Military transports are too strong

[gaerzi]

Increasing crew bonuss of marine quarters should not change the balance by much and is recommended but here the AI is not using them at al so would only benefit the player

I never use them either, and I love gobbling up entire fleets through relentless capture of everything that's not nailed down (and in space, nothing in nailed down). But they're just not a cost-effective option. If you need a ship with more crew, it's better to use a carrier-style ship and put troops in its hangar bays than to waste a system slot on marine quarters.

I feel like they'd have to give a lot more extra crew to seem like a worthwhile investment.

[zolobolo]

I feel like they'd have to give a lot more extra crew to seem like a worthwhile investment.

Yes they would need to be doubled
Also inlcuded in some of the AI ship templates so its not just another bonus for players (difficulty needs to be kept up or even increased via fair competition)

My other proposals should make stealing everything that is not nailed down a bit more difficult to pull off

[Dragar]

Small changes, one at a time, are usually better.

Ships that engage with boarding should probably decloak! That seems the first thing to change.

[Serenitis]

Changing the crew value of quarters from 2 to 5 feels like it gives decently worthwhile bonus.
50% more crew rather than 20%.
I actually feel somewhat conflicted when outfitting ships now, instead of just covering everything in shields.

@technology\systems.lua line 667 if you want to play with it.

[Dollars202]

Human marines in their carriers add 100 crew so you can get 300 crew in that small carrier and really put the hurt on people when you show up with a bunch of them and start taking over every ship in sight.

[zenopath]

I don't know if this is a bug or working as intended, but any ship with shuttles has a built in boarding pod functionality. That is to say, if you equip marine shuttles, you don't have to risk them to PD, you can just bump up to any enemy ship and just try to capture it. There's no defense against it, other than having a lot of marines of your own, I suppose.

[Arioch]

I don't know if this is a bug or working as intended, but any ship with shuttles has a built in boarding pod functionality. That is to say, if you equip marine shuttles, you don't have to risk them to PD, you can just bump up to any enemy ship and just try to capture it. There's no defense against it, other than having a lot of marines of your own, I suppose.

Yeah, that's intentional. It would be very frustrating if the tier 2 boarding item was less capable than the tier 1 version.

[zolobolo]

I don't know if this is a bug or working as intended, but any ship with shuttles has a built in boarding pod functionality. That is to say, if you equip marine shuttles, you don't have to risk them to PD, you can just bump up to any enemy ship and just try to capture it. There's no defense against it, other than having a lot of marines of your own, I suppose.

Yeah, that's intentional. It would be very frustrating if the tier 2 boarding item was less capable than the tier 1 version.

Agreed: I found it appropriate to have no intercept chance for Shuttles at 0 range

In fact I would strongly recommend having boarding pods work like torpedoes (speed and intercept option) as they are OP for their research and production cost, almost no limit to their placement and the fact that AI does not use them at all

If they worked like missiles, then the AI might be able to utilize them as well as they would no longer be tied to movement logic

[zenopath]

I just think there should be counterplay.

I know this game is pretty much dead, with no hope of anything really changing, but imagine an item, system slot maybe which addresses this issue. How about"Internal Defense Turrets" which doubles the effective marine strength of the defender? A ship armed with this would shred invaders, at the cost of losing valuable system slot. Could be attached to boarding pod tech.