Boarding is too easy money?

[S!rAssassin]

Do you want to be credited for the next "nerf"?

But it is not "nerf"! Just fair punishment for criminal action. You do not like man, who stolen your car, right?

[Caedes91]

So why spoil the game with 'Balance' (after your taste, not mine in this case) for others? Just do not use it.

Because I see so many advises in internet to use this mechanic for fast money... Many new players do not see over aspects of game, such as trade, stations building, missions... Just grab expensive ships and sell it! Then welcome to forums and do topics about bad boring game without content...

Literally every of these posts puts out a warning, saying "easy money" and "gamebreaking". If a player can not decide, that this method is not for them in a singleplayer sandbox, then they aren't enough to play the game to begin with. Egosoft has more pressing matters than nerfing something every player can simply refuse to do.

For example:

1. Improving CPU performance. Egosoft is still stuck in quadcore CPU era. Mid to lategame is always a slideshow. Even 5950x and 3090 don't get past 30fps. 99% of the playerbase without these overpriced hardware have it even worse.
2. Make station building less tedious, by significantly reducing module transparency in build window. Ever tried adding modules to bigger stations with many already existing modules? Also reduce snapping distance
3. Repair patrol behavior: Your people under attack can comm you from across the galaxy, but not ask your own local patrol for help? Spamming more ships for patrol is not a good solution, tanks performance
4. Add options to color ships in build menu, not clicking "redesign" for every goddamn ship of a fleet and waste one time use paintjobs, that you cannot even get, due to being locked behind ventures.
5. Add more ships, restore Rebirth ships and redesign old ones.
6. Give fleet leaders and stations the ability to replace lost subordinates on their own.
7. Boron still missing
8. Make all ship modding parts craftable, can teleport living beings, but not tune your ship?
9. Remove RNG from ship modding -> RNG has no right of existence in a space sci-fi sandbox. You also bring your car to workshop for random results?
10. Fix AI captains doing kamikaze maneuvers into enemy ships/stations, despite being equipped with long-range weaponry. Even 0 star captains shouldn't be that stupid. This is not challenge, but tedium.
11. Fix copy-paste stats of all factions ships and equipment.
12. Fix ship storage capicity on captal ships and deployable capacity on s- and m-class ships
13. Many, many more issues

[Duncaroos]

I'm really having trouble understanding this poll....what are you asking exactly?

[Katorone]

When boarding there's an option for the 'very hard' method, flyby boarding uses this option. OP wants this option removed so flyby boarding is nerfed.

[Nanook]

I don't think it should be removed, but there should be consequences for boarding any ship. Had never done 'flyby boarding' before so I tried it out on a Teladi freighter. 23 veterans vs 70+ mediocre marines and crewmembers. Right after sending the pods, the freighter turned red and started firing at me. I left it alone after the pods were all safely onboard. Several minutes later, the freighter turned back to blue (neutral) while my marines were still hacking their way through the hull. Meanwhile, it was merrily flying around trading with stations, selling its wares. After another 15-20 minutes, my marines finally break through the hull and start killing off crew. All the while this was happening, the ship stayed blue, no warnings by the ship and no calls for help. The ship stayed blue right up until it turned green (mine) with no marine losses. And I have a totally intact ship with no rep loss. BTW, that was right next to a Teladi station.

I'll never do this again since it's obviously a cheesy exploit. I say retain the very hard option, but make the ship become permanently hostile, have it call for help, and fight back until the end. There's no way a ship should sail blithely along with no reactions while it's actively being attacked from within, especially with no rep loss.

[Good Wizard]

I don't think it should be removed, but there should be consequences for boarding any ship. Had never done 'flyby boarding' before so I tried it out on a Teladi freighter. 23 veterans vs 70+ mediocre marines and crewmembers. Right after sending the pods, the freighter turned red and started firing at me. I left it alone after the pods were all safely onboard. Several minutes later, the freighter turned back to blue (neutral) while my marines were still hacking their way through the hull. Meanwhile, it was merrily flying around trading with stations, selling its wares. After another 15-20 minutes, my marines finally break through the hull and start killing off crew. All the while this was happening, the ship stayed blue, no warnings by the ship and no calls for help. The ship stayed blue right up until it turned green (mine) with no marine losses. And I have a totally intact ship with no rep loss. BTW, that was right next to a Teladi station.

I'll never do this again since it's obviously a cheesy exploit. I say retain the very hard option, but make the ship become permanently hostile, have it call for help, and fight back until the end. There's no way a ship should sail blithely along with no reactions while it's actively being attacked from within, especially with no rep loss.

