Ship anchoring for boarding

[DroopPhase]

Basically a function that allows a ship to be aligned to another so that a player can go into astronaut mode and board without losing their own ship or leaving it to be destroyed.

I reckon some sort of size limits would have to be added but it would add a really fun extra dimension to combat

 

[MChain]

Just use a boarding ship and an assistant flying your ship. That will do the trick. But you need to design a cheap and dispensable boarding ship ;-)

 

[jayman38]

I agree. Match Vector (not just match velocity) is good for this kind of game. Magnetic grapples/landing gear could do the job from a game mechanics point-of-view.

 

[OfficialCoding]

Or have a friend fly your ship and just use a grapple beam.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

A friend and I once used "stealth missiles", torches and grapple beams to commandeer a capital ship that was attacking my base.


Some clown was bullying less established players by visiting their bases and firing at anything that moved. He came to my base while some friends were visiting and we gave him a taste of his own medicine. The attacker destroyed one of my visiting friends' ships so I started talking smack to him in text chat, to distract him. Meanwhile, my other buddy flew his "missile" up to the capital, grappled and torched his way in. I followed suit with m own "missile" and brought along a sniper rifle. My friend cut the guy of the core and I zapped him down to low health. He then ran around the corner and committed (in-game) suicide. My friend scrapped the ship for parts.


Regarding the original idea; I think it's interesting but rather than "anchor" a ship to another, I think a better (and more realistic) idea would be to have an AI command that causes your ship to follow and/or attack at close range while you attempt to board.

If an anchor is implemented anyway, there should be restrictions that must be met in order to anchor (shields must be down, for example) and a relatively simple way for the other ship to break free.

It should be noted that if boarding becomes a common practice, AI anti-personnel turret spam is going to become a thing.

 

[OfficialCoding]

Maybe what I want to see is boarding charges that are sort of like warheads but have a 3D model and can be placed on an enemy ship to blow the door open. they wouldn't deal too much damage but enough to destroy like a single block at least. That is what I want. Either that or see the cutting torch get buffed some more.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

I think I've requested a new fleet order command like "Formation Target" at some point in the past. That way we can use this on anything.

Oh, what I mean is you target the ship in your HUD and your ship gets into formation.

 

[Sachys]

I recently suggested (as part of a private message) that the new repeller blocks could be inverted to become "hull magnets":

They would only be useable by small ships docking to much larger entities (some kind of mass restriction or calculation), and would require a 5x5 flat (square) surface to "grapple" onto. this could probably include standard USDs.

Meantime, as others have pointed out, buying a grappler gun can be very effective.

 

[NeonSturm]

It would be cool if StarMade has not fixed sectors, but points of interests which spawn sectors and are connected.

A ship which jumps, would create it's own sector, just for itself.
Whenever you are too far from a planet or a high-mass ship defining a sector, you would make your own.

Other ships can merge your sector. A bigger ship can consume your sector into it's own.
But whenever a ship leaves, there must be a decision who belongs to the new and who to the old sector. That can be done with fleet commands (all your ships join) or tractor grapples (you follow an enemy ship). Or just by being closer to the leaver than to the sector anchor when they are like 10km away.


Every ship - per default - aligns itself to the nearest universe, galaxy, sun or planet until it reaches a "pocket-dimension box" which contains the planet and rotates in this absolute space. It doesn't really matter how far. Not even for weapon ranges.

EDIT: Simpler explanation: You can lock sectors close by as if they are touching each other, but they would fade like from one snapshot into another. You can aim at specific points, fly toward them.
The projectiles would then enter the target sector so that they aim at your specified point, but that doesn't garanteue that they are instant-hit, because their entry is delayed by the seconds of distance in light years of both sectors.

When your ship sector collides with a planet sector, it drops out of warp and merges into that planet sector, probably the orbit sector around the planet sector within that orbit sector.


BTW: You can also let the current sectors be, but let ships behave like they had such sectors for anchoring and during warp they are in a sector between sectors.
Between X14 and X15 you go into XWARPID1493958 and it changes while ship is in warp-flight where you come out or which sector-transition leads you into this warp-sector.

 

[OfficialCoding]

It would be cool if StarMade has not fixed sectors, but points of interests which spawn sectors and are connected.

A ship which jumps, would create it's own sector, just for itself.
Whenever you are too far from a planet or a high-mass ship defining a sector, you would make your own.

Other ships can merge your sector. A bigger ship can consume your sector into it's own.
But whenever a ship leaves, there must be a decision who belongs to the new and who to the old sector. That can be done with fleet commands (all your ships join) or tractor grapples (you follow an enemy ship). Or just by being closer to the leaver than to the sector anchor when they are like 10km away.


Every ship - per default - aligns itself to the nearest universe, galaxy, sun or planet until it reaches a "pocket-dimension box" which contains the planet and rotates in this absolute space. It doesn't really matter how far. Not even for weapon ranges.

EDIT: Simpler explanation: You can lock sectors close by as if they are touching each other, but they would fade like from one snapshot into another. You can aim at specific points, fly toward them.
The projectiles would then enter the target sector so that they aim at your specified point, but that doesn't garanteue that they are instant-hit, because their entry is delayed by the seconds of distance in light years of both sectors.

