones with SDD's) seems like an effective use of space. Not that that's a big problem - I despise "rock-paper-scissors" anyway. I guess it'd make sense to have two flavors of SDD - ordinary and then Versions equipped with bomb defUsers. Does it need to be in an SDD to work, or can it be in a special boarding party that damages SDD's? (I don't understand the logic/explanation behind an SDD that destroys other SDD's).

PvK

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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I guess it'd make sense to have two flavors of SDD - ordinary and then Versions equipped with bomb defUsers. Does it need to be in an SDD to work, or can it be in a special boarding party that damages SDD's? (I don't understand the logic/explanation behind an SDD that destroys other SDD's).

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You have a weapon, "Boarding Cannon" with a damage type of "only Security stations". By giving the self destruct boarding defense, it counts as a security station, and can be destroyed by the cannon.

As a tweak for that, you could make the boarding cannon do 9 damage. Make the SDD have 9 hp, and the security stations have 10HP.

Then the cannon can only destroy the SDD, and there is a chance that the cannon will fail (when it hits a security station, rather than the SDD).

quote:

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Not that that's a big problem - I despise "rock-paper-scissors" anyway

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Just curious: What do you prefer instead?
An uberweapon at the top tech level?