Because armies matter... using armies for boarding as a way to make them relevant and useful

[Me_]

I was musing about the possible removal of armies as it hit me - if armies were to be made an important part of the game, they must be useful where it matters.

Up there in the sky.

If transports were not separate units, but ordinary ships would transport armies, that would reduce a lot of micro, but why stop there? Once they are on the ship, why not use them there?

Why not let space marines board space ships?

Think about it:
1) it would make armies more relevant;
2) it could make wars a bit less predictable (a powerful ship may end up being captured, turning the tide of battle);
3) it would make positioning in battle more important, which would give player more agency in battles in general (e.g. this time you may emergency FTL-out to save you from boarding, even if you are winning);
4)it would make some useless mechanics (generals, unit XP, attachments) relevant.

Thoughts?

 

[Darth Vaper]

Sounds good to me. Then again i'm for everything that adds to the armies.

 

[BrokenSky]

If they were going to do something like that it might be cool if they had "transport" slots as an auxiliary slot item, maybe with boarding tubes as a type of torpedo slot weapon?

 

[Meathim]

If they were going to do something like that it might be cool if they had "transport" slots as an auxiliary slot item, maybe with boarding tubes as a type of torpedo slot weapon?

If this means you're firing your soldiers like torpedoes I am absolutely for it. Like combat drops, but vs ships.

 

[Inquizitor]

The armies in game are on a scaled to take planets. It wouldn't make sense for them to be used as a much smaller boarding party on anything less than a death star.

 

[deezee]

While boarding parties in space might stretch the suspension of disbelief, it could be justifiable if there was a Star Trek-esque beaming system that could transport small boarding parties over short distances. It would be cool if it was researchable, helped with land invasions as well, and differed a bit based on the FTL type being used.

 

[Me_]

The armies in game are on a scaled to take planets. It wouldn't make sense for them to be used as a much smaller boarding party on anything less than a death star.

The is scale arbitrarily an argument for armies when it is not for anything else in the game, particularly with regards to fleets? How many men or Blorg crew one ship? How many are in a single transport? If a lot, why are transports not the biggest ships?

 

[Riftwalker]

I just think the idea of normal ships carrying armies to be a cool idea. I'm not sure on the boarding mechanics, as the AI might be bad at countering it effectively, or they'll get eaten by PD.

Would be cool if this did become a feature that you could select armies to be built into the ship to lessen micro and it would simply increase the build time like normal.

 

[Fourthspartan56]

The armies in game are on a scaled to take planets. It wouldn't make sense for them to be used as a much smaller boarding party on anything less than a death star.

This is false, army sizes like pop sizes are sufficiently abstracted that they can be imagined as any size to fit any situation.

 

[Sibericus]

While boarding parties in space might stretch the suspension of disbelief, it could be justifiable if there was a Star Trek-esque beaming system that could transport small boarding parties over short distances. It would be cool if it was researchable, helped with land invasions as well, and differed a bit based on the FTL type being used.

Does it really stretch disbelief anymore than some of the other aspects of the game? Boarding pods, shuttles, or torpedoes make nearly as much sense as space fighters/bombers, the rock-paper-scissors nature of ship types, limiting maneuvers to a 2-dimensional plane, etc.

And if you have transporter technology, there are so many more powerful things that could be done with it than just beaming armies aboard. Beam a fully armed bomb into some critical superstructure, beam out vital components and personel, the options are practically limitless.

 

[Diezy]

One way I suspect things could be done is baking the army units into Ship Design, in some slot similar to Hangar Bay. And when that ship of that type is in orbit, it'll be capable to invade (or board?) using the loaded armies combined! Attachments and army customization would still be there, too, in a more simple way. ^_^

So the Transport Ship from now would be replaced with a Corvette with full Army slots, and you could have BB's and Cruisers dedicated to invading and even supporting ground troops.

You could even put ships on the planet, for planetary defense, with their respective armies. The enemy fleet would have to get down on the planet and invade to engage that garrisoned fleet.

 

[Archdott]

I like this idea! Maybe we could assign hangar-slots to carry transports and later on more advanced boarding pods.
I would love to stage a planetary invasion from a dedicated mothership

 

[krios41]

Depending on how the boarders are boarding you this could be either OP, or so terrible even missiels are better...
If being shot in pods then i'd see them getting shot to shreds by PD, fighters, bombers (and if one wnats to trow the realism argument then every weapon counts)
If teleported to bybpass that then there may be no defence against it? and then it would just turn into a boarding fest and see who boards the enemy quicker...

I can't realy think of anything else

 

[Sheriff Godwin Law]

You know what, I'm on board with it.

As Krios points out, this needs to wait until after the idea of point defense is revisited but letting ships get disabled and then captured by marines might be interesting. And giving them a ship to ship combat component means you can dedicate a ship segment to it, like a hangar, which would be more believable than cramming an entire military detachment in the room you'd otherwise have spent on an afterburner for your engine.

 

[Dalinski]

Would be so awesome, along with a set of techs that change the way they do this.

 

[Teodosio7]

Boarding a ship wouldn't require a fairly different set of equipment, weaponry and training from what is required to invade a planet...?

 

[Dalinski]

You know what, I'm on board with it.

Nice Pun

 

[Archdott]

Boarding a ship wouldn't require a fairly different set of equipment, weaponry and training from what is required to invade a planet...?

Indeed. This is could be something you choose when you design your ships. It would be cool to have specialists either for boarding or invading. A third option could be a hybrid that could do both, but not very well.

 

[Kat Tsun]

Sounds good to me. Then again i'm for everything that adds to the armies.

"Assault ships" in hangar slots would be better.

 

[Admiral]

Very excellent idea. Land combat in and of itself will always be secondary to navies in a space game, given that a space game is essentially the equivalent of playing a terrestrial game on a planet entirely covered by oceans and hundreds of tiny islands. In other words, "navy" is no the most important branch but THE military as a whole.

So it's essentially futile to make land combat worthwhile, but you prove that this doesn't have to make the armies themselves useless.

i totally love this idea, the only issue is how we should execute it? Have all military ships essentially serve as transports (you could easily work the fleet capacity of a fleet into its transport capability I.e. 4 fleet capacity for each army or something)? Boarding torpedoes for torpedo slots or boarding shuttles for hangar slots? Have ships attempt to close and board age-of-sail style? The possibilities are all endless. In fact, who says we can't have all sorts of boarding styles with their own advantages and disadvantages?

Perhaps age of sail boarding gives a combat bonus (boarding crews are entering at many points versus a single point from a torpedo or shuttle) but requires ships to get close, whereas shuttles and torpedoes are faster but could be shot down by PD.