In a recent interview with PCGamesN, Chris Roberts answered some very interesting questions about boarding actions that affect us pirates:
PCGN: Are the crew on the ships are hurriedly repairing it at the same time and may possibly escape?
CR: If you repel the boarders and you get some time, then you should be able to fix your ship, or if some friends turn up and help you fix it, you may be able to get it out of there.
The idea is that the bigger ships, the capital ships are almost like floating persistent instances in space. You can’t take the down and land on planets. You can take the smaller ships down and land them on a planet, and when you land it’s safe, but if I manage to capture myself a cruiser or something, I’m going to have to find a place to park it in space that’s safe, or it’s at risk of being boarded by someone else. It doesn’t get “turned off” in the way that normal ships do.
PCGN: And what happens if you’re killed during a boarding actions, if your actual character, rather than your ship, is eliminated?
CR: That’s a good question, because you’re saying that your ship’s floating, pristine, but you got killed in a boarding action?
PCGN: Possibly. You’ve talked about ships being insured and obviously a ship can be destroyed but pilots, Wing Commander-style, could eject. In a gunfight, it’s a little different when the actual bullets are hitting you rather than your vessel.
CR: Well, it’s not fun to have permadeath, so I think if you die in a boarding action you’re going to end up in much the same way that you end up if you lost your ship, back on the closest safe planet. This is something to be decided, whether in that particular case is your ship still intact, or is it a case of you lost your ship and you get your base ship back, but you wouldn’t get all your upgrades back. That really would be a matter of deciding what the penalty is for failing on a boarding action. I would be inclined to think that if you failed on a boarding action you’d end up on the closest safe planet, maybe with your ship intact, unless someone took it over while you were boarding.
PCGN: Would it be possible for people on your side, your allies, to look after your stuff and potentially make sure it gets back to you?
CR: Potentially. There’s a bunch of edge cases in all these dynamics. There’s a bunch of stuff where it’s pretty simple to say “Okay, this is the way it works,” and there’s some stuff where you’re “Okay, how correctly do you want to simulate this?” The most realistic way is to do something like the real world, where you die boarding something and that’s it, you’ve got to start all over again, but I think it would be good if you were boarding something and you died during the boarding action, and no-one else has taken over that ship, you’d spawn back on the last safe planet that you touched down on. You’re there, your ship is there and the fiction is that your friends brought your ship back to you. You were heavily injured in the boarding action, but they managed to get you fixed up.
So, what does this mean? CR makes it sound like the pilot will also be able to exit his ship during boarding. He also says that reverse captures (prey capturing boarding ships) are possible. Lastly, the death during boarding sounds like there is no insurance penalty (assuming no reverse capture), which cuts the downside down even more. Anybody see something I missed?
-Kinshadow
PCGN: Are the crew on the ships are hurriedly repairing it at the same time and may possibly escape?
CR: If you repel the boarders and you get some time, then you should be able to fix your ship, or if some friends turn up and help you fix it, you may be able to get it out of there.
The idea is that the bigger ships, the capital ships are almost like floating persistent instances in space. You can’t take the down and land on planets. You can take the smaller ships down and land them on a planet, and when you land it’s safe, but if I manage to capture myself a cruiser or something, I’m going to have to find a place to park it in space that’s safe, or it’s at risk of being boarded by someone else. It doesn’t get “turned off” in the way that normal ships do.
PCGN: And what happens if you’re killed during a boarding actions, if your actual character, rather than your ship, is eliminated?
CR: That’s a good question, because you’re saying that your ship’s floating, pristine, but you got killed in a boarding action?
PCGN: Possibly. You’ve talked about ships being insured and obviously a ship can be destroyed but pilots, Wing Commander-style, could eject. In a gunfight, it’s a little different when the actual bullets are hitting you rather than your vessel.
CR: Well, it’s not fun to have permadeath, so I think if you die in a boarding action you’re going to end up in much the same way that you end up if you lost your ship, back on the closest safe planet. This is something to be decided, whether in that particular case is your ship still intact, or is it a case of you lost your ship and you get your base ship back, but you wouldn’t get all your upgrades back. That really would be a matter of deciding what the penalty is for failing on a boarding action. I would be inclined to think that if you failed on a boarding action you’d end up on the closest safe planet, maybe with your ship intact, unless someone took it over while you were boarding.
PCGN: Would it be possible for people on your side, your allies, to look after your stuff and potentially make sure it gets back to you?
CR: Potentially. There’s a bunch of edge cases in all these dynamics. There’s a bunch of stuff where it’s pretty simple to say “Okay, this is the way it works,” and there’s some stuff where you’re “Okay, how correctly do you want to simulate this?” The most realistic way is to do something like the real world, where you die boarding something and that’s it, you’ve got to start all over again, but I think it would be good if you were boarding something and you died during the boarding action, and no-one else has taken over that ship, you’d spawn back on the last safe planet that you touched down on. You’re there, your ship is there and the fiction is that your friends brought your ship back to you. You were heavily injured in the boarding action, but they managed to get you fixed up.
So, what does this mean? CR makes it sound like the pilot will also be able to exit his ship during boarding. He also says that reverse captures (prey capturing boarding ships) are possible. Lastly, the death during boarding sounds like there is no insurance penalty (assuming no reverse capture), which cuts the downside down even more. Anybody see something I missed?
-Kinshadow
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