previous coments regarding this idea can be found here http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/12419?page=2

the prevailing opinion in that thread is that capturable cap ships would be too stressfull, as the investment and attachment factor is too high for the larger vessels.

i'm starting this thread to be a discussion about ways that cap ships could be made capturable, without it being an anoyance.

my personal opinion is that like everything else the tactic of capturing a capitle ship will just have to be balanced. so first off let's concider some real world difficulties in capturing enemy ships to finde posable balancing elements.
1. you have to get enough troops on the enemy ship to capture it. (10 fighter pilots can't kill the 500-2,000 crew members that we can assume would be operating a capitle ship.)
2. the enemy is not going to provide you with easy acess to their docking/landing bays (docking bay mounted beam cannon?)
3. the curent owners of any ship have the advantage during boarding action as they can utelise the ship's dmage controle systems to seal in/otherwise trapp the boarding parties (it needs to be harder for the attacker to suceed at capturing the ship than for the defender to defende it)
4. if the crew is convinced they are going to loose their ship they may choose to scuttle it instead. (/explode)

so my recomendation would be that a special class of Moth-like ship be added that is a troop transport. This ship would have no weapons and be largely like the Moth in armor and speed capabilities.

then if a criticle number of these troop transports manages to dock it begins a timer, and if nothing is done by the end of the timer the attackers gain controle of the docking bay (prevents all fighters from alunching but ships can still land). then the timer begins again this time upon depletion of the timer the boarders get controle of a turret, and the process repeats untl all the non-destroied turrets are captured. After all the turrets are captured the next cycle of the timer grants the attackers controle of engineering (this disables grants the leader of the attackers /explode controle over the cap ship and removes that ability from the captain of the ship). the timer then begins again this time for absolute controle of the ship. when it runs out, the leader of the attackers, (ie the pilot of the first troop transport to dock) becomes the new captain.

now, what can you do about the attackers?
remember that criticle number that the attackers had to have before the timer triggered? well for every friendly troop transport that docks (docking transports should be prompted when they dock to declair whether they are friendly or not) the that criticle number increases by one, and if it increases past the number of attcakers, the timers begin again, but this time the ship's controlers regain systems one by one, and once they are all retaken the enemy troop transports are destroied.


is this perposal worth putting in game?
i think it would be cool if it were, but it's probably more trouble to implement than it's worth as actualy capturing a cap ship would be fairly difficult (perhaps even to the point of not being worth it).

so does anyone else have a better sugestion?

As previously stated, NO. For the love of god NO. Balanced or not, I'd probably be even more stressed out if my ship was being taken from me one piece at a time. And in any case, once someone took over all my turrets, I'd /explode just to spite them.

While it sounds cool, the amount of work to go into when the devs are already swamped with the NEW UI and AI and NEW SHIPS, and a MISSION SYSTEM, as well as pre-corrdinating a marketing push and making sure the damn servers can hold up to 1000 to even 4000 people online if need be. Right now I dont doubt that Incarnate and the boys have there hands full and are working at least 10-12 hour days to get all of this done and completed, as well as adding the NEW CAPITAL SHIPS and the NEW RAPTOR. and let us not forget that Incarnate is personally working on rebuilding and redoing the UV/reflection ampping for all the current ships. One note of this is the Warthog which looks substanitally better than the previous one.


In game screenshot *no post production what so ever*

Close-up

It would be a nice addition and prehaps it cpould be part of an expansion and or later upgrade, but right now they need to focus on all the stuff they currently have going on, once thats completed you might want to attempt re-submitting the Idea, and until then perhaps you could work on balancing the Idea in terms of the exsact stats of the moth transport, how you would graphically present the actual battle, and whether or not it would actually work with the current Vendetta game engine.

It seems much more difficult than simply blowing it up (as it should be).

I'd rather take within an inch of death and then ransom the capship.

/explode should just not be allowed for cap ships, regardless of capturability.

