Subset Games Forum

In the games I've played I've always found that having a boarding crew is always the easiest route.

With a maxed out teleporter there's not even that much of a risk of loosing men, as you can beam them out and back before they can be killed even when they are outnumbered... Even AI ships are beatable with this as you can do the damage and beam them back before they die from suffocation.

Because you get more scrap from boarding and lots more fuel and you don't need to spend money on weapons, and in fact you get so many off the boarded ships you sell them for even more scrap, you don't use up missiles or drones...

High level enemies with big shields and big weapons mean nothing, the only thing you really need if your totally stuck is to use a missile or bomb to take out the enemy med bay.

The end boss is also a cakewalk with boarding.

With all this extra scrap you get an awesome shielded and evading ship that rarely even takes damage, because you don't need big weapons or drones you have lots of surplus power.


SO, I thought of a few things to help balance this out a bit-

1. Change the oxygen system so that rather than generating oxygen faster its actually needed to have a bigger crew, cos more people means more breathing, right?
So say you get four crew members for free with one bar in oxygen but for each additional crew member after that you need another power bar. This would mean that boarding ships would lose their surplus power and they would need to keep spending money to upgrade this part of the ship. You could also use this to limit crew size by limiting the amount of upgrades allowed or by making upgrades prohibitably expensive.
To avoid gaining crew in scenarios basically ending your game when you cant afford the upgrades you could allow maybe one crew member over the limit but be penalised by having a really really slow oxygen resupply rate.


2. Don't allow boarding crews to board until the shields are down, this means that you would still need to use weapons to take out the shields so you wouldn't be able to just ignore this to save money. I don't think it would be a good idea to prevent beaming back- so you should still be able to beam back through the shields, but any further beam ins would once again have to wait until the shields are down. This would also give the enemy a chance to try and target your teleporter before their shields go down. Don't forget that this would also effect them, so they wouldn't be able to board your ship until your shields were down too, and likewise you get a chance to target their teleporter to prevent it (Except for boarding scenarios, which already ignore zoltan shields anyway).

I think both ideas are great, I have noticed that whenever I use teleporters, they are very OP.
The only thing is that it doesn't cost that much to upgrade the O2 system, but something along the lines of that would be a clever idea.

The only thing I would be worried about was if they did make boarding harder, then the game would become so much harder, and its allready quite difficult.
Also it would make boarding the Flagship almost impossible, because they have 4 shields that you have to get through, and you would have to spend scrap on weapons to get their shields down.

But great ideas, something does need to be done about boarding, it is currently OP, and way too easy to win.
(Even making the teleporter system more expensive would help)

quick answer be4 i finish reading the post:

boarding is a strong strategy but is very risky. example: i lost my 4 fighters upon fighing the boss the first time (didnt warp out in time...). I barely managed victory after that, but boarding specs are very vulnerable cos if you lose your "figthers" early you wont be able to build up your ship for the final fight.

Boarding is rather overpowered, yes.

I don't so much mind the idea of having to upgrade the O2 system to support more crew, but that's not going to hurt boarders more than other playstyles very much; everyone wants to have as large a crew as possible so they can quickly repair / repel boarders / etc.

Limiting teleporting to when the enemy's shields are down is a neat idea. Of course, it completely destroys any plausibility in the "enemies have boarded your ship" events...not that they were doing so hot to begin with when enemies can mysteriously penetrate your Zoltan shield every single time.

Another possibility, assuming this isn't already done, is to give enemy crew more ranks in hand-to-hand combat and to upgrade their doors more often. Level-2 doors mean that you have to have upgraded your teleporter to be able to retrieve your crew, especially when fighting Mantis. Otherwise you can just have your crew run around in circles until the teleporter recharges.

And of course, if the enemy ships had airlocks that they used intelligently, that would make things more interesting too.

Derakon wrote:Boarding is rather overpowered, yes.

I don't so much mind the idea of having to upgrade the O2 system to support more crew, but that's not going to hurt boarders more than other playstyles very much; everyone wants to have as large a crew as possible so they can quickly repair / repel boarders / etc.

Limiting teleporting to when the enemy's shields are down is a neat idea. Of course, it completely destroys any plausibility in the "enemies have boarded your ship" events...not that they were doing so hot to begin with when enemies can mysteriously penetrate your Zoltan shield every single time.

Another possibility, assuming this isn't already done, is to give enemy crew more ranks in hand-to-hand combat and to upgrade their doors more often. Level-2 doors mean that you have to have upgraded your teleporter to be able to retrieve your crew, especially when fighting Mantis. Otherwise you can just have your crew run around in circles until the teleporter recharges.

And of course, if the enemy ships had airlocks that they used intelligently, that would make things more interesting too.

Oh god, if ships used their doors hardly anybody would have a chance to effectively use boarding.
Then again, many ships don't come with a door system, so it might work.

And the events that enemies board your ship, well they are already unrealistic, so I wouldn't worry about making them worse.

I would love to see an improvement in the enemy ship AI so that they know how to use airlocks (and, you know, add airlocks to those ships). I really don't like this asymmetry.

I'll second the "Let the AI have and use airlocks" idea. You'll still have the advantage over an AI boarder because you can choose which room you want to beam to, but it won't be quite as OP.

Though honestly, to make boarding quite as powerful, all you need to do is put a medbay and level 2+ doors on most enemy ships. Possibly change the AI a bit too. As it is now, even doors wouldn't matter too much since enemy crew seem to enjoy jumping into mantis hugs.

I do like the shield idea though, but leave in needing shields to teleport back. Let your troops sweat while their captain tries to crack a hole in their shields to bring them back home.

Most of this is far too drastic. It needs some small balancing. Not a major overhaul.

It's powerful, but risky.

Derakon wrote:Boarding is rather overpowered, yes.
And of course, if the enemy ships had airlocks that they used intelligently, that would make things more interesting too.

This.

Also, the event where enemy's board your zoltan cruiser is a case of AI cheating. The player is not allowed to board zoltan ships when their shields are up, so that AI should not be allowed to do it either. It comes across as if it was lazy programming, unable/unwilling to code for the special case of player choosing a zoltan ship. I don't know if the event system can actually support such a thing, but take a lesson from the Bible: Avoid the appearance of evil.

I don't know if I agree with the subject. Boarding gets you a lot of money. It's really tough to beat the mothership without it. It's also really dangerous, though. It takes a long time to take down the offensive power of an enemy ship. You can lose crew in a lot of new ways, and that's a huge risk. A crew member costs as much as 6-12 missiles, 4-8 drone parts, and I lose people all the time.

Here's one suggestion: What if the teleport lock could miss like the weapons can? You don't need to take the shields down, but you can't be positive you'll be able to send your people across right away, and, unless you can shut down the engines or the cockpit, you can't be sure you can get them OUT.

Or you can cap ships at 5-6 crew. Five would ensure you had to leave a station empty to board.

What I think would be cool is if there were some special abilities, particularly for races that normally stink as boarders. I'd like it if Voltan had a racial ability to disable whatever room they were in, kind of like an ion blast (as an offset, maybe you could have them take damage from being hit by ion blasts). Or what if Engi could always override doors and move from room to room in any ship?