Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ammo/launcher(s) suggestion: 'Boarding party' / 'launcher' / 'beamer'

'Boarding party' appears in space when launched and may be targeted like drones. Attaches to target ship. Percent chance of success per cycle of attachment. Ejects target pilot on success.

Defensive skill(s)/module(s)/attribute(s) reduce 'Boarding party' chance of success and/or may offensively target/attack attached boarding party.

Offensive skill(s)/modules(s)/attribute(s) increase 'Boarding party' chance of success, cycle duration, hp, and/or max velocity in space.

A successful boarding of a ship by a boarding party may automatically cancel any pending self-destruct sequence of the boarded ship.

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Optional additional feature(s):

Boarding party may not attach to target ship whenever target ship's shields are above a threshold (for example, 0 and/or a low threshold).

'Boarding party beamer':

Offensive skill(s)/module(s)/attribute(s) may allow 'Boarding party' to be beam transferred directly to target ship when target ship's shields are below a threshold (for example 0, and/or a low threshold).

Offensive skill(s)/module(s)/attribute(s) affect capacitor usage of 'Boarding party' beam transfer and beam transfer's chance of success.

'Boarded ship (pet)':

A boarded ship may fight as a friendly NPC.

A boarded ship may be added to fleet.

A boarded ship may receive instructions from the player who launched/beamed the boarding party. The instructions may comprise: dock ship (for example, at a station), eject boarding party from ship, engage target, strip fitting from ship, strip cargo, initiate self-destruct of ship, return boarding party (for example, to launcher, beamer, and/or cargo hold), and/or other instructions.

A returning boarding party may carry stripped fitting modules and/or cargo.

FYI - "pets" will never be included in any way. The subject has been discussed ad infinitum. Drones are bad enough on server load. Imagine what big fleet fights would be like if everyone had a pet.

Also, this could be abused really horribly. It's bad enough trying to be a carebear but people would complain bitterly if they could pretty much guarantee handing your ship over to anyone attacking them (it would be very easy to set up a small fleet of 4 or more people to guarantee taking someone's ship off them).

-1 from me

EDIT - also, armour tankers would be mightily pissed about this! They'd constantly be losing their ships to people they could probably kill in a straight fight.

As an accommodation to armor tankers:

Boarding party may not attach to target ship whenever target ship's shields are above a threshold (for example, 0 and/or a low shield threshold) NOR whenever a target ship's armor is above a threshold (for example, 0 and/or a low armor threshold).

Any structure tankers out there still unhappy with the revised rule? :^)

Yeah, this. Drones are a weapon system, not pets.

I have the strangest feeling of deja vu...

A great deal of machines out there today have the reasoning power of puppies, insects or chess grand masters depending upon their specialization. It doesn't make them pets though.