Reduce Crew Combat in Ship combat grindiness

[contributor]

So this is an exploratory post looking for solutions instead of knowing just what to do.

The problem is the grindiness of taking down enemy ships through crew combat, especially in the later game when your combat crew is all sorted out and monster. The problem is especially bad when you're trying to do this with minimal damage to the enemy ship to increase salvage values. Taking down a large enemy can mean 5 or more crew combats in a row and beyond the first one they really pose no threat to your crew, so it's truly a matter of just grinding through, relatively uninteresting fights.

A few solutions I've thought of so far are:
1) Putting a hard cap on the number of crew combats. Maybe if you've won 4 (3?) without losing soldier you automatically win the whole fight.
1a) A unique way to implement this that wouldn't seem artificial is having the enemy captain always appear in the 4th (3rd?) CC fight.
2) Greatly increase the chance of the captain joining in CC after the first round. This is much similar to 1a but would be more random and overall decrease the number of combats necessary.
3) Buff boarding talents or allow more to be used especially at range 1. Being able to deliver more damage/death/morale crush would help speed things along a bit. I especially like the idea of buffing Moral Crushing talents. I mean watching all your soldiers get slaughtered and then having you crew come back a few more times and splatter the non-fighters would be pretty crushing. Crushing enemy morale does cause them to lose pilots etc. right?

[tarquelne]

Making this process more dynamic strikes me as a good idea.

I like the idea of focusing on morale penalties.
Maybe based off how little damage the winning side takes? Ideally this would be linked to how the ship combat is going.

Perhaps as a general rule taking damage without dishing any out could lead to big morale penalties. I would like to see combats more often end in surrender. Not, “No piloting systems ... and there’s only, like, six of us left anyway.”

(I saw a suggestion made for more boarding combat crew members on AI ships - I think that’s a good idea too.)

Regarding 1a, I seem to remember reading that the better the boarding roll, the more likely vital targets are offered for sabotage and/or that the Captain appears. Perhaps this could be made more significant? I haven’t noticed a difference between ships kitted out to have high Boarding and ships with good-enough Boarding.

[fallen]

Thanks for the suggestions! Cool concepts.

[contributor]

Oh, I really like the idea that scoring higher on the boarding role would force the enemy captain into battle (maybe at least on turn 2 or later). Maybe that dynamic is there and just needs to be advertised but it would create interesting design decisions. To be honest, even on ships that did 100% boarding I never actually built them with boarding based components or used buffs that increased boarding ability. It seemed that if you could dodge, you could board. Having an incentive to get mega-high boarding rolls would be very interesting.

Another idea from Discord was that back to back crew combat would have some sort of inherent morale debuff. This would create a need to manage more combat crew with backups and make each subsequent round more challenging. I'm not sure it would work 100% because it might just tempt people to spend more time buffing in combat once you get the enemy down to one wimpy fighter. But some similar dynamic might up the challenge.

[fallen]

We'll keep working on making the boarding bonus to component priority more clear. I like the idea of having it not only effect the component that is selected but also have impact on crew being forced into a fight. Even if you could force an officer over the captain, that would be powerful change. Of course, that means the AI gets the same benefit if they board you.

[resistor]

I'm just going to point out some past suggestions to reduce boarding grind.

1) <26 morale crew never being automatically selected to defend the ship against enemy boarding parties. This would reduce the number of crew you have to fight through if the enemy is significantly damaged. (And yeah, I was the one who suggested this )

2) A talent that forces the enemy captain to appear in the defense party if you successfully board them on the same turn. I don't remember who suggested this one.

[lordscrod]

Boarding modules do stack, right? Two or three of them should put you at the engine within a couple of boards each time, no?

Come to think, do the boarding modules work for boarding shuttles? Or is the shuttle's roll independent?

A boarding talent that allows you to conduct a surgical strike against either Bridge, Engine, or other critical component might be handy too, though on an 18 week cooldown AND it's like level 15.

Just spitballing, because I do feel the pain of boarding after boarding going on, but I admit double speed crew combat will probably fix that.

[nerezzar]

You could also increase the number of talents that can be used after each boarding. Like 2/3/3/4/5/7... instead of 2/2/2/2/2/...
That way boarding talents grow stronger but one won boarding still isn't the immediate end.

The enemy ship will grow empty after all and that makes sabotage easier.

[fallen]

May 27, 2019 15:06:22 GMT -5 resistor said:

I'm just going to point out some past suggestions to reduce boarding grind.

1) <26 morale crew never being automatically selected to defend the ship against enemy boarding parties. This would reduce the number of crew you have to fight through if the enemy is significantly damaged. (And yeah, I was the one who suggested this )

Hmm, this clearly needs to be added.

[OrcaFlutter]

Rather than game mechanics, I’d humbly like to suggest a different change in user experience. the problem for me is, yes, the number of crew combats, but only because each one takes so long, even if I win in turn 1.

I’d humbly like an option (to turn on under MainMenu—Options) for quick or double speed crew combat. It would be a lot of work but it would involve certain things like reducing action times and the wait times in between actions. It’s cool to see your soldier pump-fist a buff and rattle off semiautomatic fire, or get shivers when a back-rank xeno grabs your third-line fighter, but that takes up precious seconds, then waiting an extra half second or second to pull up the next character. I acknowledge that shortening or even nerfing animations is a LOT more work than programming the other fixes in this thread, But by reducing these seconds in each battle, I would FEEL like things are faster, so even if, let’s say, a combat lasts 20% less time, it would FEEL twice as fast, IMHO it’s this kind of user experience, for lack of a better term (im not a developer so.you can help me on the proper term for this), that is as important as making the mechanics feel right. Your improved quicker ship combat is an example of this. It feels easy and streamlined and I don’t notice the time it takes to pull up an action anymore. Thanks for listening!

[fallen]

@orcaflutter - it is 100% on the list to have fast crew combat just like fast ship combat.

[OrcaFlutter]

Thanks!