When your ship sector collides with a planet sector, it drops out of warp and merges into that planet sector, probably the orbit sector around the planet sector within that orbit sector.


BTW: You can also let the current sectors be, but let ships behave like they had such sectors for anchoring and during warp they are in a sector between sectors.
Between X14 and X15 you go into XWARPID1493958 and it changes while ship is in warp-flight where you come out or which sector-transition leads you into this warp-sector.

What? I don't see how this is relevant.

 

[NeonSturm]

What? I don't see how this is relevant.

If your anchor ship moves, it moves and turns the sector objects with it.
Everything anchored would remain in a fixed position to it.

 

[Kutza]

It would be cool if StarMade has not fixed sectors, but points of interests which spawn sectors and are connected.

A ship which jumps, would create it's own sector, just for itself.
Whenever you are too far from a planet or a high-mass ship defining a sector, you would make your own.

Other ships can merge your sector. A bigger ship can consume your sector into it's own.
But whenever a ship leaves, there must be a decision who belongs to the new and who to the old sector. That can be done with fleet commands (all your ships join) or tractor grapples (you follow an enemy ship). Or just by being closer to the leaver than to the sector anchor when they are like 10km away.


Every ship - per default - aligns itself to the nearest universe, galaxy, sun or planet until it reaches a "pocket-dimension box" which contains the planet and rotates in this absolute space. It doesn't really matter how far. Not even for weapon ranges.

EDIT: Simpler explanation: You can lock sectors close by as if they are touching each other, but they would fade like from one snapshot into another. You can aim at specific points, fly toward them.
The projectiles would then enter the target sector so that they aim at your specified point, but that doesn't garanteue that they are instant-hit, because their entry is delayed by the seconds of distance in light years of both sectors.

When your ship sector collides with a planet sector, it drops out of warp and merges into that planet sector, probably the orbit sector around the planet sector within that orbit sector.


BTW: You can also let the current sectors be, but let ships behave like they had such sectors for anchoring and during warp they are in a sector between sectors.
Between X14 and X15 you go into XWARPID1493958 and it changes while ship is in warp-flight where you come out or which sector-transition leads you into this warp-sector.

This seems like It would be the most complicate possible solution to the proposed problem.

Just Treat the Anchored entity like it is docked (minus power transfer and the like) and break anchor anytime the anchored ship cannot mach an action by the other ship. aka insufficient acceleration or discharged jump drive.

 

[OfficialCoding]

This seems like It would be the most complicate possible solution to the proposed problem.

Just Treat the Anchored entity like it is docked (minus power transfer and the like) and break anchor anytime the anchored ship cannot mach an action by the other ship. aka insufficient acceleration or discharged jump drive.

Yeah it seems like Neon's idea would require several months of coding. I think this idea is a better.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Neon's talking about something totally different than what this thread is about.

This is essentially a boarding/ship capture proposal. Neon's talking about instanced sectors. Unfortunately, that's not really related to this topic.

 

[NeonSturm]

Essentially, it is like docking as long as a ship can convince SM it is docked (tractor beam, dock block, etc).
I thought ahead - maybe too many lightyears. Explained the details (code-wise) when it's already implemented via docking.


Instanced sectors would solve many problems. Basically every ship has it's own sector and all other ships have a representation-instance in them which share attributes by accessing and modifying the common source. The source is then rooted down to that entity who has power over it.
But doen't matter anyway if shine doesn'T want it.

A ship entering orbit could - for some seconds - have a representation in the fleet-sector and the orbit sector which contains the planet sector.
The only thing that must be selectable accurately is the destination of actions and the attack-vector which can be locally modified by the target's actions - this can be entry-vector of ships/projectiles to a planet. Once it leaves the target sector (overshooting), it must be normalized (reset unmodified vector or - like on a black hole - even keep it).

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Essentially, it is like docking as long as a ship can convince SM it is docked (tractor beam, dock block, etc).
I thought ahead - maybe too many lightyears. Explained the details (code-wise) when it's already implemented via docking.


Instanced sectors would solve many problems. Basically every ship has it's own sector and all other ships have a representation-instance in them which share attributes by accessing and modifying the common source. The source is then rooted down to that entity who has power over it.

A ship entering orbit could - for some seconds - have a representation in the fleet-sector and the orbit sector which contains the planet sector.
The only thing that must be selectable accurately is the destination of actions and the attack-vector which can be locally modified by the target's actions - this can be entry-vector of ships/projectiles to a planet. Once it leaves the target sector (overshooting), it must be normalized (reset unmodified vector or - like on a black hole - even keep it).

This isn't an instanced sector thread. It's a ship boarding thread. Also, Schine already stated that they aren't going to do instanced sectors.

 

[aceface]

I like the idea of anchoring or docking a ship to another for boarding purposes. You could make a "boarding tunnel" intended to encapsulate the door to make the astronauts go through smoothly and in a non derpy manner like how it is currently with ramming a speedy core and grappling. This video illustrates what I'm talking about

There was glitch that made it possible with permission docking a few years ago but got patched. It was fun while it lasted. Here's a video where me and my friends board a real unsuspecting player in a similar fashion to the above video with that glitch: