Capture of ships

That would be an enormous pain to balance.

true, thats why i have defined it as an interesting twist. The AI alone would be difficult

A cool idea, though; I have always like ship to ship battles, with sailors/marines/whatever jumping from one ship to another through boarding craft and whatnot.

If something like this was possible, it would be a delight...but it doesn't sound easily feasible.

definatley difficult (rephrase from earlier statement), but you could think of it as, the more of the modules you have, the more soldiers to takeover the ship. And then the military funding (or lack of in some cases) would affect how many people are on board the vessel getting boarded, eg. if the funding is good you have 50 people on board against 20 invaders? but if you dont have the funding, you have a skeleton crew of say 8 people against 20. Adds to the financial planning and strategy required to win. Then have some algorithms that basically look at who has more forces, this will be normally how a battle is won.

A simpler example of that statement is the planet invasion from gal civ 1 on traditional warfare, maybe programmed with a few random events that can affect the battle (Warp Core blowing up certainley would affect it, 1 in 1000000 chance i think)

Hmm. Sounds like a cool Idea. Maybe not something that would be implimented on a large scale. But even if it were a random event. Or maybe if a single ship left untouched or by itself for too long could run the risk of capture. I don't know, good idea though.

But what if in the future, they just used AI controlled ships! Moment someone tries to board, it just self-destructs.

But what if in the future, they just used AI controlled ships! Moment someone tries to board, it just self-destructs.

hmm, major research technology. Possible, install self destruct modules and AI Modules, or course there is the random event that the destruction modules are disabled/failed/cant be controlled since the main computer is offline from attacks. the computer would pick a random number and if it matched the set value by the developers (out of a thousand/million/hundred/etc) that event could happen, then the reason why would be a simple random algorithm like the first.

Is it worth the risk? Yes or No? Good, Evil, or Neutral? It is all part of the strategy and how you chose to play the game.

here's an idea

One man could board the other ship and walk around all over the ship shooting alien monsters with various weapons that he would have available. He could find goodies along the way like health paks and stims.

One man could board the other ship and walk around all over the ship shooting alien monsters with various weapons that he would have available. He could find goodies along the way like health paks and stims.

You just described 90% of Sci-fi FPS and 45% of all Sci-fi Movies

here's an idea One man could board the other ship and walk around all over the ship shooting alien monsters with various weapons that he would have available. He could find goodies along the way like health paks and stims.

Thank You for the input, i expected to have many posts like this by now. Apparently i was wrong since there is only one, but for future reference to that comment, here is my opinion.

You are entitled to your thoughts as well as I am entitled to mine. Strategy is the name of the game, and i am not trying to deviate in any way from that. This is simply a new plane of strategical thinking. Every time you decide on a strategy to attempt to win, the AI attempts to respond in what it views as the best manner. Here is a new plane of thought. True there are some ideas that we have gone to the limit off, looked inside of and thought of what they could do, and made treaties to never use such devestating things (nuclear bomb was the example i was thinking of). As far as the actual implementation of it into the game, wheather you use it or not is YOUR choice, is it part of your strategy or not? Does the AI use it against you or not? The way I have proposed it is stating it as an addition to combat, if you chose to use it or not is entierly your choice. You dont like the thought of having it in the game? Fine, dont use it in your game. But there might be some that want to add the extra plan of strategy and thought to the experience. Which is what GalCiv has always been to me, an experience.

Dont assume i am angry or displeased. This was ment as a cival and friendly disscusion of possible expansion.

Rather than a random event during battle, how about it being a random event that arises out of cultural influence?

If your influence extends into enemy territory there could be a very small percentage chance each turn that an enemy ship might defect to your side. There would have to be a critical mass of influence, state of war/peace, morale, etc. It wouldn't be nearly as hard to balance because it would just be a random event along the lines of planets falling to influence alone (only less predictable).

If a ship defects and it has technology that you don't have, you can get a tech out of it. So if you're focused on shields, and a ship defects to you with armor, you get one tech level increase on the armor tree. It would probably have to be a random roll for which, if any techs you get in case there's more than one you don't have.

interesting, another take on the same topic. But look at it from this point of view. You would have no ideas on how to manufacture it. Just what it looks like in the end. could be a risk of doing that would be to build a prototype ship with that tech, but it explodes because of one of those steps that was taken during manufacturing. Perhaps a random algorithm to determine wheather the ship gives up a tech or not, which would open a screen asking if you want to make a prototype of it. Then if you hit accept, you gain the tech, a test item is made, and is tested at which point the random algorithm could determine if it was a success or not. This technique for gaining technology could also be applied to the first method of ships surrender. Certainly would be another way for war like races (drenigin, korx, etc) to evolve themselves.

I like that idea. Ship capture/surrender opportunities should be rare. I don't even think the Drengin would shoot someone up who surrended- too valuable as POWs plus ship usage. I'd say only in cases where the last ship has 1hp should there be a chance of surrender, to keep it rare. That would also help to prevent big ships from being captured as much, just the corvette-class ships mostly.

This idea is not a new one for a space empire game.

The game, Masters of Orion II, had a ship boarding system that was not too complex, but fun. In that you could build your ships with components to increase the amount of troops onboard. When you boarded a ship, you could try to capture it or raid it. Raiding it meant destroying some of the systems on board. I beleive that Galactic Civ II could easily incorperate this into it, for a game like MOOII to do it (very old game) they should have no problem doing it for this game.

I find it easier to board one of those mini freighters and you take the BC the route was worth for that turn.
I can see a takeover that turns a damaged ship into a remote controlled bomb and have it ram an enemy ship.

I find it easier to board one of those mini freighters and you take the BC the route was worth for that turn. I can see a takeover that turns a damaged ship into a remote controlled bomb and have it ram an enemy ship.

Nah, if anyone should do that, it should be the pirates.........

This sounds like some lame micromanagement. I wouldnt want to deal with that garbage. Any ship you could potentially take over would probably be way behind you in technology or you wouldnt be able to take it. All it would be good for is salvage. Whooopeeee.