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If Cryptic added Boarding Ships, would you be interested?

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  • paradox#7391 paradox Member Posts: 1,774 Arc User
    Aren't boarding ships just shuttles, I know you use one to board a fed ship in one of the early Klingon missions, I wish Cryptic could make more missions where you use your shuttles to board enemy ships, usually we just transport into enemy ships.
  • angrytargangrytarg Member Posts: 11,001 Arc User
    Gameplay wise, a ship specialized in boarding would ideally have different skills/pets for different purposes. A boarding party with the aim to capture the enemy ship could work based on chance (% to succesfully complete the operation, like a crit chance).

    Boarding party hits the ship, debuffs it with disables and makes it untargetable for allies. Then a number of things can happen:

    a) The ship is (temporarily) captured. It fights as a pet for a set period of time and either aa) gets destroyed or ab)repels the boarders and becomes hostile again. Possible option for ac) It surrenders, getting defeated without a explosion and nets the captain diplomatic or marauder XP (that's something I have suggested myself years ago, helping to level the DOFF accolades).

    b) The ship isn't captured, but the boarders manage to plant explosives and beam out, causing heavy kinetic damage to the target.

    c) The ship starts a kamikaze run to avoid a capture, charging with ramming speed at the nearest player ally, causing heavy damage if not stopped.

    d) The ship repels the boarders and continues the fight.

    This is just an example how I see this could work. It would very much be a single target specialist, unless you use some kind of boarding party pets that engage multiple targets at the same time. But it wouldn't be something that pushes a team's DPS, and STO is designed to quickly dispose of trash mobs, so it'd be a huge gimmick.​​
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  • cbrjwrrcbrjwrr Member Posts: 2,782 Arc User
    angrytarg wrote: »
    Gameplay wise, a ship specialized in boarding would ideally have different skills/pets for different purposes. A boarding party with the aim to capture the enemy ship could work based on chance (% to succesfully complete the operation, like a crit chance).

    Boarding party hits the ship, debuffs it with disables and makes it untargetable for allies. Then a number of things can happen:

    a) The ship is (temporarily) captured. It fights as a pet for a set period of time and either aa) gets destroyed or ab)repels the boarders and becomes hostile again. Possible option for ac) It surrenders, getting defeated without a explosion and nets the captain diplomatic or marauder XP (that's something I have suggested myself years ago, helping to level the DOFF accolades).

    b) The ship isn't captured, but the boarders manage to plant explosives and beam out, causing heavy kinetic damage to the target.

    c) The ship starts a kamikaze run to avoid a capture, charging with ramming speed at the nearest player ally, causing heavy damage if not stopped.

    d) The ship repels the boarders and continues the fight.

    This is just an example how I see this could work. It would very much be a single target specialist, unless you use some kind of boarding party pets that engage multiple targets at the same time. But it wouldn't be something that pushes a team's DPS, and STO is designed to quickly dispose of trash mobs, so it'd be a huge gimmick.​​

    Most of this comes under the ideas for "Strike Teams" I outlined in the Boff abilities section of a previous post.


    given this follow up then, i dont see it being viable. lets face it, during the assault, the ship is still in combat, taking dmg as you make best efforts to get as many marines on board the enemy ship. you will have decks that need life support activated or restored, possibly even decks to be closed off and thus losing anyone who was on it, marines included.

    even if you got 3k marines on board, then for giggles, whats the time frame and percentage they actually take over the ship? i think it was discussed 1 min, then down to 30 secs. lets go back to the one minute mark. (which after thinking more about it, is the better time frame). within that minute, or say within the first 15 secs of boarding, the "team" would need to be notified that the target should be off limits. (thus not killing alliance members on board), however, if the ship is targeted within that time frame it could go poof and thus losing everyone anyway.

    i like the idea, but the benefit is not showing any promise in my view. (based on this reply from you)

    Um, any ship on an active battlefield has issues related to the first paragraph. And the marines (certainly Starfleet ones, maybe Klingons or Jem'Hadar might not be so careful) will have environmental suits on anyway before getting into the battle. (definitely before any kind of planned engagement; perhaps not when being ambushed, but then that is the same for any vessel being ambushed)

    The timeframe heavily depends on the method. Now, the good old fashioned "ram them, lash them and board them" approach as deployed in naval warfare literally since it first started depends on how quickly you can get a collision going, which is tricky with a big cruiser. But, tractor beams make it easier. In STO, probably 30 seconds of movement followed by another ten to force the connections to the enemy hull, then probably another 20 to detonate as usable entrance through the hull before you are into heavy infantry combat trying to seize an enemy warship that has had a good half a minute to get everyone on board prepared for hand to hand combat. In other words, it can be done, but not quickly, certainly not TFOable.

