Suggestion To Make Boarding/Raiding More Fun

[Krinadon]

Hello. So I have been playing this game and nearing 100 hours played. I like to go slow and like to be a completionist, so I've spent a long time building up a massive ship with a big crew and a stockpile of resources. I finally decided to begin being aggro and pushing to take over enemy ships/bases.

On my first attempt, I realized I can't even attack the enemy because they were using a targeting jammer.

Okay. Maybe I'll send some starships? Nope, too many point defense turrets.

Okay, let's send a boarding party and sabotage from the inside. We make it, kill the first line of defenders. and start looking around. Okay, let's destroy their critical facilities. Er... you can't? Shooting it? No. Right-click to manually destroy or turn off or sabotage? Nope. Can't do anything at all to all of their critical facilities that I'm staring at.

Lots of fighting continues - one of my allies goes into surrender mode. We kill the nearby enemies. Okay, let's get our surrendered ally back and get him healed up. He has a sliver of health and is bleeding. Er... I can't do anything about it? Can't bring him back. Can't pick him up. Can't heal him. He just stands there bleeding to death for a couple hours and dies with his hands up in the air surrounded by his crewmates. Amazing.

I spent about 1-2 hours messing around with the above and it basically instantly killed any motivation I had to keep playing the game. What exactly are we supposed to do in end-game combat? Seems like the only viable strategy is to send a massive boarding party and YOLO it to kill every enemy on board and that's it? That isn't very fun. I want to be strategic and tactical.

Suggestions:

1. Save surrendered crew members. If immediate fighting has ceased, right-click to have an option to bring them back with a fellow crew member. Have it have a cast time so it's not abuse-able. Give the crew member a severe morale penalty for having entered the surrender state.

2. Be able to turn off enemy facilities. It should just act as a simple "Break" option that that puts it into a broken state. Give it a cast time based on construction skill to work.

3. Be able to physically destroy enemy facilities. Whether by just shooting it with guns or building special explosives or something.

These three changes would significantly improve the experience for boarding/raiding an enemy ship/base where you aren't just forced to literally kill every enemy before you can do anything else.

I have loved the game and was really looking forward to finally getting my hands dirty. But it seems like all of the time I spent building a big powerful ship was pointless. Everything is 100% just disabled by a target jammer that I can't even destroy or disable with a special op boarding party.

[aksel_bugbyte]

Hi there!

The targeting jammer can only be found on some stations, they are not on NPC spaceships. However, if you have a targeting jammer yourself you will also prevent yourself from firing if it is on.

The jammer is on some special stations because they are meant to be crew combat oriented experiences, as we also wanted some special crew combat scenarios in the game like the pirate hideout station.

The surrender mechanism has many reasons, one of them being that fights would not lead to a crew member getting killed but still have the crew member be out of the fight so to say. It works both ways, NPC's will also surrender and stay that way until either side wins the fight. It allows taking for prisoners and not having as many of the persons die. Although sometimes it happens of course, and perhaps a timer based action could be beneficial there also in midst of the fight.

Taking out the facilities with some type of explosive could be a good idea!

[Krinadon]

I was indeed attacking a base, so thank you for the info that NPC spaceships do not have them.

I definitely don't have any inherent issues with the surrender mechanism, but I do think there should be an option to "rescue" a surrendered crew mate. It should require you to be 'out of combat' (as in, not actively in a fire fight) and probably have a cast time so it's not some instant action. Maybe take like 10-20 real life seconds where you're vulnerable to dying yourself if still under fire. But yea, it was really frustrating just watching my crew mate literally bleed to death with his hands in the air and I couldn't do anything to stop it lol.

And yea, maybe we can manufacture C4 (or some equivalent) at the chemical station that can be used to destroy enemy facilities from within. I think it would really add a ton of depth to combat by boarding enemy bases/ships with a small sabotage crew.

Either way, I appreciate the quick feedback and wish you guys the best in future development.

[Corporal Tunnel]

Hello, I have yet to send a boarding party for a capture mission, will try in my current game. I wonder - regarding the problem with wounded ally member unable to re-join crew- once all enemies are killed, and crew members still have their hands up in surrender mode; you should be able to scroll out and "Claim" ship. My thought here is that once the ship is yours, (all opponents dead) I would think crew member in question would re-join automatically.

I get it, frustrating. Especially when you need all all the hands you can get when trying to take a ship. I love the sabotage idea- Board enemy vessel, sabotage their critical systems- sneak out under fire, hit 'em hard with your own ship's hardware to finish them off. But also agree game needs some work to accomplish these actions.

Q: I captured a pirate crew member and held him in prisoner mode for a bit- built him a nice area, in hopes that he would join us after warming up. But no matter how I spoiled this guy he always hovered around 0.9% likely to join. With a 17% chance to rebel. To test I removed cuffs and he immediately attacked us. Had to confine him again. So is it just some characters won't ever warm up and join? Or am I missing something? Is it a faction based mechanic? Recruit option is interesting, but I'm not sure how it works either...
Thanks