Boarding parties question - Page 2

Instar · #11 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 · #12 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 · #13 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.

dmm · #14 January 22nd, 2001, 07:09 PM

1. Cool idea, Zanthis.

2. Getting back to the actual game: Can multiple, level 1, boarding parties (BP1) defeat a single, level 2, defense station (DS2)? How is that calculated? Would it be like this:
1 DS1 beats 1 BP1;
1 DS2 beats 1 BP2 or 2 BP1;
1 DS3 beats 1 BP3 or 3 BP1;
and so on?

3. Somebody claimed that boarding fails sometimes and that multiple BPs increase the chance of success. I don't seem to recall a BP ever failing against a ship with no DS.

fdlu · #15 January 22nd, 2001, 10:12 PM

Nice ideas to all below. :-))

I never really liked how the current boarding
is handled. (and i did not like the pictures, but that�s just personal taste)

I would like to add the following ideas:

Give all "warship-hulls" a specific boarding +and+ security rating depending on hullsize, representing armed sailors on small ships and
specificly trained marine parties on larger ships. (I think this is an real world approach/18th and 19th century also).

+boarding only possible if one ship is shields down +and+ immobilized. (tractor / repulsor weapons could benefit from this)

+all normal troop types in cargo holds get only a fraction of their combat value, representing men armed with small arms and lacking shipboard training.But lots of warm
bodies can overwelm boarders. these troops can +not+ board other ships and take great
casualities in a boarding action.

+decrease the a.m. hull rating with damage,
to enable smaller ships to capture larger ones. (representing loss of personal to
combat casualitis, low morale, injured and
fatigued crew)

+add a new troop size/type. say a raider marine in space combat armour with some kind
of +small+ (say 10 kt)bay component for storing. with this you can create a small
specialized boarder ship and as it is small
can put this on larger /civil ships for
insurence and in case of war fill it with
marines. the marines can +not+ invade a
planet due to specialisation.

+an afterthought for this bay component.
create a special force type troop for this
also. make him quite expansive.
but this can represent saboteurs droped prior
to normal troops which can destroy military
installations (WP, shield generators, some
percent of troops). this can ease invasions,
and they are expansive enough (maintaince and building)only to be used for the hardest,
most valuable targets. and their transports
must run the gauntlet of fire to the planet.
therefore no sneak attacks as well defended planets will down their transports.
these sf can not invade the planet. thats
what normal troops are for.

Any comments are welcome. (If this are
stupid ideas pls say so)
If they have some merit feel free to point
MM or others to them to include them in their mods.
Personally i think that the above can possibly implemented without to much
difficulty as component addition.
if the a.i. can handle them, that is a
whole other world.

Nyx · #16 January 23rd, 2001, 12:50 AM

quote:
3. Somebody claimed that boarding fails sometimes and that multiple BPs increase the chance of success. I don't seem to recall a BP ever failing against a ship with no DS.

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.

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.

In the other direction, how do you propose fitting hover tanks down the corridors of an enemy ship? Nah, leave it as is.

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

DirectorTsaarx · #17 January 23rd, 2001, 01:03 AM

Actually, if MM used the same code as from SE3, crew quarters are factored into the boarding equation, so it's possible for a large ship to repel a boarding party (I know it happened to me once - I was boarding a large transport with only one boarding party...).

Freyland · #18 January 23rd, 2001, 02:56 AM

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

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

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 · #19 January 23rd, 2001, 08:39 AM

Baron M. wrote:

quote:

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.

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:

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.

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 · #20 January 23rd, 2001, 08:46 AM

Nyx wrote:

quote:
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.

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.