I posted in the original thread... but I think it's only logical that you would be able to capture one... it is called VENDETTA, right? everyone wants it to be so nice. it's a war.

i can't see /explode becomming a problem for cap ships, i mean other than spiting capturing a ship (and scuttling a cap ship rather than let it be captured has to be posable if capturing them is allowed)

I think that capturing capships is a cool idea that will never see the light of day. Just too complicated.

But there should be a way to give/loan capships.

The idea I posted over in capship turrets thread:

"Ships at a certain hull % become crippled: won't move, won't fire any remaining turrets, ALL THOSE INSIDE ARE SPEWED OUT! if for some reason someone was inside without a ship (as in, he docked from a station) he gets a bus or a centurion, or maybe he gets sent back to his home station.

Anyway, the capship remains closed to all docking attempts for say, one to five minutes, and during this time the attackers and defenders fight it out; the capship itself can be still be damaged and destroyed all this time. After the capship "undockable" time is up (and supposing it hasn't been destroyed), THE FIRST PERSON TO DOCK WITH IT TAKES OVER IT, REGARDLESS OF GUILD OR ANYTHING. The capship now also becomes responsive, though it is still quite damaged, and it's in the new owner's best interest to move it off to safe haven. Further shooting up of an overtaken capship will just deal damage to it, not start the whole "overtaking" process again, so the best the losing guild/person can hope for now is to destroy it to deny the enemy their prize.

This way, a badly defended capship can fall to the enemy, while a properly defended one won't. In fact, the capships could be indestructible, not being destroyed but just crippled. This way, there would be no need to destroy a cappy; just cripple it, and then either take it over or deny your enemy its reactivation; in an engagement where both sides haver their own cappy, the first one to have theirs crippled would suddenly be in a very BAD position.

This way the capships could also be like fortresses in other PvP MMORPGs, where they can be taken from you but never really destroyed, and could serve as good testing grounds for the eventual ownership and capture of stations."

Unless capships were made indestructible like I suggested above, I find it perfectly acceptable that one could /explode his own ship, to deny to the enemy.

People would become overly paranoid and never log off!

personally I dont even want to have to be bothered with piloting my capital ship let alone sitting inside it constantly to ward of people trying to steal it! I hope the reason the new UI is needed is so you can give it orders from afar and follow along or go do your own thing. driving a capital ship would be an incredible nuisance imagine how long it'd take to recover your heading from a collision or somthing! it already takes the moth 10seconds or more a capital ship would drift from its own intertia for ages before recovery!

Maybe it's just me, but I've always assumed that when you are done playing, if it's your frigate/destroyer/etc. that it would disappear like all your other ships. I always log off in B-8 and it's not like my cent is just sitting there in space. Also, IIRC there was talk of giving cap ships (player owned) defensive bots, be it much less effective then real players, but you would have some defenses.

Yeah, it's obvious the ship vanishes if the owner logs off. And according to the Devs your ship will be maneuvered from a third person perspective, a la Homeworld, so it will be quite different than flying a moth, but the Pilot WILL be inside it.

Plus, you'll soon(tm) be able to hire escorts, be it for yer capship or yer regular ship.

And finally, having the capships be vulnerable if they are flying on their lonesome will help insure they can't be abused. Imagine if BG could buy one on his own and decided to go grief people? if the ship can hold its own with just one person flying, we're going to have a lot of powered-up griefers flying around...

jexkerome,
yes, but then the military and anti-pirat guilds would have a perpus; bringing their capitle ship(s) against the big well equipped pirats. And i'd expct that cap ships aren't going to be esy to replace after repeated deaths.

anyway, the trouble with a ship capturing system in my opinion is it's can't be just "Ha, i landed my cent on your cap ship while you were picking up supplies at the station. Now, it's MINE!"
after all one pilot is not a signifigant part of any sort of boarding action against a ship with 500-2,000 crew. i will sight precedent:

"There's over 400 guys up there"
-Cpt, Kirk in the gangster planet episode

"there's over a thousand people on that ship, you think you can kill them all the fine, otherwise get the hell out of our way"
-Chief Tyero (BSG mini-series)

"what about all the Jafa, what do we do about them?"
(paraphraised) -Mjr. Carter, after SG-1 had taken the bridge of a goa'uld mothership

anyway, the point is capturing a cap ship would take a signifigant number of troops, and that formed the basis for my original sugestion, and is the primary issue i have with most of the other sugestions i've seen. while interesting from a gameplay persoective they just don't seem to make sence.

