Read by Council Magnetic Grapple

[kookster]

While talking in the https://starmadedock.net/threads/drill-block.22490/#post-256578 topic. The idea for a system that would allow a ship dock to a hostile ship to allow a boarding party get on the ship came up. The idea is the Magnetic Grapple. This would allow your ship to grapple to any part of another ship almost like a rail docker, then the crew on that ship can use torches to tunnel through the other ships hull and board. Since this would be a very powerful mechanic we thought a one or a few downsides should exist. Some that I was thinking is, no cloaking/jamming while using the grapple, shields go down, or just make it really hard to maintain the power like how cloakers power is done.

[Edit]
A idea that was posted below and I really like, what if the power requirements were based off what the thrusters would use to actually stay aligned. This way it gives the ship thats being boarded a chance to maybe fling the ship off.

 

[jayman38]

I think this should be usable on friendly/neutral ships without a shield outtage, but I think jamming and cloaking should still be inoperative during the link, and friendly/neutral ships should have an option to "disconnect" a grappled ship at will.

A hostile ship should also be able to "disconnect" a grappled ship at will, but the disconnect should take 5 or 10 seconds to happen, to allow the boarding party a little time to align to the hostile ship.

A magnetic grapple will be really fun for roleplay "factory" scenes.

It should probably have a geometric mass/power curve, similar to cloaking, to discourage larger ships from grappling.

Rail entities from the core entity out to the magnetic grapple should be locked in position during use.

 

[kookster]

I think this should be usable on friendly/neutral ships without a shield outtage, but I think jamming and cloaking should still be inoperative during the link, and friendly/neutral ships should have an option to "disconnect" a grappled ship at will.

A hostile ship should also be able to "disconnect" a grappled ship at will, but the disconnect should take 5 or 10 seconds to happen, to allow the boarding party a little time to align to the hostile ship.

A magnetic grapple will be really fun for roleplay "factory" scenes.

It should probably have a geometric mass/power curve, similar to cloaking, to discourage larger ships from grappling.

Rail entities from the core entity out to the magnetic grapple should be locked in position during use.

I was thinking of the shields going down to discourage larger ships from doing this, but I like basing it off cloaking power more or something like that. This way it would be very very hard to maintain a long grapple to a ship.

 

[NeonSturm]

It should at least require power similar to a 1/2 thruster, based on thrust applied.
Counter-act turning should cost a lot of energy so it can be used to break the hook.

If it requires a huge amount of power (quite some power-storage) and can only grapple above 67% and lose at 33%, you also have a nice cooldown mechanism.

 

[kiraen]

While I like this idea, the main problem I see is teleporters. This is much harder and you'd probably still need to take out the shields. Why would I use this over telport boarding? Seriously, I would much prefer this over the OP teleboarding, but I can't think of why any one would bother. imo, teleporters were a poor design choice but we are stuck with them.
We need to add something to make teleporters less useful for these ideas to really gain any traction.

 

[kookster]

While I like this idea, the main problem I see is teleporters. This is much harder and you'd probably still need to take out the shields. Why would I use this over telport boarding? Seriously, I would much prefer this over the OP teleboarding, but I can't think of why any one would bother. imo, teleporters were a poor design choice but we are stuck with them.
We need to add something to make teleporters less useful for these ideas to really gain any traction.

You cant teleport to a hostile ship if they havent made their teleporters public.

 

[jorn818]

Good to see our idea come to live!

 

[kookster]

It should at least require power similar to a 1/2 thruster, based on thrust applied.
Counter-act turning should cost a lot of energy so it can be used to break the hook.

If it requires a huge amount of power (quite some power-storage) and can only grapple above 67% and lose at 33%, you also have a nice cooldown mechanism.

Added your idea to the OP, great idea!

 

[kiraen]

You cant teleport to a hostile ship if they havent made their teleporters public.

Yet.

iirc, the plan is that you will be able to generally target the ship/station and will get teleported to a random Quarter. But Quarters aren't programmed into the game yet.

 

[kookster]

Yet.

iirc, the plan is that you will be able to generally target the ship/station and will get teleported to a random Quarter. But Quarters aren't programmed into the game yet.

Yeah im not too concerned until they actually release something otherwise its all speculation.

 

[Asypha]

Sorry to necro; but, I found this before posting something close to identical. The idea of being able to latch onto another ship without their permission, at any location, is wonderful. You could create anything from limpet mines to rescue ships. (I would mostly build ships that I could fly over, latch on, then abandon as they continuously used their weapons in an automated way.)

Balancing them so that shields bounce them and they need some kind of thrust to offset maneuvers designed to toss them, should ensure they do not become OP. Plus, the need for a ship to have some form of fighter defense to remove ships from locations that turrets have trouble reaching, or the changes in armor design that come from attempting to prevent them from docking, could prove interesting.

 

[kookster]

Glad, you necro'd, since bumping is not really condoned. I was thinking to balance it out make it so no cloak/jammer, its just like firing any other weapon, but this toggles on and off. Also as the ship you are attached to moves you have to expend power to use your thrusters to stay aligned. How do I explain this. say they start accelerating forward. If your ship doesnt have the thrust capability to keep up with their acceleration unattached, you lose connection. If you dont have the power to accelerate that fast you lose connection. Now we may want to double the energy costs for this, not sure.

 

[WitherFireGaming]

This is awesome, but there should be some sort of game mechanic so that only smaller ships can utilize it, to encourage small stealth ship boarding parties. Perhaps a rapidly increasing power cost dependent on the mass of your ship?

 

[kookster]

This is awesome, but there should be some sort of game mechanic so that only smaller ships can utilize it, to encourage small stealth ship boarding parties. Perhaps a rapidly increasing power cost dependent on the mass of your ship?

I dunno, I go back and forth on this one. I just think of like starwars and the star destroyer forcully docking to the block-aid runner. Big ships forcefully docking to others makes sense. But so do small ships. I think a balance needs to be found rather then preventing one or the other.

 

[RODLON]

I like the idea. Have you tried to board a ship at high speed? The physics become crazy!

I would say that grapple is only possible if the enemy ship shields are below 5%, and they need to stay below 20% to mantain the grapple.
Like if the enemy shield is a layer that prevents a ship from sticking to the hull.
And maybe add a ship subsystem that acts as "repulsive" hull to avoid ship grappling and kicks away grappled ships (based on their mass).