C# Aurora Changes Discussion

[King-Salomon]

I do think that boarding shouldn't instantly remove a ship from the fight, but I can't help but think five minutes per increment is too long, especially without any mechanic that diminishes a ship's fighting ability while it's being boarded if the attackers have overwhelming force.

hmm.. good point...

maybe if a ship get's boarded it could get to "abandoned an overhaul-like status" which just reduces the reload-time of weapons (I guess the order "all hands prepare to repell boarders" from the ship captain MIGHT reduce the ROF a tiny little bit indead...)

[Steve Walmsley]

I do think that boarding shouldn't instantly remove a ship from the fight, but I can't help but think five minutes per increment is too long, especially without any mechanic that diminishes a ship's fighting ability while it's being boarded if the attackers have overwhelming force.

hmm.. good point...

maybe if a ship get's boarded it could get to "abandoned an overhaul-like status" which just reduces the reload-time of weapons (I guess the order "all hands prepare to repell boarders" from the ship captain MIGHT reduce the ROF a tiny little bit indead...)

Yes, I think something on those lines is probably worthwhile. The degree of impact would depend on the weight of boarders vs defenders. I am not at home at the moment but I will take a look later.

[Agoelia]

I do think that boarding shouldn't instantly remove a ship from the fight, but I can't help but think five minutes per increment is too long, especially without any mechanic that diminishes a ship's fighting ability while it's being boarded if the attackers have overwhelming force.

hmm. .  good point. . . 

maybe if a ship get's boarded it could get to "abandoned an overhaul-like status" which just reduces the reload-time of weapons (I guess the order "all hands prepare to repell boarders" from the ship captain MIGHT reduce the ROF a tiny little bit indead. . . )

Yes, I think something on those lines is probably worthwhile.  The degree of impact would depend on the weight of boarders vs defenders.  I am not at home at the moment but I will take a look later.

Agreed, a 20 marines squad boarding a 5000 crew capital ship should interfere a little bit with the operations but the slow down would be barely noticeable.  Viceversa, an entire company dropping on a 14 crew scout vessel would render almost impossible for the boarded vessel to execute any order (not even counting that they would slaughter/surrender everyone in a few seconds)

[Scandinavian]

Perhaps once the boarders have achieved hull breach, crew morale would cap at [total frontage of defenders (crew plus defending infantry)] / [total frontage of defenders and attackers)], similar to how overcrowding or overlong deployments cause diminished readiness. It could also be modeled as reducing the effective crew to a percentage of full crew complement equal to [total defender frontage] / [total attacker and defender frontage]. Or both at the same time.

This would have the advantage of piggybacking on existing mechanics that are well established and give a set of penalties that seem appropriate to a vessel having to deal with boarders.

[QuakeIV]

I think if the whole crew is going to get transformed into ad hoc infantry units, it shouldn't get to continue doing its job as a crew at that point.

[Barkhorn]

I think it would be just like a ground battle; some crew would be "Front line", and would fight the boarders but would be unable to man their stations.  Other crew members would be "rear echelon" and would still be able to man their stations, but would not meaningfully contribute to repelling boarders.  Maybe the player should get a chance to set up which stations are manned and which are abandoned to repel boarders.

[Hazard]

An all or nothing approach, or converting part of the crew to a military unit for boarding combat purposes and the remainder becoming the prize crew until they get interned at some colony or another where local crew are let on board to take over would work best I think without massively complicating boarding combat.

[Iceranger]

The new boarding combat sounds very interesting.  I have a few questions after reading the change log.

1, since there will be NPR using boarding tactics, will the player get any visual ques to identify such situation? For example, is there a way to tell whether a hostile boarding part is successfully landed? When the boarding parties are making their way through armor, will detonations be detected? Once they are inside the ship, will there be notifications before the first round of combat begins?

