Disabling and capturing enemy ships in battle

In a real battle, one could not, due to the irritating lack of oxygen and the fact that people would KILL YOU first, with or without a virus, they'd just aim the ship at you. This is real life, of course. This isn't c&c. It's in space, and that sort of thing wouldn't work when you think about it.

No thanks.

Men! If our ship won't hold our feet from the darkness, then theirs will! Aim all landing pods at the enemy! Tell the fighters to give us cover! (Goes right in with the battle choices thingy)

and GC2 is not a RTS

While it would be cool, it would be truly annoying and almost impossible to do - remember that you have no control of your ships in battle...

While you're at it, add an assimilation beam. You fire it at the enemy ship, and soak up (part of) their weapons, defenses, hit points, engines, and other systems, so they are now on your ship not theirs. After a while, there won't be a thing that could stop this ship.

Back to the point, yes, RTS tends to have the possibility to take over enemy units. Space RTS have it too. Star Trek Armada II has it, but of course, in star trek you have transporters. So if you manage to knock out the shields on enemy ships or installations, you can start transporting your crew to the enemy ship/installation. They even had special ships which were meant for this purpose, with lots of crew on board, and a special attack button (fire till shields down, then transport troops), and a special roam-and-board-whoever-you-come-across button.

Homeworld II also had special ships for this purpose. One side had marine frigates, which would fly up to the enemy, attach to the hull, cut a hole in the hull, and board the vessel. If not removed/destroyed on time, the enemy ship would be yours. I think the other side had ships which would launch small pods with troops, or something like that.

If you say 'yes but GC2 is not an RTS' then of course, you are right. But turn-based strategy games have the possibility of taking over enemy units as well. The diplomat or spy unit (which was it?) can bribe other units to fight on your side in the Civilization games.

Why not create a transfer module, which would work in conjunction with troop modules? Then you could use troop transports to seize enemy ships. In fact, what could be possible is that you seize freighters on trade routes, and for example get the revenue for that route for X turns.

Taking over enemy ships could either be part of the fleet battle, or be a separate type of battle you can fight out in some way or other; in the latter case, there can either be a system where you only need a transport ship to take over enemy ships, or a system where you need a powerful fleet with a transport as one of the ships.

Actually, since there is a 'number of troops' or 'number of colonists' stat, you could add crew to every ship, in addition to hitpoints. During battle, some crew would get killed. If a ship's crew is then dead before it runs out of hitpoints, anyone could take it over. If noone does, it's just stranded in space until someone re-crews it. If a ship lost it's crew, but the fleet it's in wins the battle, it shouldn't be able to continue with the fleet, unless one of the other ships re-crews it. There should probably be a special module to do this (also to be used as a weapon, by sending troops to enemy ships to kill their crew quickly). Also, the number of crew on board should not restore by itself, like the hitpoints do, but a visit to a planet would be needed to restore them. That way, in a war, ships would either need to return once in a while to get fresh crew, or get a visit from a troop carrier with a transfer module. Or visit a starbase, which would hold lots of crew of course. The transfer module would be standard on each starbase, and they could accumulate crew over time, like planet growth (but probably faster). The rationale is that they probably receive regular supplies from home, might as well send new crew too then.

ships would either need to return once in a while to get fresh crew

sounds like you're stocking up on vegetables, fish, meat and men....
otherwise it's not a bad idea, but it needs to be done properly so that most of the time the ship is destroyed before the crew. It's unrealistic to have an entire crew killed in battle and still have half the hitpoints on a ship.
On that note it would be interesting to make an option in the shipyard to be able to specify minimum, maximum, and optimum crew amounts, with some benefits to it.. maybe make it part of the lifesupport modules.

Good post

we dont need more micromanagement with having to restock the ships. if it did it automatically, depending on fleet composition and supply lines, it would be interesting. but that would change the game alot.

if you wanted to have a missle that would pierce the armor of the enemy and release deadly chemicals or nanobots, or something of that nature, makes a bit more sense.

it would make having defensive techs a little more important

Sorry, the OP is wrong.

In a battle WHERE SPEED CAN DEFEAT RANGE you can board ships. For instance, a modern naval battle does NOT have boarding actions, because you can't board at 220km and you'll be dead long, long before you close to grapple-and-cutlass range. Further, to board you'd need to basically immobilise the enemy ship, at which point it's worthless anyway. It's more suited to specific situations than some general tactic you'd design entire ships around.

Thing like viruses... on a spaceship? Where everyone is probably wearing vacuum suits? Yeah, that'll work. If you can penetrate the targets' defences and hull... why not just explode it? The ship would doubtless need a tow, repair, and probably a complete refit to be usable after having it's engines blown away and hull sections cut open.

Well in theory, the inside of the spaceship should be pressurized- I mean, whats the point of forcing people to wear space suits 24/7 while inside the ship for months on end (it takes some time to travel from place to place, even with hyperwarp 3)?

How would they eat? Miniature airlocks?

How would they sleep?

I mean, they could have some sort of emergency system (like in team fortress classic.... blue team scores... nerve gas released... secure protective suits immediately... ahhhhh the memories ). But a virus like that might at least take out a few people (though not nearly enough to justify the cost of the attack, if the victims' ship had any countermeasures at all... and thats not even taking into account depressurization...


Annyways, hasn't ANYONE here played starcon2? Shame on you all. SHAME!

A turn is a week long, so crew have plenty of time to don their spacesuits for battle. It's "documented" in endless science fiction (remember, a game is also fiction) novels, where the first reaction to attack is to get into a vacuum suit. A lot of novels also depict ship crews as wearing pressure suits continually, but with the helmet off (like the space shuttle crews generally do, at least during takeoff and landing). A ship could also have crew cabins each with extra armour and a single door that seals (unlike an airlock which has two), so they don't have to sleep in their suits. Colony and transport ships probably have deepsleep systems so they don't have to carry food and process air for millions/billions of people for weeks or months.

As for RTS vs TBS having ship capture, remember, MoO2 had ship capture - in fact, some technologies were only available if you captured Antaran ships. To fit with GC2 style, a ship that could capture other ships would have to be like a troop transport or colony ship, and be one-use. Where a colony ship or troop transport becomes the new colony population, the capturing ship's complement would become the captured ship's crew.

All these ideas are great! I realise how much it may change the gameplay but why not expand on what chriskrusz was saying and have invading ships similar to invading planets? Twards the end the game when ships are enormas and take long to build this could be maybe a more costly but time saving option.