What if you couldn't breach a ship until it has been damaged - reddit post by me

[mint lily]

I was asked by @hushed sky to post this here

https://www.reddit.com/r/MaraudersGame/comments/134fld0/what_if_you_couldnt_breach_a_ship_until_it_has/

Right now, bringing in a big ship is more or less a detriment especially if you aren’t a 4 stack. It can be fun, don’t get me wrong, but pretty much any time you bring out a capital ship or the heavy frigate half the lobby instantly flys their escape pods at you.

So pretty much every encounter ends up with you needing to get off the pilot seat to defend the ship and then while you’re dealing with boarders some rust bucket is pelting you while you’re defenseless and eventually you have to bail, if you haven’t died to intruders.

Almost this exact scenario happened last night to me and a buddy, 3-4 raids with a capital/heavy and pretty much no ship to ship combat happened, the first raid we were boarded 6-7 times and we ended up killing most of them, podding out to the ship drilling us, killing them then returning to our now broken ship to repair. And by the time that’s all over, there’s no more ships to fight.

Rust bucket fights end up similar, if it’s more than a 1v1 then whoever dies first tries to board someone and that person is forced to leave the controls and the third person just pelts the defenseless ship. It’s not exactly engaging or fun.

I feel like ships, especially big ones, need some form of anti-board and the simplest I could think of is what if you had to take say, at least 50%hp loss to be boarded. And this could be permanent even if you heal. And there could be a visual indicator like there already is for destroyed ships.

I know it won’t fix everything, but at least another ship would need to try and damage you before just hitting the pod. And maybe people wouldn’t instantly pod over from across the map

I’d love to hear other suggestions, boarding is great fun, but it’s so lackluster to bring other ships when it’s just going to be pvp inside the ship 90% of the time, and you can’t defend against ships and boarders at the same time. The scout is the best ship to bring I feel because from a distance most people don’t notice you aren’t a rustbucket

[snow hare]

boarding is a ton of fun and id hate to see it change. i like to run good ships just to bait people into boarding, i think the actual ship combat in itself isnt actually that interesting, it is more the threat of being boarded afterwards that makes it a lot of fun, and having to fight inside your ship. besides, if your a good pilot youl often be able to kill half the pods or more whilst they try to board you

with how easy it is to obtain good ships now, you dont need to feel that attached to them, if you had breach shields or whatever basically rust buckets have no chance to counter play you and it would lead to boring gameplay when 100 percent of the time they just pod out to the exit and there is no threat or excitement

[valid garden]

I think the current meta of instantly leaving your ship in a pod and just boarding one ship to the next isn't great. Some may argue defenders have an advantage, as such it can be seen as a skill issue. But being able to board instantly will most certainly drive some people away from the game, and this game already has a dwindling player base and if it were more approachable by new people; making it so you can't be boarded while above a threshold of HP would be great. Gives those newer players a chance to fight back, or leave if they so choose to. I think a good counter-balance to this would be to reduce the pod boost speed and/or distance. Whether ship combat is seen as boring or not, as the game develops, it will likely be a BIG reason people want to play. Since there isn't many games out there that boast spaceship style combat.

[static copper]

I like this idea. I'm not a fan of the instant pod meta at the moment.

Also, there is no incentive to really have a ship-on-ship battle. If I win the battle, I'm rewarded with a crew breaching my ship.

I think ships should go to a disabled state and then a breachable state.

That way, if you win the fight, you have a choice to breach or not.

If you lose, you can either defend (repair) or escape.

If you repair the ship, I think the breachable status should continue for the rest of the match or raid.

Maybe even have a lever that activates on the breachable ship that will dump a salvage drop.

So even if the crew escapes, you can get a salvage drop out of the win.

At the moment, the new ship variants are cool, but I don't see much reason to take a better ship into the game right now.

If ship battles were more of a thing that resulted in rewards (salvage drops or ships becoming breachable), I think people would generally start bringing in better ships.

Just my opinion anyway.

[snow hare]

how is it fair for the person who won the ship fight to then have to breach the ship he disabled lol? it makes zero sense since defenders have the advantage, and if they are in a team it is almost always a death sentence for whoever is breaching.... the meta would just be people bringing in good ships, let themselves get disabled and hopefully bait people into breaching them which will be as dumb as it sounds lol

[static copper]

How is it fair that the person who won gets breached either. I totally get what you mean but both results seem silly to me.

Also, and this is probably just me cos I'm just shit at the game but I lose most times I'm breached.

[snow hare]

We often bring good ships to bait people into breaching us, to fight them in our ship where we know where they will spawn and almost always kill them without even trying. Besides, if your a good pilot you will be able to shoot down half the pods on average and loot the pod

[static copper]

Maybe it's just a lack of experience on my side.

Ship to ship combat seems a little pointless and we just run really.

I've won a few boarding actions. But I've lost nearly all time I've been boarded

[snow hare]

The people who try to breach right at the start are usually just more skilled on average, but 2 players of equal skill, the defenders will win, and if you have at least 1 buddy with you those odds go up even higher

Where are you guys encountering all these breachers anyway? Me and my bud spent an hour flying around in the red barron ship disabling other ships and trying to get the pods to breach us but nearly every single one just escaped to the extract

[static copper]

More just my collective experience of the game since I've played it.

You are right tho, breaching isn't really a common thing anyway. Most of the time everyone run to the raid or escapes if disabled.

Just trying to figure out ways that would encourage people to bring in a variety of different ships and battle more often.

Think at the moment ppl just dodge and weave until the raid.

Or pod early if your grinding PvP kills and your skilled

[naive quartz]

It's a tough problem.
breaching is fun but then you have this system with all these ships that people only use for either storage or to bait people into boarding which results in basically everyone just using the garbage ship that you get for free.
Something needs to change for sure but it's difficult to come to a reasonable answer.
My opinion is that the rust bucket should have a weaker gun and no escape pods.

Regarding ship damage to allow boarding, there has to be a middle ground somewhere.
If you're wrecking someone most of the time you'll just bombard the ship until its disabled and continue bombarding it for additional damage until the guys inside leave and you have a boarding fight.
If a lot of ship damage is required I don't see anyone boarding outside of crews of 4 sending a couple guys to cause chaos

[pulsar sentinel]

Maybe not 100% of hp but two shields 50% hp you can be breachd 0% hp you cant move or attack

[magic turtle]

It doesn't exactly answer the breaching issue but I really wish ship combat worked more like Guns of Icarus so everyone on this ship has something to do and the ship itself is much more difficult to take down if everyone is running around repairing.

Right now the reason people just pod out is there isn't a reason to stay. If nearly any ship gets the jump on your ship, doesn't matter what your in, you are fighting an uphill battle that ends when you run out of fire extinguishers. So it's not really a skill issue, its who has the most fire extinguishers and who got off the first volley.

Fixing the breach meta doesn't need to be resolved at least initially by breach protection. Instead give people a reason to stay on their ships.