What about a ship capture\pirate mode? Instead of just destroying the ship with a boarding party, how about the flight controls for the ship being captured get transferred to the pilot of the merc ship

If I can only be boarded when I'm in low structure, I'll just get friendlies to kill me if I can't self destruct in time.

Also, why do you want to nerf hull tanking?

there is no nerf in this feature request

Hull Tanking.

Doing so would now result in you being boarded instead of just killed.

Also, death 2 all supercaps. With this in, no supercaps would ever die, therefore it is bad.

All those 'oh god I warped out at 5% structure, **** was awesome' stories would be replaced with 'yeah, then I got boarded. **** sucks.'

Could i carry militants that would fight for me? That would give them use.

on the defender side its a bit hard because the standard ship dont have a clone bay to summon mercs for defence so or they carry them all the time (not gonna happen) or the ship is defended by the crew (NPC) and where is the fun there?

boarding ships is unlikely to be practical under the circumstances that it either provides an 'i lose' situation to anyone who doesnt carry around marines, or it isn't realistic in the way that a dust team has to be formed and prepared in the time it takes a ship to die (literally seconds).

just to reinforce my point, boardings only happen very rarely in real life, and mostly by parties against undefended vessels (pirates vs cruise or transports). there are no combat situtaions where boarding parties have been used because it is a whole lot more practical to just blow ur enemies to pieces.

if the boarding party manages to kill the pod the ship is boardable from any eve player in a capsule. Thats the basic idea. The destruction is actually a defense mechanism of the ship owner in the "you get nothing" or "i go down with my ship" sense. You do not board a ship to destroy it, you would just fire on it. You board it to take take the ship or steal (eject) the cargo.

I really don't see this working for the following reason:

A Dust match will take a certain length of time to complete. Let's say it's a really fast match, and takes 5 minutes. That is 5 minutes that the ship being boarded can fire on whoever is pointing it. The dude being boarded could also call for help as well, if there are friendlies within a couple jumps it will just take a falcon to break the point, then what? The Dust match suddenly ends? What will be the incentive for the Eve pilot that is keeping point on this ship and being fired on? What will be the incentive for the other pilots that are holding the field?

The only 3 scenarios where I see this working would be if you catch a capital ship alone ratting, or bumped out of a POS or something. Although catching a carrier ratting in null isnt' that rare, he will most certainly call for help as said above.

The other scenario would be after a fleet fight, keeping the last ship pointed to board it. In this second scenario I think you would be hard pressed to find a fleet that is willing to stay on field to keep 1 ship pointed instead of blowing it up for 20 minutes (or w/e time the dust match takes), since if it's actually the eve pilots who woudl get the boarded ship, it would have to be split in some manner between the entire fleet.

Another thing to mention here is that once the ship is boarded, it should still be in space in teh eve world, adhering to game mechanics. So if the dusties to board and capture a ship, the pilot of the ship could have his friends blow his ship up should they be in a position to do so.

That being said, I don't think the development time required to implement this would be worth the infrequent occurences where boarding would take place and is actually sensibly worht doing.

Starting to wonder if anyone posting in here has done any actual PVP? (semi-serious) most of the fights I've been in have been over in a very short space of time, absolutely no window of opportunity for boarding mechanics to work between running low armor and ship exploding. Any way to do this would massively change PVP from what it is now and pretty much kill the game as it would give plenty of extra time for people to get reinforcements in aka blob to win... or am I missing something?

In most fights (tho not all) that just won't or even can't happen. No ones going to sit around on a gate for instance if they've just caught a shiny T3 and shot it down to hull - then sit around for 5 minutes or whatever while a dust match plays out - all the time giving the opportunity for the victims friends to arrive or another bigger roaming gang to turn up.

In big 100s of player fights you aren't going to just halt everything or move onto another target leaving a target half finished etc.

Here's how i see boarding would work,



You can only be boarded in Low sec/Null Sec or just Null Sec.


You would need a ship called a Millita Cruiser (or something simular in name), this ship is basicly a freight that can spawn Mercs for boarding. No weapons, just mercs. any Cruiser type could NOT be boarded for the simple reason it would be OPed to other ships in this class or under.


