Boarding mechanics?

[Fenikso]

OK, thanks for the answer. It is a bit confusing right now. I will wait for additional changes.

[Cory Trese]

Oct 14, 2011 12:09:05 GMT -5 Fenikso said:

OK, thanks for the answer. It is a bit confusing right now. I will wait for additional changes.

It is far, far less confusing that it was last time.

There additional changes will be very small changes to the text at the bottom but they won't really be very significant.

I have played about 30,000 turns myself and simulated ten times that, so I'm pretty familiar with the new rules already.

You can take damage to your own ship doing Board, just like Ram. The Armor value and Crew Success are the big factors there.

[Fenikso]

I did not board their ship, I fired guns and they boarded me.
The message states opposite, that I boarded them.

I am the one who took damage to the ship loosing all my guns.
The message states opposite, that I did damage to them.

I do not see how this is not confusing. Would you please care to explain what I am not seeing? Am I reading it wrong?

[Cory Trese]

That is confusing, I will have to investigate. It sounds like the names got switched during a critical. that happened in one other place as well, it is possible I missed a second occurring of the name swap.

thanks for explaining it again

[Cory Trese]

Oct 14, 2011 12:45:14 GMT -5 Fenikso said:

I did not board their ship, I fired guns and they boarded me.
The message states opposite, that I boarded them.

I am the one who took damage to the ship loosing all my guns.
The message states opposite, that I did damage to them.

I do not see how this is not confusing. Would you please care to explain what I am not seeing? Am I reading it wrong?

You are not reading it wrong I was coding it wrong.

A patch will be coming ASAP =)

[johnmark287]

I don't know what all the fuss is about with regards to Boarding and coming out of a boarding event with little damage. I don't know if I'm using a different (maybe more methodical) tactic to Boarding enemy ships of all sizes, or I've become so accustomed to the Boarding/Dueling style of gameplay that I'm comfortable with winning nearly every boarding or dueling event.

My characters are typical Strength and Wisdom Military officers. Question for Mr Trese, is there some way that you could implement a visual representation in the event of a player that successfully boarded an enemy ship? All this time, I relied on the shifting of HUD buttons during boarding events, and I find it odd (and a tad frustrating) that the enemy ship could escape from the duel/boarding position, retreat, and come out alive.

Any help, comments, or suggestions on the matter would be appreciated. And thank you for the game.

[Maktaka]

So the boarding mechanics are definitely much improved now. Loss isn't an instantaneous "you shouldn't have done that and now your engines are destroyed" thing, and if you're trying to board a ship that's a bit beyond your means, it's feasible to pull back to short range and finish it off with guns.

That said I do have a question that I don't think ever got answered before. How does stocking Weapons affect your boarding success, if at all? I'm not seeing any information in-game that indicates they have any effect, but I was advised earlier to keep them in stock to improve my effectiveness at boarding.

I ask because I'm currently outfitting for a shiny new Royal Cruiser I just picked up (200 crew and 100 cargo). Doing so is requiring me to put a bunch more points in Pilot to handle it properly (There are penalties for having less than half the ship's HP in Pilot skill right? Er, I think? I read that on the forums somewhere, but it's not in-game anywhere so actually I don't know if this is even still true.), which means Warrior isn't quite keeping up as much as I'd like and I'm starting to take more losses than I'd prefer during boarding. If stocking some weapons helps then I have about 20-25 spare cargo space to do that, but based on the in-game info there seems to be no point.



Hmm, on another note I'm finding Target Decks to be much less reliable than Target Engines. Target Engines will typically hit the engines and disable the craft, occasionally hitting elsewhere instead. Target Decks sometimes hits the crew decks, but more often hits the hull itself and destroys the craft, with a mix of gun, torpedo, or engine strikes as well. I find I'm more likely to NOT hit the decks when targeting them. It makes it a bit tricky to effectively soften up a craft for boarding Is this intentional?

[Cory Trese]

The "Decks" attack shoots into the Crew and Gun Decks. The damage quotation that is NOT shown to you (estimate it in your head) is the damage to the MORALE of the enemy ship.

Target Engines never damages ship Morale, Target Decks almost always does.

[Cory Trese]

but that also can mean that quickly the enemy will do something stupid like steer into your final fatal shot at decks doing nothing but hull damage and game over