Thrust Pack Assaulter.....

[bugkill]

I really liked having the Marines (Prefer calling them Assaulters or Commandos) being able to breach ships without a breaching pod like in X3: AP. It would be great to see this brought back with a new "astronaut" model that has a more sleeker and tactical look to them (not too bulky like the old model) similar to the pic in the link below with a small thrust pack.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/mmkve


The breaching pods can stay. I'm just speaking about being able to deploy them from your spacecraft individual and they reach the target on their own and can be picked up in space.

[Karvat]

Surely the boarding will be improved in X4 compared to X3 and XR

[bugkill]

Surely the boarding will be improved in X4 compared to X3 and XR

I have faith that it will be improved upon, but I'm hoping to see the astronaut/marine model come back for X4 since it wasn't in X:Rebirth (at least I've never seen it). It was awesome launching marines into the vacuum and having them approach enemy ships to breach and assault them.

[Killjaeden]

It was awesome launching marines into the vacuum and having them approach enemy ships to breach and assault them.

Was it really?To me it was mostly just frustrating and forced me to find methods and ways how to basically release them so that they are instantly at the destination... and swear everytime this failed and 24m/s marines would try to catch 120m/s M6 while beeing targeted by defense lasers.

[Alan Phipps]

<Shrugs> Knowing that spacewalk boarding was complex and difficult to set up correctly was one of the reasons that I so enjoyed trying and the great satisfaction of eventually achieving it. I still do it occasionally (for TMs and M6s) in vanilla X3AP even now.

I found fast M6s were often easier to board due to their tendency to circle my ship without aligning their main weapons. However, M6s armed with very light weapons in the turrets were far more difficult to board without losses, and also those equipped with minor shields that very quickly recharged by percentages while my marines were still approaching gave a different type of challenge.

I don't mind admitting that several reloads may have occurred during some of these activities.

[bugkill]

It was awesome launching marines into the vacuum and having them approach enemy ships to breach and assault them.

Was it really?To me it was mostly just frustrating and forced me to find methods and ways how to basically release them so that they are instantly at the destination... and swear everytime this failed and 24m/s marines would try to catch 120m/s M6 while beeing targeted by defense lasers.

That's why it was awesome to me. It was a challenge to get into a proper position to drop them. Don't get me wrong, using the pods were more efficient, but I really liked the option to just shoot them out and have them make their way to the ship and breach it.

I think what needs to happen is that you break down the "marines" into different categories. The troops that occupy the pods should be considered regular assault troops and they would be used to take down larger sized ships in order to seize them. The troops that can exit and use a thrust/jet pack would be considered Special Forces/Commandos who could be used to assault small to medium sized vessels, and even certain stations to capture sensitive intel, HVT's, and rescue hostages.

It would add a little more wrinkle to the boarding side of the game and also have ships out in the game where a player could quickly seize upon an opportunity (like a random special mission) that could net them great rewards or affect military operations depending on who they serve.

[spankahontis]

I really liked having the Marines (Prefer calling them Assaulters or Commandos) being able to breach ships without a breaching pod like in X3: AP. It would be great to see this brought back with a new "astronaut" model that has a more sleeker and tactical look to them (not too bulky like the old model) similar to the pic in the link below with a small thrust pack.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/mmkve


The breaching pods can stay. I'm just speaking about being able to deploy them from your spacecraft individual and they reach the target on their own and can be picked up in space.

Babysitting the shields until some made it through? No Thank you.
Rebirth was a slight improvement, but not perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination.
But keeping the shields below 10% was boring and if you released your marines too early, it would take forever to get them to float towards the target.
Not good at all; but we do need improvements, Rebirth was a slight improvement, but still needs serious work.

[Skeeter]

About capturing, I reckon X games could follow homeworlds method of ship capturing. Have dedicated marine frigates where they, after it's been damaged a bit to help the process quicken, fly up to the enemy ship and start a boarding process. The more marine frigates the better the chances of a capture well for large ships at least.

[Killjaeden]

I found fast M6s were often easier to board due to their tendency to circle my ship without aligning their main weapons.

Because they are basically toothless ships in AI hands in vanilla. M6+ where only good because of how many turrets they have.

I don't mind admitting that several reloads may have occurred during some of these activities.

Every reload is an indicator for bad game design. Why does it take gazillion of hours to train marines to be usefull? It forces you to reload in case of failure basically, unless you want to wait for dozends of hours for new marines to be trained in case of them beeing lost. It's not hard because of beeing designed as difficult mechanic as such, it is hard because of dodgy, unreliable behaviour, clumsy menus and questionable logic (shield percentage.. add 1MJ shield to M6 and that ship is boarding proof). Boarding is only "fun" because it is a relief when succeeding of not having to reload yet again and the getting reward. Not because the action itself is fun or enjoyable to do.

Because i always play as pirate, boarding via M6 was my second most frequent occupation after stealing cargo. But the action of deploying marines itself was never fun. Only the outcome and the fight to isolate the target and get it ready to be boarded (modded game where there is actually target protection and where M6 can fight decently).
When it succeeded there was only this feeling of "oh great, the game hasn't screwed me over by teleporting my marines 2km away from the target after deployment yet again".

[Nanook]

...
Every reload is an indicator for bad game design....

I disagree. Reloading was not a required game mechanic unless the player refuses to admit defeat. Defeats should be part of the game. Making the game mechanics such that the player never fails (and thus never feels the need to reload) is what I'd call bad game design. That's how I view Rebirth's boarding mechanics, because boarding is so easy and almost guaranteed. Without challenges, the game becomes boring. I never felt that X3's boarding was boring.

[Sandalpocalypse]

The possibility of losing huge amounts of time and effort investment for no return insured that you would always load after a failed boarding in x3.

[Nanook]

Speak for yourself.

[Sandalpocalypse]

Good gameplay that is dependent on players voluntarily restricting themselves from optimal choices is bad game design, full stop. The degree of this varies, but properly designed games try to insure there's never a best choice or there are at least tradeoffs to your choices.

In the case of x3 boarding, for example, training marines is such a massive time sink that the player is essentially presented with the choice of either SETAing overnight to get more marines and dosh or just reloading. The game designers don't really expect players to spin their wheels forever getting more marines; use of save/load for the player to continue their endless winning streak is expected.

This is not being overly critical; X games are massive in scope with limited resources, and a large degree of jankiness and loose game design has always been present. I can think of a few ways to make it so failing boarding isnt always a Quickload event, but they'd all involve a pretty hefty investment of resources.

[Nanook]

The only time in X3 where failing a boarding op resulted in a massive loss of resource, aka, marines, was when the player failed to keep the shields low enough during the hull cutting and the marines were fried. After getting through the hull, if a boarding op failed the marines abandoned ship and were able to be picked up by the player to use another time. And yes, you could lose the occasional marine there, too, but nothing really worth reloading unless the player was anal about it.

I played many a TC or AP game with minimal reloading, and then generally in cases of either death or bug, or because I did something stupid inadvertently. Those games were fun because there were the occasional losses.