X4 boarding mechanics

[RAVEN.myst]

I also used to think this, but in my latest playthrough I discovered that it's not actually the case - if your boarding strength is sufficiently higher than resistance once the objective times out, the round's result is resolved.

that's actually from one of the boarding mods

Nope - I ONLY play vanilla, so I have no mods installed. Ever.

[wolvern]

Wait them out:
Boarding should be more varied, where hacking systems would be able to clear a ship of enemies by killing them over a longer time by taking out life support. So this would take like 10 mins for them to all die out and thus protecting the ship or moving it using your cap ship and a form of towing?

Force them out:
Using many pods to board the ship like in XR while also using chemical warfare or otherwise which the item for it would be illegal in all systems and thus the pirates way. The chemical would be for fast capture and thinning because the pirates ships are designed for hit and run so speed is key and they wouldn't have as many in the boarding party.

AGI infiltration:
This would be the most dangerous boarding as it's basically just hacking the ship but this would also be a method to distract the ships during a boarding because you could force 1 ship to be marked as Xenon and as such force all ships to fire on it and thus make you less of a target for when boarding when there's 2-3 cap ships in the grouping.

First person boarding:
Finally allowing us to board via the docking bay on a ship and invade the enemy ship ourselves with our boarding party, this would be amazing because then we could actually start FPS killing a ship from the inside with our squads. Would love seeing this because then egosoft would need to finally put more detail into making interiors of cap ships. This has been a feature wanted for so damn long and they keep not doing it.... XR had a modder finally do it instead which was awesome because i could sit on the bridge and run around.

Forced Surrender:
Finally having the dialog where surrender actually does more than nothing at all...
Killing all modules on the outside of a ship would take a while but this is the NON BOARDING option, you gain the ship and hopefully we can get combat options for capital vs capital where higher class officers or ships with such orders would take out all the modules which could be faster because you can use many ships to do this and the module targeting option would NOT DESTROY (this is key) the ship.

NEEDED ITEM: Claiming the ship - So stop shooting at it!
Not the way you're thinking tho, i mean the ship is still owned by the enemy faction but it would stop enemies from shooting at it while you're claiming it.
This was the most annoying thing in XR and no mods were ever done for this to stop those asshats from shooting my new ship, it had no modules, it was dead in the water and yet everyone keeps shooting the damn thing....
FIX THIS IN THE X4 - I want to tell the allied forces to get stuffed without having to blow them all up just to get them off it.

Salvaging claims - Yes this could be a great thing
Don't need a ship?
Want to recycle it?
I want to be able to use other ships to salvage or recycle ships, even at my own shipyard / station. Give us the ability if wanting to scrap these ships so i can rebuild them into something new. If this becomes a thing, please allow our shipyards to force sell or dump excess... we don't want to have the shipyard cap out in parts and then just get stuck with a ship sitting there taking up room...

Jamming:
This is needed so that we can deploy jamming drones or even destroy the dish on ships so we can stop them calling in more ships over time. It's kinda crappy that we can't stop them from reporting us when there was a dish sitting on the front of every cap ship that had no use at all until someone came and used it in a mod. Please look at adding the mod to the X4 game so we can take out support requests.

WARGAMES - Training marines using cap ships
This is an essential idea for if using marines, we need to be able to TRAIN marines again but make it cost near nothing because if you think about it... If we already own a cap ship of that type, or even a cap ship they should be able to train on board that cap ship. Could even board a station maybe?

[wolvern]

I really dont like XR boarding, I just think its ridiculous that you can just sit in a capital ships blind spot and pepper away at them without them being able to do anything. I much prefer something like in x3 where you had to at least coordinate something, usually with other ships set to attack shields.

There's a lot of blind spots in everything, even on human military ships and bases there's always a blind spot or no cover in that section, the ship can't just bend itself and can only cover so far.

If we had to board using a cap ship because that could actually sustain the amount of people needed, then we'd still send smaller ships to take out weapons because they're faster and more agile to destroy such weapons. Any star wars movie or ship battle movie would usually show there's always going to be such thing.

This is why cap ships had drones, it's why they have fleets and support elements, if the ship is alone, we could just implement jamming technology and force it to not be able to send out a signal and thus no fleet support...

