[IDEA][FEEDBACK WANTED] Equipment For Marines

[RoverTX]

While I was working on my last mod I realized that it wouldn't be that hard to create an equipment menu for marines, which would allow a player to equipment marines with new equipment.

The limitations being, if the piece of equipment effects skill levels, you couldn't remove something or equip something worse because of the way training works in X3. Basically keeping track of pre-equipped values would be a giant pain. So the equipment would act like a one time boost if the equipment was going to effect skills.

On the other hand their could be some equipment slots that might effect other things, or provide bonus to the ship the marine is on. These of course could be switched out on a wim with out any issues, because they wouldn't run into issues relating to how the game handles skill levels.

So I am currently looking for ideas as to what effects, besides skill boosts, equipment could provide marines, that could help the player out. I have a few but would like to see if ya'll have any ideas.

[X2-Illuminatus]

Well, a skill boost is of course the most obvious thing you can do. One question from me would be, whether you want to "hack" the boarding process itself or not?

What I have in mind are things to influence the boarding process further than the current result of getting a ship or not. A few examples:

- Increase the probability that specific marines survive the boarding process, even if it fails. If you fight a lot with your marines, they become something like friends to you. Well, maybe not friends, as you're still their boss. But you can play cards or have a drink with them and they tell you more than some random stranger. If they are highly skilled the chances that they die during a boarding process decreases. However there is still this random "unlucky-ness" that a marine forgets to deactive his hull cutting laser while entering the ship and cuts off his arm or leg, falls over a roller skate from a crew member lying on the floor and breaks his neck or hits the wrong key while hacking the ship computer and activates the internal defences. If I would be able to give the marines some coffee before they start, or conclude a salvage contract for them, they might survive even when experiencing such a random unlucky-ness.
Now, this shouldn't make the marines really stronger, influence the boarding process or even make them immortal, but rather add another check and a 'coin toss' after the boarding process has ended. The equipment itself could also be rather expensive.

- Increase the chance that certain equipment or weapons can be obtained during the boarding process. Successfully boarding a ship is great. But sometimes I really just want the weapons in the cargo room of said ship. Unfortunately, the crew is only rarely willing to simply give them to me. Also during the training of my marines there is no course called 'stealing weapons'. But maybe I could provide them with some equipment that signalizes them to hold fire, once they find valuable cargo. That could even mean that the boarding process itself fails, but at least my marines would manage to throw the weapons I want out of the cargo room, so I could collect them.

- Make it possible to arrest enemy marines. I'm not a murderer. Everything I want is the enemy ship and maybe a bit of its equipment. If it was up to me, everyone aboard the ship could survive - even the enemy marines. Of course, not everyone can be arrested and convinced to work for me. Some marines might be loyal to their former crew, others simply don't want to be arrested and after all it's really not that easy to convince your enemies that you come in peace after cutting through their ship's hull and shooting at everything on sight. Nevertheless, equipped with the right weapons - for example ones that also have a "stun" mode in addition to the usual "kill" and "vaporize" - my marines might be able to "recruit" other marines while boarding.

- Create the possibility that data from the ship computer can be obtained during the hacking process. When boarding military ships of the different races or even Xenon ships, I would expect to find lots of secret data there. Nevertheless, even my marines with the highest hacking skills never manage to do more than transferring the ship computer controls to me. And even worse, when I enter the ships their database is always empty. Of course not every ship can carry around top secret information. But if a few would have something aboard, this would certainly help to convince me that those ships have an actual purpose within the race's military they belong to and are not just created by a mysterious entity (called "Jobs engine"). The data could be everything from a simple text note that contains the mission instructions over an up to date map of the sectors they were patrolling to a blueprint of a certain ship.
I actually have to think of Master of Orion 2 here. I'm not sure, whether this was also possible when boarding ships, but at least when taking over a planet with your ground forces there was a certain chance to obtain technologies, which your opponent but not you have researched yet.

[RoverTX]

1. Because of the way boarding is the only thing I could do would be more chances for the marines to die, which makes me a sad panda in morning when I think about it.

2. Very doable, I already kind of do this with my TL boarding script, would be about the same logic, but instead based on what gear the ship currently has, I believe the Dr also does something similar to this in one of his scripts.

3. Very doable, and a very cool idea. I am reminded of Disgaea where you can capture enemy demons and then try to get them to come over to your side by beating them or bribing them. Not sure if it would go that far, but defiantly giving a chance for an enemy marine to jump ship so you could pick him up, would work.

4. Very doable, and why the hell didn't I think of this! Could be map data, ship blueprints, random text. It could also trigger an event where some enemy ships would spawn in sector and start attacking you.

Thanks for the ideas! Very enlightening!

I was thinking of one where when you take control of a ship it repairs automatically 1% of the ship hull. Or one where when you take control of a ship you gain credits from the ships vault.

[X2-Illuminatus]

1. Because of the way boarding is the only thing I could do would be more chances for the marines to die, which makes me a sad panda in morning when I think about it.

If you monitor the boarding process already, you could check, which marines are going into the ship and save the properties of those that have the specific item equipped (e.g. by checking for a certain local variable on the marines). After the boarding process has ended, check whether one of the marines you saved the properties of is dead. If so (metaphorically speaking) flip the coin to decide, whether he's really dead or not. If the latter, create a clone on the target ship (if the boarding process succeeded) or in space (if it failed).

I'm not sure, if you can get all properties of a marine (voice is doubtful, face is not necessary). The important ones (race, name and skills) however should be no problem to get.

I was thinking of one where when you take control of a ship it repairs automatically 1% of the ship hull.

There are already some scripts, which do that in some way. But I can't really say, that I'm a big fan of the whole "marines repair something" feature. Of course, I understand the idea behind it: If you have a marine that is skilled enough to only cut through a tiny bit of the hull and enter the ship, then he might also be able to repair the hull properly. Nevertheless, I always felt the marines should be used to fight related stuff only. But that's just my oppinion.

Or one where when you take control of a ship you gain credits from the ships vault.

I think that's pretty similar to my suggestion number 4. In the end, it's all about immersion. Convincing the player that there is more to the ship he's trying to board than a big flying hull that is controlled by an autopilot and has some wares on board.