Was just potatoposting on trello for a moment there, when something dawned on me:
Having boarding party, docks, mass disintegrator and buzzsaw opens a whole new dimension of gameplay, one where alpha strike tries to take out the opponents weapons and tries its best to disable boarding vessels.
What I want to suggest to make this even more dynamic is:
- allowing dock-only minithrusters that can outpace kiters. Otherwise the best way to fight would still be to outmaneuver everything in sight, so countering that seems appropriate. To compensate, dock-only armor could be weaker as well so the carrier ship would need to consider protecting miniships as part of their strategy. Or maybe armor of different weights? Lighter and heavier armor would of course cost more than normal armor.
- large control room that allows moddable AI while we deselect our ship with the large control room (whereas in the past our ship would then only use simple targeting after its first intended target is destroyed). What I mean by this is, allowing a chain of targeting priorities, positioning relative to enemy, and other values usually coded into AI set as variables we can manipulate for our particular ships.
- a different kind of barracks that can either train soldiers with higher attributes (faster run, higher hit points, better damage, targets enemy crew first then reactors, controllable by players etc) for boarding parties / boarding party defense, or can pilot ships, or can do both. If both can be done, how much would these guys cost? Would they spawn from a commando factory, or would they have to be ordered and then trained? Not sure right now but separating them from the masses of crew seemed appropriate to me. Maybe it consumes both crew and credits, it could go so many ways.
- customizable ship builds for docks. Already suggested, just reiterating it to fit in with the theme. Just to get it out of my system, tractor beams would also definitely have an effect on these things.
- 1x2 machine gun, fixed position and shoots in a spraying cone much like PD. hopefully does no friendly damage, does little damage to armor, little damage to buildings, no damage to structure nor corridors, but kills enemy crew on impact. The "alpha strike" equivalent of boarding, where unsuspecting enemy crews are mowed down on sight. Enemy commandos might be able to deal bonus damage to machine guns, and machine guns might need manning.
- internal defensive structure, say a 1x1 Tesla coil that zaps enemies in the vicinity or a 1x1 pistol turret that repeatedly shoots at nearby boarders until they die or turret is destroyed. Upon destruction it leaves structure. Crew weapons were also suggested on trello, so that'd be fun too.
- "the beast" that might need to be fitted into the boarding ship alone with the pilot, doesn't have a weapon but tries to kill everything on sight with claws. Could impede their own commandos' progress but that'd add to the randomness factor of this thing.
- scaled grid sizes for docks. The dock build grid might be 8x8 but its outward appearance would only be 4x4. Maybe it went through some Ant Man-style transformation, idk
That's all I have for now, thanks in advance for feedback or add-ons to tack onto this list!
