Starship Corporation

Mega marine post, sorry about the block of text. But it seemed like a key mechanic and pretty interesting.

Since this game seems to be quite heavily based around boarding enemy ships and protecting against boarding on your own ship, this area would need to be reasonably deep (but not necessarily overly complicated). Boarding another ship would be a very complex and dangerous task, with the defenders having a huge advantage (it should be much harder to take over an enemy ship than secure your own). Some basic CQB tactics could go a long way in making boarding interesting.

From what I've seen so far it appeared to me that it was pretty much attrition, the boarders charge in and everyone blasts the crap out of each other without appearing to have much depth of tactics in the combat. Of course it's work in progress and I obviously don't know what's planned or being worked on.

Attrition should still be a valid option, but the attackers should need a 2:1 or even 3:1 advantage in numbers to win by attrition, as it will be cost the attackers more casualties.

-Defensive advantage: If marines don't move for a short time, they should get a defensive bonus (basically kneeling down with their guns trained on the door/corridor) and shoot first vs the enemy charging into the room. If there's enough guys charging them they'll be overwhelmed, but the first few guys through the "fatal funnel" will likely be easily killed. In this way well planned choke points when the enemy must enter a room or corridor a few at a time to face many defenders would be quite effective. A couple defenders could stop a larger force. This initial shoot first advantage could be leveraged in a defense in depth, where you ambush the boarders, then fall back to lay another ambush (but you give away ground to the boarders, which may be dangerous depending on the design and where they breached the ship).

-Morale/suppression: Being shot at and nearby/overall casualties should lower morale. The marines shouldn't be suicidal and fall back if things are going badly enough. It would also create more back and forth and make it less likely to wipe out everyone in one firefight.

-Fog of war: Do you automatically know where all the enemy boarders are? I think it seemed that way in the trailers. I'd think you'd only know if a door was breached, not how many or where they are. To track them in the ship you could install motion sensors with a limited range. Tight surveillance of your ship would cost a decent amount. Marine patrols would be cheaper, but spread out your force.

-Grenades: A simple hand grenade ability would be nice, to allow attackers to throw it around corners and into rooms to dislodge defenders (and making hard to break though choke points tougher to design and require more space, as you want to keep the boarders out of grenade tossing range). Stun or smoke grenades could add even more tactical depth, but might not be as necessary.

-Simple Marine inventory: I think a basic class-like inventory could be a way to get a small number of different marine types. Key thing here is to avoid too much micro-management and have only 3 or 4 Marine classes. You wouldn't manage the items in their inventory, different armory types would just provide different load outs. A small icon on the arrow over their head could denote class.

Investing in advanced Marine types would require armories with that class gear and these would be more expensive and possibly require maintenance/technicians as armorers. A specially equipped force of Marines would be a major investment.

Some ideas:

-Basic/rifleman: Pretty much the marines like they are now, guy with a rifle, maybe small charges to damage rooms on the enemy ship and grenades. The basic armory would provide this loadout and the armory room for just rifles would be low maintenance and space efficient, being able to arm many marines. Cheap and most common class.

-Demolitions/breacher: Slow firing grenade launcher (maybe something like the current 25mm ones, not a whole lot of splash damage, but direct hits would be powerful) and one, maybe two, large explosive charges. Cuts through doors faster and has a charge powerful enough to blow holes in the walls between closely packed rooms, allowing them get around choke points. A highly defensible ship design might want to factor this in by thickening/armoring walls around choke points.

-Heavy: Powered exoskeleton armor and a large caliber rifle. Shows up as a large dot and slow moving. Tough in a fight, but require lots of infrastructure. Needs a large, expensive armory that would equip maybe 2 guys and require maintenance and technicians. They would then take up a lot of space on the boarding ship. Useful for small marine crews where you need quality, not quantity (like a long range ship to keep down life support needs) or for leading the charge when boarding a ship. On the other hand it's expensive and puts all your investment in a handful of marines, making it hard to cover large ships with heavies and any losses are disastrous. Useful as part of a mixed force.