[mr.WHO]

<Remember the time I tried to capture Fulmekron>...what blindspot?
That thing had none.

BTW I would love to see hard Xenon boarding from X3 instead of no Xenon boarding of XR.

[wolvern]

<Remember the time I tried to capture Fulmekron>...what blindspot?
That thing had none.

BTW I would love to see hard Xenon boarding from X3 instead of no Xenon boarding of XR.

Yeah i can agree that some ships do have no real blind spots but that ship you can actually make a blind spot within seconds by taking out some modules at the back, the issue i had was that the engines are a little harder with that factions ships and the ray turrets were a pain in the ass...

I guess some factions are stupid with military somewhat but in many ways factions should have different ideals with defence. PMC brought backup every 2 mins to the main ship to help, Xenon swarmed with 3-4 cap ships in one area...

Every faction should have different ways to deal with such issues, it should never be impossible to board or extremely hard. Cargoships are always poorly protected tho because they are for cargo.

[astreus]

On XR I like the logical details as first to prepare for boarding well (if you wont have losses), destroy the turrets, engine,... not only put the shields down.
And if your crew apply to the needs (boarding strength) and you did all the mini jobs, you get it without any frustration unfair random faults, which result only in a frustrated reload as in X3.

...X3: safety is reinstalling - go swimming...! WHY? Marines are still on the place - should blow up that dam' computer and silence! Ok, have to repair it later..... Or that unexpected random losses when you have 20 5* 100% marines on board while target have NONE! Just a boring reload job!

[X-Series]

How about making boarding more thrilling by being able to join a boarding party through an android/robot representation. Add a little bit of FPS shootout by killing the guards protecting the ship, roaming inside the enemy ship and protecting your hackers/engineers while they disable the doors/defenses.

[Skeeter]

Id rather scrap marines and boarding that way and instead just have a dedicated capture frigate or something like from say homeworld games where it latches on and takes over with a timer which is affected by ship type being captured and amount of damage been inflicted. Some ships like cap ships would require multiple capturing ships.

[caleb]

I know the idea appeals to many people, but I personally do not like FPS games. And I never buy an X game expecting an FPS in it... So I do not like the idea.

I would prefer a more strategic approach to boarding. Not sure if as simplified as SPGW

https://youtu.be/fXd13U58QfE?t=9m58s

Hard to find a good capture video... Basically, your troopers have certain strength, and you have to advance room by room. Each room zaps their strength, and you can raid shield rooms to lower enemy shield, or weapons room to disable their weapons. Or keep advancing to the command room to take the ship. At the end, you may fail or succeed depending on their remaining strength at the command room.

Quite simplified, but I found it to be workable enough for the type of game that it is, and it let me keep flying my ship, so I could keep fighting or run away, or whatever.

If there was a separate mini-game, what happens if your shiny new ship gets attacked by someone else and destroyed? Losing control of your ship seems like a bad idea on a space simulator.

[caleb]

Id rather scrap marines and boarding that way and instead just have a dedicated capture frigate or something like from say homeworld games where it latches on and takes over with a timer which is affected by ship type being captured and amount of damage been inflicted. Some ships like cap ships would require multiple capturing ships.

We could scrap capturing altogether, and just have a different mechanic. A scrapper ship that hauls the wreckage for your labs to analyze (expensive! and long!). After getting X number of wrecks (5-6?) then you get the plans to build that ship.

So you *can* get any ship, but it would be pretty expensive and long.

The problem I have with boarding, is that normally you get waaaaay more than you invest. It's just too hard to balance.

[MegaJohnny]

We could scrap capturing altogether, and just have a different mechanic. A scrapper ship that hauls the wreckage for your labs to analyze (expensive! and long!). After getting X number of wrecks (5-6?) then you get the plans to build that ship.

So you *can* get any ship, but it would be pretty expensive and long.

The problem I have with boarding, is that normally you get waaaaay more than you invest. It's just too hard to balance.

You know, I think you're right.

I think the cost of boarding has gone down, even, in XR. Strip all surface elements and damage hull as appropriate, initiate boarding, get a free destroyer. Put on a 5-star engineer and leave to cook for 20 minutes. If you want a Rahanas or something else with low base boarding power, you basically point at it and it turns green.