I already gave a rather harsh reply to the OPs post. I stand with all I said several posts above - but that said:

If the OP just wanted better consequences for boarding, and not just a nerf or making it much harder, I have to agree. This should be in comparison to the relation to the owning faction: If I have good relations to TER, say 28 (like in my current game) it is really bad treason to capture an Asgard or a Syn from them. It should have harsh consequences, back to relation zero or so. I do not know if this can be done. But it should be rather hard, since it is actually quite easy to gain in relations.
If relations are bad, like the default -15 with TER (from Young Gun start), then it could cost less, but still should go down to a point, where it is hard to recover. It even could mean war, if the players relations to the faction are bad to begin with. The usual ship capturing from pirate factions are not touched by this, since they are frozen anyway (SCP).

Another way would be to just not do it, even if possible. This is what I do now...

[Raptor34]

I don't think it should be removed, but there should be consequences for boarding any ship. Had never done 'flyby boarding' before so I tried it out on a Teladi freighter. 23 veterans vs 70+ mediocre marines and crewmembers. Right after sending the pods, the freighter turned red and started firing at me. I left it alone after the pods were all safely onboard. Several minutes later, the freighter turned back to blue (neutral) while my marines were still hacking their way through the hull. Meanwhile, it was merrily flying around trading with stations, selling its wares. After another 15-20 minutes, my marines finally break through the hull and start killing off crew. All the while this was happening, the ship stayed blue, no warnings by the ship and no calls for help. The ship stayed blue right up until it turned green (mine) with no marine losses. And I have a totally intact ship with no rep loss. BTW, that was right next to a Teladi station.

I'll never do this again since it's obviously a cheesy exploit. I say retain the very hard option, but make the ship become permanently hostile, have it call for help, and fight back until the end. There's no way a ship should sail blithely along with no reactions while it's actively being attacked from within, especially with no rep loss.

I already gave a rather harsh reply to the OPs post. I stand with all I said several posts above - but that said:

If the OP just wanted better consequences for boarding, and not just a nerf or making it much harder, I have to agree. This should be in comparison to the relation to the owning faction: If I have good relations to TER, say 28 (like in my current game) it is really bad treason to capture an Asgard or a Syn from them. It should have harsh consequences, back to relation zero or so. I do not know if this can be done. But it should be rather hard, since it is actually quite easy to gain in relations.
If relations are bad, like the default -15 with TER (from Young Gun start), then it could cost less, but still should go down to a point, where it is hard to recover. It even could mean war, if the players relations to the faction are bad to begin with. The usual ship capturing from pirate factions are not touched by this, since they are frozen anyway (SCP).

Another way would be to just not do it, even if possible. This is what I do now...

That would pretty much kill boarding then.
Frankly if you want something like that go try X3FL.

[jlehtone]

That would pretty much kill boarding then.

Would it? It would have no effect on SCA nor on enemies. Where it would make a difference are the freighter/miner operations that are also offered as missions. That is, if the cost on civilians would be as steep as on top military.

[Caedes91]

Whatever they do, as long as it does not make the performance worse due to more complicated scripts, I don't care.
Though I highly doubt, that Egosoft will actually waste time on this, simply due to the fact, that the player can decide to do this or not. The game progresses mostly towards empire building. For everybody, there comes a point, where you can simply build your desired ships. Or are there any players, that bother with boarding from early game all the way to lategame? It's not that fun after a few times. If the player was able to fight in first person inside a ship, that would be a different story.
Boarding will be too much of hassle by then, for needing to do it yourself. No reason for it outside of getting unique ships like the Oberth.

As I mentioned before, the game has more egregious faults, that needs fixing.

[Nanook]

...
If the OP just wanted better consequences for boarding, and not just a nerf or making it much harder, I have to agree....

What the OP is specifically talking about is the current ability to board ships using the 'very hard' option, with no consequences whatsoever to the player, not nerfing boarding in general.

...

That would pretty much kill boarding then...

Not sure why you think having consequences for boarding ships would kill boarding. We currently have quite dire consequences for boarding, other than the very hard option, which is the topic under consideration.

Too many knee-jerk reactions and generalizations in this thread, I think. It would help if more than a few of us read the OP for comprehension.

