Suggest - Features and Improvements

[Dragar]

That's a really interesting idea!

I was pondering another idea: make large ships take longer to charge up their jump engines to retreat. Ships below cruiser could take their current amount of turns, cruisers and additional turn, and everything above and additional 2 turns. This would give a real niche to smaller ships that are otherwise outclassed in straight fights to act as raiders and opportunists, that can attack and retreat safely if the enemy sends reinforcements to defend while en-route - while fleets of big ships actually need to worry about taking casualties if they get into a bad engagement.

I'd also like to see ship rotation for larger ships more costly in (so that smaller ships getting behind big ones is a real risk!).

[PrivateHudson]

Let me pull out some old stuff... I think, all agree that boarding is slightly OP. Maybe forbid boarding until shield is depleted from the boarder's side for Boarding Pod or any side for Shuttles?

[grothmag]

Let me pull out some old stuff... I think, all agree that boarding is slightly OP. Maybe forbid boarding until shield is depleted from the boarder's side for Boarding Pod or any side for Shuttles?

That would be a good start. I would also suggest something using a system slot that doubles effective crew size for the defender, or gives the defender a significant advantage in some other way. The system can of course be destroyed like any other, but there'd be an incentive to install it when facing off against boarding-heavy species, at the cost of a slot. Boarding (for capture or raids) is still possible with various advantages, but it would at least be harder (unless the ship was damaged and this system knocked out).

Or perhaps the first raid targets this system, and if successful, subsequent boarding actions can attempt capture?

[Serenitis]

The simplest way I can think of for toning down the effects of boarding is to always give the defender the advantage - either by making attacking crew count for less, or defending crew count for more.
It would then be harder to capture ships in general, make the Marine Barracks intrinsically benefit defence more than offence, and also slightly increase the value of radiation/lethal weapons.

Speaking of boarding, it would nice if the AI had some alternate ship design templates to use that include boarding pods.
It does appear to know how to use them if you automate a player fleet equipped with them, but never actually gets the chance to do so for AI teams because it never equips them.

It would also be nice if the AI always tried to keep a reserve of ships as best it could, so any attacks it commits to would be smaller but potentially more frequent.
Currently the AI likes to create a huge singular fleet and smash it into things, which to be fair is the 'correct' way to leverage shuch direct power.
It's just not very fun to play against, and has a significantly non-zero chance to effectively end the game for the player just by existing in thier general direction.
(Tinkers seem to get bitten by this quite a bit due to thier poor economy not allowing them to support enough ships to deter the AI.)