[RAVEN.myst]

Regarding FPS boarding: I think that this is one of those things that seem "cool" in the abstract, when daydreamed about, but which in fact would be less so if actually realised. Consider the following:
- How varied can the boarding missions really be? Probably not very - so pretty quickly, it would start feeling tediously repetitive, and at that point it becomes nothing more than an annoying, monotonous time-sink. Thus, it would have to be made optional so it could be skipped once it became tedious - ie. development time would be invested into a feature that would be getting disabled more often than not.
- If the player HAS to lead the boarding op him/herself, then it interrupts the flow of the game outside of this, and prevents the player from being able to support the op externally (for example, guarding the site from the target's friends returning, or from summoned reinforcements.) Therefore, again it would have to be made an optional feature, and likely one that would be getting skipped by most, and thus again development time would be invested into a feature that would be getting disabled more often than not.

There is, however, a possible way to add that "on-site, first-person" immersion factor with *relatively* little development (though the amount required may still not be deemed worth the trouble) - during a boarding op, have a small P-in-P monitor open up somewhere, showing "marine-cam", perhaps cycling between a few of them. This would be the video equivalent of the audio track that plays during boarding ops in X3TC/AP - highly atmospheric, but essentially nothing more. the problem is, while the previous audio track being the same track played every time was OK, having the same video sequence simply repeating every time would NOT - it would need to be live-rendered and based on the current ship and its toughness/crew/whatever, to some extent, even if somewhat simplified/abstracted. Hence, there would still be considerable development required (though far less than an entire FPS game-within-a-game.)

In any case, THAT is my pipe dream with regards to boarding operations in X.

...
The problem I have with boarding, is that normally you get waaaaay more than you invest. It's just too hard to balance.

You know, I think you're right.

I think the cost of boarding has gone down, even, in XR. ...

There's no "think" about it It is possible to get a marine officer and a full 5 marines right out the gate (for example, take the Aspiring Merchant start and sell the starting freighter, or take Home of Light start and sell the economic analytics software and trade computer, or... well, you get the idea!), and start boarding immediately. Yes, the first few will be low-level ships while the marines (and possibly the MO) train up, but within an hour or two one can be boarding fight-capable ships. The cost vs reward is too low, and the improvement slope is too steep: one can be boarding the toughest ships within hours. (In fact, I think I may fire up Rebirth and do precisely that for a day or two, next time I'm THAT bored... Thanks for getting me to think of it!)

By contrast, in X3TC/AP one has to first get ship/ships capable of delivering marines, as well as the marines themselves (which are NOT trivial in cost) and then ideally train them up (if boarding for money, then engineering skill is important, and for success rates in general the other skills are advantageous) - so there is a whole lot more time and money investment required in order to even get started boarding. Then the marines' fight skill improves a lot more slowly, so it's not like the player will be boarding Js and Ks on the first day...

[MegaJohnny]

Regarding FPS boarding: I think that this is one of those things that seem "cool" in the abstract, when daydreamed about, but which in fact would be less so if actually realised. Consider the following:
- How varied can the boarding missions really be? Probably not very - so pretty quickly, it would start feeling tediously repetitive, and at that point it becomes nothing more than an annoying, monotonous time-sink. Thus, it would have to be made optional so it could be skipped once it became tedious - ie. development time would be invested into a feature that would be getting disabled more often than not.
- If the player HAS to lead the boarding op him/herself, then it interrupts the flow of the game outside of this, and prevents the player from being able to support the op externally (for example, guarding the site from the target's friends returning, or from summoned reinforcements.) Therefore, again it would have to be made an optional feature, and likely one that would be getting skipped by most, and thus again development time would be invested into a feature that would be getting disabled more often than not.

There is, however, a possible way to add that "on-site, first-person" immersion factor with *relatively* little development (though the amount required may still not be deemed worth the trouble) - during a boarding op, have a small P-in-P monitor open up somewhere, showing "marine-cam", perhaps cycling between a few of them. This would be the video equivalent of the audio track that plays during boarding ops in X3TC/AP - highly atmospheric, but essentially nothing more. the problem is, while the previous audio track being the same track played every time was OK, having the same video sequence simply repeating every time would NOT - it would need to be live-rendered and based on the current ship and its toughness/crew/whatever, to some extent, even if somewhat simplified/abstracted. Hence, there would still be considerable development required (though far less than an entire FPS game-within-a-game.)