    So, in order to get any use from this, we need a much quicker way of boarding, otherwise only roleplayers are going to use this and therefore there was no point doing the whole revamp. Which is why I have so heavily focused on transporters.

    Once the enemy has lost their shields, you can beam aboard. The number one advantage of transporters is that the enemy ship doesn't have anywhere near as much warning that the attack is coming - the first warning is the sound of the boarders materialising from transport. Now, when we see this tried in the shows and in STO, what goes wrong is not enough marines are beamed in; they get overwhelmed by the numbers of opponents. They often get to conduct a critical objective - kidnapping Picard off the bridge by the Borg for example - but eventually, they are fought off.

    BUT, this is where the MASSIVE difference is between a Commando vessel and a normal cruiser comes in. A normal Starfleet ship has enough transporters to evacuate the ship in an emergency situation; while it is a standard procedure, this is exampled in the TNG episode 11001001, where a fake warp core breach means the entire Enterprise-D is evacuated in an impressively short time (although the mitigating circumstances are the ship was already in spacedock for maintenance and upgrades and as such a lot of people were already off the ship) For me, this further justifies the Galaxy class as my choice for the first Starfleet Commando specialisation cruiser, because it is canon evidence that even a standard Galaxy class - which was designed to have families aboard full time don't forget - could be converted and used for what I have in mind.

    What I propose, is going from the twenty transporter rooms mentioned in that episode, to perhaps as many as a thousand transporter rooms. (that gives the ability to beam out a thousand teams of 5 should that many people be available)

    At this point, we can apply 5000 marines onto an enemy vessel in maybe ten seconds from transport initialising to being on the enemy ship with almost a 2:1 advantage or better against almost any other warship fielded by the Alliance (Bortasqu/Odyssey for example are about 2000 crew) and for the overwhelming majority of them, more like 5:1 (cruisers like the Guardian, or the Sovereign) down to possibly 10:1 for ships like escorts and sci ships. And remember, they are deployed in less than ten seconds from when they are in position on the transporter pad, and their targeted beam in points are positioned to give them the tactical advantage over hostile crew in the vicinity.

    I.e. the victim ship does not stand a chance; a hostile crew member has barely seconds to stop what they were doing and try to defend themselves. Some of them will of course, but essentially, resistance on the ship is defeated less than thirty seconds. Definitely well under a minute. Getting control over the ship by bypassing emergency lockouts and stopping self-destructs etc. could take longer, but the critical work could be done in a quick enough time that the ability is TFO usable.

    And operating on this scale means it is no harder to beam 1000 marines each to five different ships at once if you manage to mass disable multiple enemy vessel shields.

    The rest of your objection wouldn't be a problem in a real scenario as the Commando ship saying "Hey, I'm going to send marines to X ship" wouldn't get ignored like putting that into chat would be in game, and Klingons/Jem'Hadar have standards of acceptable losses from allied overkill. (further, they'd be expecting high casualties from boarding actions anyway)

    Total allied casualties would likely be less than a carrier losing a frigate pet.

    Heck, you could opt to just beam out the enemy crew into open space and then take the ship at your leisure, although A. it's cheating, and B. that probably constitutes a war crime in universe. I mean, someone must have thought about how to weaponise transporters for more than just the TR-116...
  • lasershadow#9220 lasershadow Member Posts: 17 Arc User
    I'm down for boarding parties. It was a feature in the Star Trek Armada trilogy and I don't see why it shouldn't be in the game.

    I think you mean Armada duology, as there were only ever two games in the series.​​
    Oh yeah the 3rd one was a Sins of a Solar Empire mod. Fixed.

  • cbrjwrrcbrjwrr Member Posts: 2,782 Arc User

    well put and addressed concerns. although id say no to converting a ship, but build one for the purpose proposed. given the nature of your statement, id say something similar to the juggernaut, vaadwaur version. simply for a few reasons. most people say its one of the top tough ships in the game. also, it has the mass to protect the brigade of marines as well as offer more physical protection for the transport platforms you mention. (no it does not need to be this design, but i think more mass as a general rule is needed compared to what you express for use)

    i think said ship should have 2 bays. not for fighters, but support. shield hardening, or something else that would aid in keeping the ship in the fight while operations take place to and from the ship and the target.

    id have to re-read boff skills.

    The boff skills are just concepts for now, and inevitably there will be new designs for ships. (Cryptic's revenue comes from ships after all, so straight away we're looking at one ship for each faction in a four pack, like the Recon Destroyers or the T6 Carriers)

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