Ramships and boarding pods - let's make this work, shall we?

[HorribleHedgehog]

I've been thinking about boarding lately, and not the wussy teleporting kind either. Everyone knows that boarding an enemy capital without making a ship-sized hole in the side just isn't proper.

With that in mind, I built this little thing to serve as my dedicated boarder:

Grappling hooks!

Unfortunately, the pulse-cannon-punch (1:1:1, 180 blocks each) weapon system I outfitted it with does absolutely diddly squat to advanced armour. My delusions of boarding grandeur were swiftly shattered.

And so I turn to you. Know a good weapon combo for making large holes in advanced armour? Got a boarding pod lying around you want to show off? Know just what is it I've been doing all wrong in my pursuit of ram-boarding goodness? Share your thoughts here!

 

[Ithirahad]

Want to know why people don't talk about boarding strategies with ships much?

Because it doesn't work.

You have to either grapple on as an astronaut and cut your way in with a cutting torch, or make a hole in their capital ship with your capital ship and head in that hole.

 

[HorribleHedgehog]

Want to know why people don't talk about boarding strategies with ships much?

Because it doesn't work.

You have to either grapple on as an astronaut and cut your way in with a cutting torch, or make a hole in their capital ship with your capital ship and head in that hole.

I was afraid that would be the case, but I'm going to experiment a little more. Can't give up on my dream without some more testing, even if it'll ultimately lead nowhere. :p

 

[Rixxan]

Want to know why people don't talk about boarding strategies with ships much?

Because it doesn't work.

You have to either grapple on as an astronaut and cut your way in with a cutting torch, or make a hole in their capital ship with your capital ship and head in that hole.

wait we have a cutting torch :P
Also, ya know, to blast your way in you do need to have their shields down.

 

[Zekester81]

Have you tried putting a boom on your ship covered with warheads? You could hook it to an inner ship remote to detach the boom when the warheads go off, and you could also use some wireless logic to remote activate/deactivate forcefields around the warhead so they don't go off too early. I have been thinking about this too but don't know if it will work. Going to have to try I guess.

 

[HorribleHedgehog]

I've tried some warhead rams, but they're hilariously weak against advanced armour. I'm guessing it's doable, but one would need to use comically many warheads at once - which is not an option for me, because I want my ships to look good first and foremost. :p

Regarding the ship in my starting post, I tried it refitted with 1:1:1 missile-pulse-explosive, but even that - aside from requiring a humongous power source - failed to create large enough dent in just a single layer of advanced armour. This pretty much puts a nail in the coffin for my light boarding ship designs - you just can't pack enough firepower in a frame that small to make ram-boarding an option. This makes me sad.

 

[kiraen]

Have you tried a warhead (or 5) for making your hole? Just Push a few in rapid succession from close range. That might work. Just don't get to close while blasting.

Edit: need to remember to refresh after stepping afk.

Still, a beam with pierce(?) To get the hole started and then Pushing a few warheads into the hole has potential. I might try that.

 

[Keptick]

Warheads ignore shields right? You know what you have to do

 

[StormWing0]

A detachable warhead ram docked on it should work. The problem is hitting your mark multiple times and if you miss those turrets of your enemy's are going to invite you over for dinner. XD

 

[alterintel]

Have you tried a "Missile Drill"
Basically you set it up with multiple missile groupings, so that when you fire the missiles they come out in a nice neat little line, like a chain. So that each missile will hit almost exactly where the last one hit. This in essence makes a drill of sorts. Be careful not to space your missiles too close together as the blast radius of the missiles may destroy following missiles.

I've never tried it so, let me know how it goes

 

[Zekester81]

I was thinking of something similar since seeing this thread earlier. Except I was thinking super large rapid fire missile with me hanging back just outside of the blast radius. Would be hard to get into a small fast craft though. But you could protect warheads if you had enough shielding and recharge, along with using a wireless set and an activation on the warhead end to operate forcefieleds surrounding it to (hopefully) save it from the enemy turrets. The forcefileds take shields from your ship just like armor. It might not be much but it could be a bigger array and it might even take a couple hits from something before it goes off giving you more time to make impact. It all depends on the shield systems of your craft then. Build to maximize speed, armor, and shields. Have enough thrust to push the extra mass with lots of acceleration and you might make it.

 

[KingofCalamity]

Or cloak, jam, and ram it with a docked buster beam......

 

[Mork2]

You will need to use warheads since they ignore shields. Successive groups of warheads used to ram.

Otherwise your going to have to punch the shields down which will pretty much require you to defeat the ship anyway. If you can drop the shields then you can kill it and salvage beam it.

You shouldn't use collision mechanics as usually the server will unstick you so trying to grapple mechanically generally won't work. You pretty much need to jump out of the core and align yourself to the target ship to move with it. Or have a friend do so. If you could align your ship with a larger ship then technically you have grappled with it that would work.

Once aligned you can use your cutting torch etc.

But if your target ship has any well thought out anti boarding defences it gets pretty hopeless pretty fast.

There is the usual AI controlled turrets or fixed guns hidden in walls looking down passageways. A cannon with overdrive 2 blocks each does exactly 120 damage with 1 shot per second and will kill a player with a single hit. And its still protected by advanced armour and the ships shields.

I usually have a area trigger system setup. When I enter the core room all over the ship various traps are armed and blast doors close. When I walk out of the core room all traps disable and the blast doors open. I can log out in the core room and all the traps are ready to go while I'm not there. The evilest trap is any weapon mounted on the main ship can pass through all docked entities. So at the front I have some missile/missile systems pointed back towards the core and at the back ones pointed forward towards the core. If you activate any of the area triggers/fake buttons/floor activators the missiles will fire internally to the ship where point defence can't get to them and kill anyone even me on-board the ship. I have a detector to detect hostile players with an indication light to tell me while piloting. I can also manually set off those internal missile systems, I will be safe in the ship core, you won't be.

 

[KingofCalamity]

You will need to use warheads since they ignore shields. Successive groups of warheads used to ram.

I got a prebuilt dockable spear head that has about 20 3x3x3 groups of warheads, works on everything pretty well except advanced armor....

 

[AtraUnam]

Wait since when did warheads ignore shields?

 

[Mork2]

I'm not sure since when.

If the warheads get a damage buff then it should be viable. I'm told the damage is 2k if it get multiplied up like missiles then it should be around 8k and that should let it break through some advanced armour maybe.. If there is full pierce and punch resist it might still be tricky but doable....