2, it is mentioned that the troops on parasites are fighting to defend their mothership. 
2. 1, if during the boarding battle, the hanger bay/boat bay is destroyed by collateral damage (thus the docked parasite destroyed), will it affect said troops? (I guess no based on how troop transport bays are handled?)
2. 2, during the boarding battle, will the parasites be able to be launched from the mothership? Will they carry the troops away with them? (I guess no based on how troop transport bays are handled?)
2. 3, does it mean during the course of the boarding battle, ships with hanger decks/shuttle bays can be reinforced by friendly parasites carrying troops?

3, if the ship being boarded does not have a hanger bay/boat bay, will it possible for friendly ships to send reinforcements in someway? For example, small crafts dock with external docking ports?

[Profugo Barbatus]

An all or nothing approach, or converting part of the crew to a military unit for boarding combat purposes and the remainder becoming the prize crew until they get interned at some colony or another where local crew are let on board to take over would work best I think without massively complicating boarding combat.

I think this could be a reasonable approach. Convert say, 75% of the ship crew immediately to the light infantry troops, the ship suffers the undercrewed penalty until combat is resolved and they revert, and if the ship is captured, they become the prize crew and represent those that surrendered or were incapacitated in the boarding attack. If the defenders are repulsed successfully, convert them back as normal and you only suffer the undercrew penalty for the casualties from that point forward.

If you wanted to get even fancier, you could make the base percentage of defensive crew lower, and add an armory module to the ship, increases the number of crew that are converted. That directly allows you to control how much of an efficiency hit you are willing to take when boarded. If you have a ten thousand man crew, you probably don't want to convert 75% of them into defensive forces and allow 10 marines to cripple the ship for five minutes, but you may want to take that risk on your 400 man beam escorts, having those flip control in your formation could be devastating. This allows additional interesting defensive boarding designs, without slowing the combat down once its kicked off.

[Whitecold]

An all or nothing approach, or converting part of the crew to a military unit for boarding combat purposes and the remainder becoming the prize crew until they get interned at some colony or another where local crew are let on board to take over would work best I think without massively complicating boarding combat.

I think this could be a reasonable approach. Convert say, 75% of the ship crew immediately to the light infantry troops, the ship suffers the undercrewed penalty until combat is resolved and they revert, and if the ship is captured, they become the prize crew and represent those that surrendered or were incapacitated in the boarding attack. If the defenders are repulsed successfully, convert them back as normal and you only suffer the undercrew penalty for the casualties from that point forward.

If you wanted to get even fancier, you could make the base percentage of defensive crew lower, and add an armory module to the ship, increases the number of crew that are converted. That directly allows you to control how much of an efficiency hit you are willing to take when boarded. If you have a ten thousand man crew, you probably don't want to convert 75% of them into defensive forces and allow 10 marines to cripple the ship for five minutes, but you may want to take that risk on your 400 man beam escorts, having those flip control in your formation could be devastating. This allows additional interesting defensive boarding designs, without slowing the combat down once its kicked off.

You don't want to decide at design time on how much crew is getting converted. Frankly, given how rare boarding combat already is, and how even more rare boarding combat against units that are still well functioning is, I would not spend too much time on this.

Convert all crew, and use a formula that decreases ship effectiveness against a mass assault, and leaves ship effectiveness unaffected if the attacking force is tiny. I don't think this warrants more investment or needs an active player choice there.

[Steve Walmsley]

Convert all crew, and use a formula that decreases ship effectiveness against a mass assault, and leaves ship effectiveness unaffected if the attacking force is tiny. I don't think this warrants more investment or needs an active player choice there.

Yes, I think something on these lines is probably appropriate.

[Steve Walmsley]

The new boarding combat sounds very interesting.  I have a few questions after reading the change log.

1, since there will be NPR using boarding tactics, will the player get any visual ques to identify such situation? For example, is there a way to tell whether a hostile boarding part is successfully landed? When the boarding parties are making their way through armor, will detonations be detected? Once they are inside the ship, will there be notifications before the first round of combat begins?

2, it is mentioned that the troops on parasites are fighting to defend their mothership. 
2. 1, if during the boarding battle, the hanger bay/boat bay is destroyed by collateral damage (thus the docked parasite destroyed), will it affect said troops? (I guess no based on how troop transport bays are handled?)
2. 2, during the boarding battle, will the parasites be able to be launched from the mothership? Will they carry the troops away with them? (I guess no based on how troop transport bays are handled?)
2. 3, does it mean during the course of the boarding battle, ships with hanger decks/shuttle bays can be reinforced by friendly parasites carrying troops?