Finally, I don't think it would take much effort by the devs to change the very hard option so that it has the same consequences as other boarding options. Right now, it appears that destroying ship parts, destroying lasertowers and fighter drones, and damaging the hull are what cause a reaction, so they just need to add killing any crew to that list. Or they could just remove that option from the game so no more free ships for the exploiters. And yes, it is an exploit since I doubt the devs intended to allow the player to steal ships with no consequences.

[Raptor34]

...
If the OP just wanted better consequences for boarding, and not just a nerf or making it much harder, I have to agree....

What the OP is specifically talking about is the current ability to board ships using the 'very hard' option, with no consequences whatsoever to the player, not nerfing boarding in general.

...

That would pretty much kill boarding then...

Not sure why you think having consequences for boarding ships would kill boarding. We currently have quite dire consequences for boarding, other than the very hard option, which is the topic under consideration.

Too many knee-jerk reactions and generalizations in this thread, I think. It would help if more than a few of us read the OP for comprehension.

Finally, I don't think it would take much effort by the devs to change the very hard option so that it has the same consequences as other boarding options. Right now, it appears that destroying ship parts, destroying lasertowers and fighter drones, and damaging the hull are what cause a reaction, so they just need to add killing any crew to that list. Or they could just remove that option from the game so no more free ships for the exploiters. And yes, it is an exploit since I doubt the devs intended to allow the player to steal ships with no consequences.

Did you read his suggestion though? Boarding one ship would basically tank your rep.
At that point what's the reason to have +30 rep then?
And no, we do not have dire consequences now for boarding, not even for wiping out a whole defense station. Or at least we are able to prepare for it by spending the time and effort to build up a rep buffer. His suggestion means there is nothing we can do about that, board one ship and now you're at 0 rep. At that point I would no longer even board ships in the end game.

That would pretty much kill boarding then.

Would it? It would have no effect on SCA nor on enemies. Where it would make a difference are the freighter/miner operations that are also offered as missions. That is, if the cost on civilians would be as steep as on top military.

At that point there is no longer any reason to work on creating a rep buffer. Which means if you want to stay on good terms, then no boarding.
What this would do is actually restrict what players would be able to do, nothing more.
Also it means that unlocking SCA rep is now actually a bad thing, since after doing that you can no longer steal ships from them. Because steal a ship or two and good luck ever recovering from that.

[S!rAssassin]

Ideal, will be get rep loss for killing each defending crew, like for killing engines, shields or turrets. More dead crew - more consequences.

But simplest exploit fix - remove "very hard"

---

About frozen reputation of pirate factions: pirates do not have central faction leadership - we have base reputation and local loss. Looks logical. Until Split Fallen Families arrived...

[jlehtone]

Finally, I don't think it would take much effort by the devs to change the very hard option so that it has the same consequences as other boarding options. Right now, it appears that destroying ship parts, destroying lasertowers and fighter drones, and damaging the hull are what cause a reaction, so they just need to add killing any crew to that list. Or they could just remove that option from the game so no more free ships for the exploiters. And yes, it is an exploit since I doubt the devs intended to allow the player to steal ships with no consequences.

To my knowledge damaging the hull does not affect faction reputation at all -- or does "unauthorized attack" have persistent effect?

There are thus two approaches now that have no consequences:

• Drop plenty of marines on intact ship. Plenty of crew does die and everybody lives happily ever after.
• Shoot at hull of a ship until all crew has bailed out. Then send marines to kill the captain. Even more people might live happily ever after.

Actually, that makes three, for one can disable turrets and engines without "killing" them. Plenty of marksman shooting is required, but the first stage is then less risky.

Should we really remove just one method since there are plenty of ways to board without consequences? IMHO, no. Should this one method be modified without affecting all the other methods? It does currently have the hull breaching time as a "short-time cost", while the other methods require other activity. Making that time yet longer (has such change already occurred?) won't probably improve the balance.

Deaths during boarding are an obvious attribute to play with. However, it could be a bit more complex.

• Military ships should be more costly. Faction administration probably care more about their ships than about citizens. The private companies are free to take risks and the space is dangerous. Therefore, killing crew from military ships should be more prominent than killing crew of freighter.
• Plan A: Two hundred noobs try to take over an Asgard. Couple of the defenders are KIA, but the attackers are all wiped out. These waves keep coming. Eventually every defender is dead.
  Plan B: Elite team takes over the Asgard in one go, without losses.
  Are the two cases equally aggravating? The crew of Asgard dies in both. Same amount of deaths. Or, should you lose a bit of reputation for every marine that the defenders have to kill too? That way you would have to choose between easy to get rookies that cause bad rep when they die and laborious gathering of the veterans that get the job done "cleanly".