In any case, THAT is my pipe dream with regards to boarding operations in X.

Totally agree. The point about reinforcements is a good one, as there really aren't any in XR, but having some RRF-type thing could really spice up the boarding.

For visualisation, how about a kind of AR overlay on the target ship showing the marines' movement? The rooms could be just cuboids and the marines colour-coded dots. Nothing has to correspond exactly besides the number of dots and their distance to a different cuboid representing the bridge.

There's no "think" about it It is possible to get a marine officer and a full 5 marines right out the gate (for example, take the Aspiring Merchant start and sell the starting freighter, or take Home of Light start and sell the economic analytics software and trade computer, or... well, you get the idea!), and start boarding immediately. Yes, the first few will be low-level ships while the marines (and possibly the MO) train up, but within an hour or two one can be boarding fight-capable ships. The cost vs reward is too low, and the improvement slope is too steep: one can be boarding the toughest ships within hours. (In fact, I think I may fire up Rebirth and do precisely that for a day or two, next time I'm THAT bored... Thanks for getting me to think of it!)

By contrast, in X3TC/AP one has to first get ship/ships capable of delivering marines, as well as the marines themselves (which are NOT trivial in cost) and then ideally train them up (if boarding for money, then engineering skill is important, and for success rates in general the other skills are advantageous) - so there is a whole lot more time and money investment required in order to even get started boarding. Then the marines' fight skill improves a lot more slowly, so it's not like the player will be boarding Js and Ks on the first day...

Always glad to help although you've had the exact opposite effect on me. I've just packed away my plot game saves and am about to start a fresh no-boarding playthrough. All the stations just feel like ill-gotten gains now.

[Cabrelbeuk]

The idea is cool but well, I would far prefer Egosoft to focus on polishing main 4X gameplays aspect as automation and management.

This interactive map already give us what we were all waiting for very long time : RTS aspect to the game.

[birdtable]

All these ideas about boarding are fine and dandy "IF" there are no further ill conceived outcomes ..The prime example is the inability to stop friendly fire from destroying target, killing marines or destruction of repair drones.
Far better if Egosoft had yellow stickies everywhere reminding them of the games title ...."X4 Foundations" ...
All that is required is an adequate defence capability of the boarding target, escorts, weaponry or whatever but not my pet hate RRF's...

[RAVEN.myst]

For visualisation, how about a kind of AR overlay on the target ship showing the marines' movement? The rooms could be just cuboids and the marines colour-coded dots. Nothing has to correspond exactly besides the number of dots and their distance to a different cuboid representing the bridge.

Oh nice, I rather like this idea It would give it a modern sci-fiesque look, too. And almost certainly considerably less work than even the semi-scripted interior trooper-cam.

I've just packed away my plot game saves and am about to start a fresh no-boarding playthrough. All the stations just feel like ill-gotten gains now.

LOL! I completely understand In my latest plot game, I think I boarded all of three ships - and I'm not even sure what I did it for, as I didn't sell any of them. Oh yes, they got pressed into service, then thrown at the PMC Overwatch as cannon-fodder

The idea is cool but well, I would far prefer Egosoft to focus on polishing main 4X gameplays aspect as automation and management.

This interactive map already give us what we were all waiting for very long time : RTS aspect to the game.

I completely agree. At the end of the day, those boarding bits as suggested would be cosmetics for the sake of immersion - nice to have if possible, but not at the expense of any important stuff. (Hell, just record a boarding soundtrack a la TC/AP and that would already provide some atmosphere, with almost zero effort.)

[Alan Phipps]

X-Series' boarding thread merged with previous boarding mechanics thread.

[Hassie]

Most games just do some hidden calculations based on your boarding party and some stats you have, and you are told if you win or not. Recently however, some games have tried to expand on this, and made the boarding and capturing of ships more interactive, which is definitely should be. Naval Action for instance, has a basic fight system, where you choose from a variety of actions as your crew attempts to win the day for you, while still largely leaving it up to numbers in the end. Slightly more or less recently, depending on how you look at it, Starpoint Gemini: Warlords, created a tier based system where you can either choose to raid the current section of the ship you are on, advance to the next section, or to run away. This is again largely based on a numbers game though unfortunately.