3, if the ship being boarded does not have a hanger bay/boat bay, will it possible for friendly ships to send reinforcements in someway? For example, small crafts dock with external docking ports?

As a preface to this, I don't want to devote time to coding special rules very rare situation such as (in this case) a carrier being boarded, while also carrying or receiving troop-carrying parasites.

1) You will be aware that charges are being detonated on the hull or that boarder have penetrated the hull.
2) If a parasite leaves, it will take any troops assigned to it. If one arrives, they will join in. This isn't a special rule - this is just how the code is working now. Hangar bay destruction will affect parasites during boarding but not their assigned troops (as they are exempt during boarding combat).
3) There is no way to send extra troops to a ship being boarded if it has no way of receiving them.

[Father Tim]

The new boarding combat sounds very interesting.  I have a few questions after reading the change log.

1, since there will be NPR using boarding tactics, will the player get any visual ques to identify such situation? For example, is there a way to tell whether a hostile boarding part is successfully landed? When the boarding parties are making their way through armor, will detonations be detected? Once they are inside the ship, will there be notifications before the first round of combat begins?

2, it is mentioned that the troops on parasites are fighting to defend their mothership. 
2. 1, if during the boarding battle, the hanger bay/boat bay is destroyed by collateral damage (thus the docked parasite destroyed), will it affect said troops? (I guess no based on how troop transport bays are handled?)
2. 2, during the boarding battle, will the parasites be able to be launched from the mothership? Will they carry the troops away with them? (I guess no based on how troop transport bays are handled?)
2. 3, does it mean during the course of the boarding battle, ships with hanger decks/shuttle bays can be reinforced by friendly parasites carrying troops?

3, if the ship being boarded does not have a hanger bay/boat bay, will it possible for friendly ships to send reinforcements in someway? For example, small crafts dock with external docking ports?

1.  I believe you get a 'ship name is repelling boarders' message if one of your units is boarded

2.1  No.  If parasites are hangared, their crew is zero.  Those folks are now part of the mothership's crew.

2.2  Yes, unless the yet-to-be-written "boarded" penalties ban launching parasites. 
     --     If by "troops" you mean 'reduce the defenders numbers due to reduction in overall crew numbers, I certainly think they should.  If you mean 'escaping parasites also count as 'being boarded' and now there are separate fights,' then that sounds interesting, it might be fun, but I don't see how the player could have any meaningful decisions to make to impact the outcome.

2.3  One certainly should be able to dock a dropship's worth of marines to counter-board an endangered ship, and therefore it would make sense that landing a squadron of Fighters would boost the defenders manpower by a tiny handful. 
     (And if 'Space:Above and Beyond' taught us anything, it's that risking 8 or 9 highly-trained marine aviators (spaciators?) in ground combat is the surest means of victory.)

3.  If the as-yet-undetermined penalties for "being boarded" reduce the ship's speed, then boarding it again should be easy enough.  As long as Steve includes the code for boarding 'drops' on friendly units, your troops can crawl through the same armour breaches the attackers did and mop 'em up from the rear.

[MarcAFK]

Reguarding boarding combat, you could have a chance of the ship surrendering every increment based on crew casualties, with a 100% chance after 95% casualties. Maybe also taking into account how must strength the boarders have.
When the fight is fairly equal theres no chance of surrender, but as the defenders (or boarders?) start to get overpowered, and if total casualties on that side hits a minimum, maybe 20% then a surrender chance starts getting checked.
There might be a small chance of the majority of a ship surviving battle, and a large chance of at least a chunk surviving.
This would simulate the fact that teh entire crew doesn't need to be wiped out to take a ship but rather just critical elements need to be taken, maybe teh officers, bridge, engineering, etc,

[QuakeIV]

Would it be particularly difficult to code in an option to allow you to initiate a boarding attempt on one of your own ships to try and reinforce the defenders?