Note that even if deaths are penalized, the "Shoot at hull of a ship until all crew has bailed out" remains the almost no consequences option. That sounds almost ethical.

Penalty on crew deaths has additional bonus: you get bad rep even if you fail to board.

How much rep loss is "balanced"? Should loss of ship due to piracy be less or more bad than just destruction of the ship?


Pirates do not steal ships, just wares. SCA reputation among other factions appears to be "unrecoverable". Only player can steal ships and we can do something about our reputation. Is that fair?

[Raptor34]

And yes, it is an exploit since I doubt the devs intended to allow the player to steal ships with no consequences.

If they didn't intend that they would have just added rep loss when a ship is captured.
Unless their spaghetti code prevents them from doing that.

[Nanook]

...
To my knowledge damaging the hull does not affect faction reputation at all -- or does "unauthorized attack" have persistent effect?

There are thus two approaches now that have no consequences:

• Drop plenty of marines on intact ship. Plenty of crew does die and everybody lives happily ever after.
• Shoot at hull of a ship until all crew has bailed out. Then send marines to kill the captain. Even more people might live happily ever after.

Actually, that makes three, for one can disable turrets and engines without "killing" them. Plenty of marksman shooting is required, but the first stage is then less risky.
...

All options are not created equal. Only the first one, the 'very hard' option, has zero consequences no matter where you do it. In my example above, I started the boarding operation in Teladi space, where it also ended. There was zero reaction from either MIN or TEL to my aggression. I can guarantee that would not be the case with either of the other two options. Even just shooting the hull will result in you being attacked by the local forces if you're in their space. While the hull-shooting option may not result in permanent rep loss, if you defend yourself, it may become so.

With all that said, the logical thing to do is make stealing any ship result in rep loss. This goes for the S/M ships as well, which also currently have no consequence if you steal them far enough away from forces friendly to the target ship. When the ship changes ownership is when the rep loss should occur.

[X4Starter]

I will put in my opinion without going into specifics of the mechanics.

Whenever there is a certain way to play a game, that is not mandatory, that is by player choice, particularly in a single player game, that is determined to be 'too easy, unethical, cheating,' by some in the community and therefore to some people SHOULD be changed, Caution is advised.

It is not ours nor the game makers position to determine what are acceptable and non-acceptable ways for others to play the game within the confines of the game itself. Overreach in this effect is generally NOT appreciated by the gaming community as a whole, as the opinions of the vocal few are not necessarily representative of community as a whole. I think the poll demonstrates this.

Rockstar Games is notorious for squelching harmless exploits, that only a very small percentage of players use to spice up their playing of the game (IE early access to late game horse breeds in Red Dead). And they are one of the most successful Sandbox makers in the industry. I really don't think it improves the game by doing so.

Same thing with the early game crystals, it was too easy, too plentiful they said. Perhaps I am not aware of all the concerns for the original bountifulness of crystals, but in my opinion, WHO CARES. It was only one way to play, and I would argue a great way for NEW players to learn the game. I did. I don't anymore because as I gained experience I found better, and for me, more fun ways of starting out. We do not rob people of ways of playing the game they find enjoyable because we do not.

Especially since this is supposed to be a Sandbox-style game. If it breaks YOUR (and let the OP understand I am not singling them out, but in general terms) experience, don't do it, or MOD it differently.

As stated already, there are more important issues than this. If you don't like it, don't use it.

[S!rAssassin]

in a single player game

But future ventures?

This exploit is not game break, but... budget custom game start do not alloy you to start with Asgard. Why we have restrictions, if...

WHO CARES

[Nanook]

.... If you don't like it, don't use it.

That's not really fair. I personally would like to have the very hard option, the ability to gain a ship with minimal damage but which takes a long time (which it does). However, I do not like the fact that there's no repercussions for doing so. So it's an option that is worthless to me. And that's sad.

[jlehtone]

Indeed.
We have at least the "I don't like a feature because I use it" and the "I like only most of the feature so can't use it" viewpoints.
Therefore, we have also the "remove everything that I don't like" and the "these features could be improved" suggestions.

@S!rAssassin: Should Asgard and/or budget game start be removed from the game? That would "remove a restriction" ...

[S!rAssassin]

Should Asgard and/or budget game start be removed from the game?

Go, hire some Somali pirates, board USS John C. Stennis in her home port of Norfolk, Virginia, and try to sell her back to US NAVY...