I do not have a problem with numbers playing a large role in boarding actions, as it obviously makes the most sense, and I am all for mini-games being used for boarding actions, unless a game has a dedicated 1st/3rd person engine to go in with your troops and do the work, or some bird's eye view tactical mode to have your troops go in and capture the ship, Wasteland style. Those options seem beyond the boys at Egosoft unfortunately, so I would propose to use minigames that do not require you flying a ship around shooting turrets and other modules on the outside of the ship. I don't see the in game reason for this, and while it was fun the first dozen or so times, it does become exceedingly tedious after awhile. The fact that modules on the outside of the ship, would somehow allow your marine to advance further in the ship, has never made sense to me, while hacking a ship does have some in game logic.

I like to feel immersed in a game when I play it, and the X series above almost all over games to this effect. I want to feel like I am helping my marines, and doing mini-games similar to how some games use quick-time events during the CGI moments to connect the player with the action. There are SOOO many electronic lockpick, hacking and other mini-games that are both easy to understand and complicated at the same time. Being given puzzles like this, while sitting at the ops position, while you give the helm to an npc to fly your ship while you attempt to assist your marine by opening up passages for them, sealing off enemy combatants behind airlocks, as well as a dozen other options. You can very easily give the player the choice on what they want to do, and choosing to lock off enemies, without knowing exactly how many you will trap, or opening up a passage without knowing if you are leading your marines right into the main enemy defense force can be borth terrifying and immersive at the same time. This would also give a lot of benefit to advancing your sensors, so you can get a more detailed map of what if happening inside that ship, so as captain you can make the most informed choice to board and capture/raid that ship.

I really like this idea, and hope Egosoft looks into creating a more immersive experience for players, by building on the mini-games from other games that have really worked, and avoid the ones that most people detested. I of course would really like a tactical combat scenario where you control your squads of marines from a bird's eye view if you choose too, but I think that may be 3 or 4 iterations of the X series away from being anything close to a reality.

[KRM398]

I see people say they don't like boarding one way because its too tedious (think too hard) that's exactly how boarding should be...its not easy and you will lose people. something XR doesn't take into account a lot. I boarded repeatedly and lost no one, not a single soldier...ridiculous. Every attempt, especially against a larger and more powerful enemy ship will cause losses, and should. Yes it makes it harder and more expensive...you're tryng to capture a ship after all. and attacking a cruiser with a corvette or frigate SHOULD be really hard, since smaller ships should have less room for marines.

Now soldiers should definitely be of more than one class, and should gain experience with each try. so buying green marines gets you bodies, but little experience, so you board freighters first, then bigger ships later. Experience needs to mean something, and also ship size...a corvette can NOT hold 50 marines and a Commander like in XR, BS. where did they sleep and eat? In the Commanders pocket? Be more realistic, a fighter has zero chance at boarding anything, a corvette can carry maybe a dozen people. frigates maybe 2 dozen, and so on. Having better tools needs to help to, buying handguns or salvaging them from battles adds +1 to your marines skills, get them body armor, +5. Grenades..+7 etc, no robots or AI fighters, its all us and our men and women.

[RAVEN.myst]

I see people say they don't like boarding one way because its too tedious (think too hard) that's exactly how boarding should be...its not easy and you will lose people. something XR doesn't take into account a lot. I boarded repeatedly and lost no one, not a single soldier...ridiculous.

I completely agree - that's a problem I also have with XR boarding, the fact that it's too controllable for a zero-loss outcome. Hell, I seldom have casualties in X3TC/AP boarding, even, except when I expect losses (for instance, when "selecting" recruits for further training... )

...a corvette can NOT hold 50 marines and a Commander like in XR, BS. where did they sleep and eat? In the Commanders pocket?

Maybe before the last boarding op before the player gets the Skank was the TARDIS, and now that's where the marines hang out... Or maybe, as I suggested at some point long ago, marines are actually blow-up dolls (hmm, well, they DO quite possibly blow up doors and such, once inside, so the moniker may be more apt than I intended...), and the Marine Officer's first task is to operate the air-pump... Yes, it IS absurd