When you board you choose your spacific objective (capture or steal cargo). depending on objective depends on Price of buying mercs to board. more you offer to pay, the better the mercs you have to board. also, Stealing cargo is always cheaper and easyer than capturing the ship itself. Buying Clone Revival Units will cost in the millions and takes money to restock your clone count. Also sence you are paying for the mercs, depending on the skill lvl AND if they complete the main Objective you can end up payin up to 200k-2M PER MERC.


Only A squad or 2 squads may board a ship at a time. this can be based on how many Millita Cruiser are attempting to board you, or something EvE player based (skill, equipment, ect)
.

If the ship warped out of range of the Cruiser the match ends early or you AUTOMATICLY have 0 clone count. i think having a 0 clone count because the ship warped would be a good penilty. also, if the Cruiser is destroied the clone count will automaticly reach 0. blowing up the Boarded ship via attacking it or because it selfdestructed means no one gets paid sept the mercs.


you get FREE Boarding Defence, whether bot or Merc, and you get better mercs/bots for paying better insurance. this gives you best insentive to obtain higher Insurance. Not only that but there are defencese on the ship that the Capcleer can trigger to impede the progress of the mercs this can change the path or give addtional objectives to figure out. Also, they get a WAY Higher clone count than the Boarders or unlimited if they are using Bots.



Boarders only get 7-10 mins to acheave their objectives on battleships and capitals. battlecruisers are and expection, they get 11-15 mins to acheave their objectives.


there is high risk/high reward now for using mercs. Now being a pirate is fun and challanging.

any opinions?

My opinion on this is taht I don't want to buy a PS3 and play a shooter that I have no interest whatsoever in playing to be the one that is responsible for my own spaceship's fate in teh PC game that is Eve online.

to bad, Dust514 will eventuly affect faction wars to it's core. you're already gona be deeply effected. better play a different PC game now.

boarding parties could be the next big thing for the CCP marketing department after orbital bombardment becomes boring.

so how could it work in a balanced fashion?

IMO those two high level conditions must be maintained to make it balanced for both sides:
1) the ship should be only boardable when it would die anyway (explosion imminent requirement)
2) there should be at least one way to prevent successful boarding


1) preconditions for boarding
ship immobilized (pointed, not in range for docking or jumps)
shields, armor and hull are below a certain threshold (ship is basically dead)
speed is below a certain threshold

2) preventing successful boarding
via self destruct (or regular destruction of the ship)
defending the ship till one or more of the conditions listed in 1) do no longer apply (e.g. your reinforcement fleet arrived)

how would a dust match on a ship work?
The boarding party would have the job to reach the pod. Additional objectives could be to temporary disable the self destruct mechanism, disable ship drives, weapons, eject cargo.. you name it. The defending party would have the objectives to delay the boarding till the ship explodes (protect self destruct mechanism) or delay the takeover till your reinforcement fleet arrives (protect pod).

If the player does not have a dedicated merc defense team standing by, the mercs will be put together via match making (player driven ship protection contracts - could work like ship insurance).



- - - - -

FAQ:

the merc point of view: what is victory?
its simple: if the ship explodes with you or the pod is killed you did the job right. This will minimize griefing since destruction of the ship is basically a victory condition for the merc. Rewards are player driven, no NPC contracts(!). So if you think you can invite mercs short before you press F1 to kill the ship you do them a favor since you gave them free rewards. Full rewards are only payed out if all objectives (as specified in the contract) are met.

how are mercs transported?
"generic merc clone" commodity. Empty hulls till the match starts. Maybe another container with "generic space merc equipment pack" for the resources they need for the weapons and stuff. Special module or ships does the actual boarding by attaching itself on the other ship (or something similar).

its my ship i don't want that a console player takes it away from me!
read 1) again. You are already dead, its your fault.

so i have to wait 20mins till i can lose the ship? How long is a boarding match?
well. if the mercs run to your pod without resistance and kill you its not very long. If they do not manage to disable the self destruct its max 2mins after you enable it. And if you have a very good defense team it can be quite long.. since your goal is the delay boarding till your reinforcement fleet arrives, or your ship explodes.. remember?

POS/Outposts?
right now? I don't think that CCP wants to touch them before they know what they want to do with them. But yes they would be the obvious first choice for in-space barding under different conditions.

POCOs?
sure, could generate a lot of matches. Even in highsec if CCP decides to make them player driven.

But, my ships have only one person on board: me.

So, no real point.

Thank you.

thats not the case and i am sorry that you see no point in this request.