-Shield: Marine with little or no offensive power, but a hand held shield (like a riot shield) using the same rechargeable technology as the ship shields. Expensive, but handy for advancing under fire as he could stop a fair amount of fire before the shield fails, allowing him to protect the marines behind him and for example advance down a hallway or help hold a choke point on the defense.

-Scanner: basic marine, but he can see a short distance through walls around him. Would be quite handy when boarding other ships, to know whats through that door before you enter.

Nice suggestions, I definitely agree that the advantage is with the crew. Unless of course the attackers were able to board stealthily. Going off at a tangent, it's probably not going to appeal to those who enjoy strategy games, but I used to love the Star Wars Battlefront II space sections. Rather than simulating marines fighting intruders, would it be possible to have a fps element where people could actually fight, similar to that in SWBII. Non combatants (i.e. pilots and techs etc) could still be AI controlled.

Seeing as the game is being made in Game Maker, 3d isn't really a strong suit (I think you can do 3d now). I'm pretty impressed he stuck it out to make this in Game Maker, it's been a long time since I've used it, but it wouldn't be my first choice for anything.

Technically I think it's *possible*, but it would be like making the game from scratch again (but perhaps harder) and then making it work with the existing game. So not realistic in terms of effort and probably way out of scope.

among the tactics that could be used for boarding or defending we can have:

for boarding: (mainly based on the capture of specific room. A space ship being a closed environment, it's theorically well balanced but the loss of one element would upset this balance.)

- shortcutting the bridge : cutting energy supply to the bridge (by capturing most or all the generators) or disconnecting the core from the bridge(by capturing the core). that way, it's harder to monitor hostile movement.

- life-support negociation : boarder that have space suits can shut down life support. starting a countdown. If life support is not restarted in time, people that are not wearing space suits would start to die. moral would be affected and some of the crew member may decide to surrender to the boarders if moral is too low. (would require a special room for space suits, so people could still fight in an environment that is dangerous to life forms if count down reach zero.)

- engine negociation : boarder that capture the engine room would be able to stop it or threathen to destroy it if people dont comply to their demands. (mostly a self-defense tactic if they got other of their tactics countered.)

- shutting the supplies : by capturing fuel storage room they can remotely shut the engine by cutting it's supply


NB: those tactic could have differents priorities and the boarder could switch from one tactic to another of they found an obstacle on the way. (for example, first the boarder would try to get the bridge, if the bridge can't be reached easily, they can then switch to another tactic, like engine or life-support negociation, depending on the room already captured or the nearest "strategic" room.

for defending (by non military means)

- venting the atmosphere out : similar concept than the "life-support negociation", it's turning some area hostile to life forms so only people wearing space suits could survive. (could have some limited use based on the number of air tanks in the ship and the air volume of the rooms that has been vented out.)

- cutting the power in the captured area : as boarder dont have good knowledge of the ship layout, reducing their view range by shutting off the light would reduce their speed more than it would reduce the speed of the crew. that would increase the chance of escape of the non-combattant while giving more time for the "military" to deploy. it could lock them in one level of the ship if that level can only be reached by a lift, at least it can slow their advance (as most lift have a ladder for maintenance).

edit: about doors, there could be different type of door depending on the price or energy consumption.
for example, there could be a low level mechanical door that don't require energy and could be left open or closed.
- if left open, character would travel twice as fast as they don't need to open it (even on electrical door you have to wait for the door to open after you pressed the button)
- if left closed, character would take twice the time to get to the other side as they have to open it manually and close it manually.

mechanical door would have their pro and con in "energy black-out" and "air venting-out" scenario but would also affect the moral depending on their status (always open or always closed) and procure the lowest security as they could be open from both side in pretty much any scenario. (during energy black-out, electrical door could be stucked in a closed state , needing something like a crowbar (or brute force) to force them open with possibility to close them again when energy is back up otherwise if the scenario is switched to one that force an "air venting-out", any door breach with explosives would not stop the air from being vented out.)