However a new posability just hit me:

if Cap ships use a docking arm to dock with stations, than perhaps capturing a ship should work like this:

shp A and B are fighting,
ship A takes sevear damage and loses most of it's turrets while ship B is still reasonably undamaged.
Ship B's captain decides it is worth the risk to capture ship A.
Ship B closes in wioth ship A and extends it's docking arm
once ship B has docked with ship A a mini game is played. the game should be designed so that the more players on a ship the better it will do, but that it can be played by a lone player. ship B can stop the minigame at any time.
if ship B wins than ship B has captured ship A
if ship A wins the mini game, another begins but this time ship B can't stop the game and ship A can stop the game at any time.
if ship A wins this game the crew captures ship B
if the minigame is stopped than the ships un dock from one another and resume normal operations.

this way it takes a cap ship to capture anotehr cap ship, and the process of actualy boarding another cap ship reqires that the attacker put their ship at risk both from the defender's weapons while docking and from the posability of being captured yourself.

I like the sound of your minigame suggestion a lot. Would need to be a fairly interesting minigame though, and hopefully not some first person shootout.

A first person shooter with objectives would actually be agreeable to me. You run through the hack, you know, securing objective points. First the docking bay, then the engine room, then the bridge or whatever. But I'd still be happier if capturable cappies were left out entirely. I'd have a frakking heart attack if someone took my cappy from me. And on the note of player owned cappies, question to the devs. Will the capital ships be PLAYER owned, or GUILD owned? Cuz seriously, I like, want my OWN cappy, not to be privilaged enough to fly my guilds cappie...

Strange. When did I suggest you could waltz up to an "empty", healthy, docked capship and just take it? Please read my suggestion again.

jexkerome,
my coment about stealing a ship while it's capatain isn't looking was not specificly directed at you. it was a comentary on the series of sugestions ranging from "once boarding begins everyone gets booted out and the first to land become the new owner", to the "once x players land on an enemy ship they can capture it" ideas. basicly i was trying to illistrate the point that 100 pilots landing their fighters on a cap ship isn't sufficent force to capture a carier with 1,000 crew some of whome are a dedicated security force. and therefore anything based on any random fighter or group of fighters being able to capture a cap ship was objectionale to me from a realisam point of view.

that was why my original post involved a dedicated troop ship doing the boarding, but the anfer some thought the cap ship's docking with one another and then playing a mini game wouls be easier to implement and seemed more elagent all around.

johnhawl218 / LordofBlades,
while a FPS would make sence, it would require a LOT of additional game engin and art development, comprable to that of walking around in stations. so while i wouldn't object to that in the long term, my original idea, was something of a small strategy game. perhaps a varient of checkers, where each side gets to start out with 1 king for every player character they ahve onboard the ship at the start of the game.

regardless the mini game should take 1-10 minuts to play, require some level of strategy, and give a noticable but not overpowered advantage to whoever has more player characters onboard ther ship at the start of the game.

how about for the mini-game, a map of the inner main areas, and as your forces are advancing or retreating you have to constantly click your mouse on that area for them to advance. But, the trick would be that there are multipule areas that are being taken over at once so it would be a constant back and forth between areas. Basically a button mashing game. Wouldn't take too much work to make something that simple yet there would definitely be some strategy. Do you secure the bridge or the engine room, crew courters or defense installations (turrets), docking bay, etc.

Being able to capture capital ships could open up the need for the trident and similar sized ships. They could be marine frigates, each capable of taking over a single capital ship at a time.

Dear lord, think of the RSI.

(*Click click click click click click click click...*)