MiddleStates 7.1 discussion

Well, I guess the first topic is do we have ship capture or not? (glad to have outside of team input - it all helps).

The up side is that it is fun. The popularity of iFleet proved that. And once the disruptor missiles are taken away, it is pretty hard. You have to shoot off the engines. And what would the Independence Navy be without some captured Navy ships?

The down side is that it destroys game balance. iFleet proved that as well. That is the reason you can only capture civilian ships. (it can be so unbalancing that this feature was not even planned for the prior version of Epic).

There are a few features of Middle States that help balance this out a little. First, if you pirate or capture ships, the owning faction is going to hate you. Second, you can only sell your captured ship to ship breakers, and so the game designer has control of the profits. Basically, this is an option for pirates or privateers who like to raid into hostile territory and flee back. And who don't mind being hunted.

Otherwise, your captured ship behaves just like a hired ship. And if you fail to pay the crew, they take the ship and leave. Hiring ships should be a cheaper way to get wingmen.

As far as how else could the feature work, the answer is lots. I didn't like how easy disruptors worked. So I wrote a little simulation where you could deploy attack drones that latched onto a ship and tried to disrupt it. They were slow and fragile. One shot killed them. But if a few latched on, the target was disrupted.

Nexus uses marines to destroy subsystems. That might be possible for drones as well.

There is some handyness to having a boarding party of some kind on the player ship. Especially for story lines, or mission requirements. Capture X ship. Or search X ship for contraband. Or get X data files from a floating hulk. But we don't have those features planned, so it is probably not worth discussing.

Oh... I thought the team was discussing refinements to an already-implemented feature. I see now you're looking at it in a more general perspective.

While Mehrunes' I-Fleet is great fun during free-form play (and a marvel of POG skill), I've never been very keen on capturing ships. Both Cambragol and Qlippoth bring up the same points I found when I was researching this for a project which never materialized.

Originally posted by Qlippoth:
It would also seem logical to me that weapons against human boarders would be hazardous to both the boarders AND the defending crew.

I quite agree. Also:

Your ship is being overrun. Most of your crew killed. You've barricaded yourself on the command deck and face either death by weapon fire or death by suitless spacewalk. Would you not self-destruct? Take some of your enemies with you? I would.

The thought of a Venice class freighter going boom while I'm docked to it would deter me from piracy.

In fact, I would go so far as to say extreme preventive measures would be implemented to reduce piracy across the board. Such as computer systems which can be locked down by the commander... or wiped clean except for the most basic of functions. 'Lo-jacked' ships which have hidden transmitters and can be tracked. Police decoy freighters to lure pirates out.

Together these things tend to shape a view where ship capture is a rare event. Something best left for scripted missions in special circumstances. A custom-scripted capture mission allows a greater degree of realism and tactics for the player than a general player-initiated feature. It also keeps the play-balance intact.

But that's just my rather odd opinion... players love capturing ships. And what is the game for if not for the player?

I still find marines or mercenaries a little far fetched. What is to stop them from just leaving with the ship once it is captured? What power does the player have over them, that keeps them bound to his will?

I agree. I've never been quite satisfied with wingmen command level of realism in any sim except Privateer 2. In Privateer 2 the player could hire wingmen, but if he sent them after a target which the wingman deemed too dangerous they would refuse. They were willing to hazzard themselves only to a degree. This made them seem more real.

My dream AI/Wingman system would be one where reputation is not determined between factions, but also between ships (with a parental slant based on faction feeling). This would allow the player to build a working relationship with another ship. Unfortunately, while it may be possible to create an AI capable of this (and I'm pushing for this with the Freehauler project), I don't think EoC is really designed for this type of thing.

So how to make it as realistic as possible?

I'm uncertain of just what reputation code is present in the latest Epic release, but possibly the mercs would have to be hired from a faction which is strongly aligened with the player (i.e., the 'love' side of the scale)? That might keep the new crew from running off with the ship.

I like Shanes idea of linking reputation with wingman. Perhaps we could limit wingman and ship capturing to when the player has established the highest level of reputation with a certain faction. So it is not a feature that is merely present at any point in the game, but rather comes into play later, after the player has worked hard to earn the loyalty and respect of certain faction members, enough so that they will obey and follow his lead. Capturing could also be limited in who they are performed against. So perhaps only factions that the player has the highest standing with will obey him, and they will further only perform ship capturing against factions against whom they (and the player) have the lowest standing with. The player becomes allied so to speak with a certain faction, and involved with the 'war' or skirmishes that exist between that faction and its enemies.

If the question is do we have the feature or not, I would say at the least hold it off until Traffic.

Just starting my thought process on this area so please bear with me.

1. To me ship capture was always a fundamental part of the I-War universe. This can be seen extremely well in the trailer movies. The fact that it didn't form part of the origianl campaign was a bit of a bugger.

2. There are very real game balance issues. They can be countered a little by the mighty dollar.
* You have to pay people to risk their skin in a boarding party. Often that money would come from a portion of the ships sale and bouty. It therefore costs mega for such a mission
* The practice of raiding/capturing ships is going to make you a very unpopular person with the corporations you effect, the government forces who will be under pressure from the corporations to stop you and the local police forces for whom you are causing so much static from their bosses. The net effect is you are going to get a lot of grief for your efforts. Also such pirate activity should start to up police patrols and escorts as well as private escorts

3. The believability of marines. I think this is a personal thing. Personally I have no problem with that. I wouldn't use Space Marines as a label. Just Marines is fine, why would we be trying to differentiate between Marine on water ships and those on space ships? Now as to their use. the disably of the target ship will always be achieved via blasting out thrusters or using some other tech to disable the target. However at the end of the day you have to control and contain the crew of your target. That is where the Marines come in. On a large ship they could well be on fighting. On smaller ones it might just be a case of putting a civilian crew under lock 'n key and guarding them. Either way you will usually have some gun slinging types (who specialise as such work) managing that side of the operation. Yes a robot could do it but that just doesn't seem right for the feel of the I-War universe.

4. The ship hire system. I think it is a reasonable approach to this feature. Although I rather like a pure marine contingent approach that is not tied to a ship hire. I.e I have three wingmen there for I can hire a total of 10 marines per ship.

Just some ideas/thoughts. More discussion needed I think.

For the less-than-moral out there, there can be another way of capturing a ship. Shoot it until the armor’s weakened (say, 25 or 50%), then plug it with a nerve gas missile. Everyone on board dies in seconds. Then wait for the ship’s atmospheric systems to clean it out, dock, set your ship’s computer to find its way home, and fly your new prize home yourself.

Military ships would have automatic doors, gas masks, and the like to stop this from being effective, but a civilian ship could be taken over this way. What do you think? Too easy? Too gruesome? We can make the nerve missile expensive and/or something the cops don’t want you to have, and give it a limited chance of success.

My take on marines: When I think of military operations in a scifi world, I always imagine the fighting to take place between cyberneticly and geneticly enhanced soldiers. The marines don't come cheap either. The cost of creating such a super soldier would be enough that only the military can afford to use them, and even then they only employ a small number. I would say a large military ship might have only a few onboard.

These marines would be much more powerful than your standard human. One could easily take on twenty or more fully armed mercenaries. This is how most space battles would play out, large numbers of mercenaries trying to take out a single marine. That is how I imagine the battle of the future.