taking captives

[brakenfur]

i think it would be cool to be able to take prisioners and take them to jail or a P.O.W camp where you can get enemy the units to leak tech or you could trade them for our units that were capcatured. Just an idea and you should probably put a surrender bottun too.

[MetalWarrior95]

You mean like to neutralize the unit to take the wrecks and to analize them?

[brakenfur]

sort of

[Saberuneko]

Something similar to that on campaign, you can take the plans from destructed buildings. Maybe some tech could appear also from destroyed units...

[brakenfur]

i mean you like put the ploits in a P.O.W camp and u bring the tank to the research center to be exambed

[lav_coyote25]

i mean you like put the ploits in a P.O.W camp and u bring the tank to the research center to be exambed

pilots ????

examined ???

just asking...

[JakeGrey]

Not sure how prisoners would work, but I like the idea of vehicles having a chance of leaving behind a wreck that could be towed back to base to provide a new item to research, and/or be put back into service for about 75% of its cost to build new. Possibly this could be a secondary function of repair turrets?

[Saberuneko]

I think it's getting too much complex. What about what I said (killed units can leave leftovers that can be simply taken and get the tech?) Just as happens with buildings atm.

[meeso]

yes it must be considered: what's the purpose of having prisoners and all that, how is this going to contribute to game play and how is it going to benefit players, how is it going to add to their advantage of the opposite. I don't think the nature of the game allows any chance for prisoners and captives just for the fun of it; as it was said several times, this is not a war management game, but a strategy game.

In low power games it could be very useful to make a mod or something that prevents units from being destroyed and causes them to just become motionless and under the control of the opponent player to send them back to factory/repair facility or turret and get them to work with own units for lower cost. Also as it is suggested here, if they use some weapon or technology that is not yet researched, they could give that technology immediately just by capturing it. That can be easily done in terms of development (i suppose) and it contributes directly to game play.

[Saberuneko]

*cough* Nexus *cough* Turret

[3drts]

O-R-B had an "Attack to Disable" option, in practice it was rarely used, but that may be due to its "manpower" system.

In short:
Your ships would attack, dealing reduced damage, when the enemy ships HP bar was nearly gone, it became "disabled".
It would only stay disabled for a short time, and unless repaired in the meantime, once it reactivated, it had to be destroyed.
While it was disabled, if you had a troop transport, you could order the troop transport to commandeer the ship.
*I think once the commandeering process started, the ship remained disabled until it was finished, or the troop transport/pods/commandos were shot off*

For capital ships, you could "incorporate" it into your fleet right there on the spot(better have some repair ships handy, because its a few HP away from death), and gain a tech boost if the ship required tech you didn't yet have (or couldn't otherwise get)
For fighters, they would need to be docked with a base/capital ship before they could be put to use (in theory you could use them as unarmed scouts), and you had the option of either recovering technology from it (scrapping the ship in the process), or putting it into service.

It was a pretty cool system, though not used much.

The troop transport would launch commandos, in these little pods.
Had a cool little animation/special unit for a commando in a space suit with a cutting laser that would get on the hull, then cut a while, and enter the ship (the pod flies back to the transport, empty) - that was for fighters/bombers and the smallest capital ships (1 pod was launched for fighters, several for the small capitals).
For carriers and assault carriers, the entire troop transport flew in the docking bay.

Of course, its manpower system doomed it - each commando took up 1 manpower.
A Malus troop transport had 1 pilot and 12 commandos, reducing the number of fighters you could field cap by 13 (cost almost as much manpower as a destroyer capital ship).
The Alyssian one was less efficient, 6 commandos, 1 pilot (7 manpower for 6 commandos, vs 13 manpower for 12), but it could still capture capital ships (anything larger than a destroyer took longer before you gained control, unless you used multiple transports), but didn't reduce the strength of your forces as much, and IMO the best use was for gaining tech, not the actual ships.
6 commandos was fine if all you really wanted was to disable a Malus ship using Anti-Matter Torpedos, to unlock that tech for the Alyssians who cannot otherwise get it.
Whereas the malus would have a minimum of 13, more than enough to capture an Alyssian ship with cloaking technology.

[brakenfur]

just forget it stupid idea

[Saberuneko]

O-R-B had an "Attack to Disable" option, in practice it was rarely used, but that may be due to its "manpower" system.

In short:
Your ships would attack, dealing reduced damage, when the enemy ships HP bar was nearly gone, it became "disabled".
It would only stay disabled for a short time, and unless repaired in the meantime, once it reactivated, it had to be destroyed.
While it was disabled, if you had a troop transport, you could order the troop transport to commandeer the ship.
*I think once the commandeering process started, the ship remained disabled until it was finished, or the troop transport/pods/commandos were shot off*

For capital ships, you could "incorporate" it into your fleet right there on the spot(better have some repair ships handy, because its a few HP away from death), and gain a tech boost if the ship required tech you didn't yet have (or couldn't otherwise get)
For fighters, they would need to be docked with a base/capital ship before they could be put to use (in theory you could use them as unarmed scouts), and you had the option of either recovering technology from it (scrapping the ship in the process), or putting it into service.

It was a pretty cool system, though not used much.

The troop transport would launch commandos, in these little pods.
Had a cool little animation/special unit for a commando in a space suit with a cutting laser that would get on the hull, then cut a while, and enter the ship (the pod flies back to the transport, empty) - that was for fighters/bombers and the smallest capital ships (1 pod was launched for fighters, several for the small capitals).
For carriers and assault carriers, the entire troop transport flew in the docking bay.

Of course, its manpower system doomed it - each commando took up 1 manpower.
A Malus troop transport had 1 pilot and 12 commandos, reducing the number of fighters you could field cap by 13 (cost almost as much manpower as a destroyer capital ship).
The Alyssian one was less efficient, 6 commandos, 1 pilot (7 manpower for 6 commandos, vs 13 manpower for 12), but it could still capture capital ships (anything larger than a destroyer took longer before you gained control, unless you used multiple transports), but didn't reduce the strength of your forces as much, and IMO the best use was for gaining tech, not the actual ships.
6 commandos was fine if all you really wanted was to disable a Malus ship using Anti-Matter Torpedos, to unlock that tech for the Alyssians who cannot otherwise get it.
Whereas the malus would have a minimum of 13, more than enough to capture an Alyssian ship with cloaking technology.

O.R.B. was a great game, the manpower is something that you could easily override by taking asteroids (+5 manpower), and improving them to bases (+10/+15 manpower, depending on the upgrade).
Also, researching the "Formation" branch would give you more and more manpower. Let's say, that I rarely had problems of manpower if started to expand fast...

Now I'm playing StarRuler, which has some similar capturing system, but manpower (for ships) is not limited, due to de HUGE scale battles. That could make it, anyway as the OP said, the idea is hard to implement, and units CAN already be taken over with Nexus Turrets, so have nothing to change, since enemy units/buildings can be captured anyway.

[3drts]

Ummm... not to go too far off on ORB, but there weren't that many suitable asteroids on most standard maps.
Starting MP was also a consideration, a low starting MP vs a high starting MP had a big effect, as for each map you could only add a finite amount of MP to your total.

http://www.o-r-b.com/info/Technology.as ... =TechTable

Through the *academics* research, you could get +50 manpower, at quite a cost (each level getting more and more expensive, 3,000 total)- Thats the price of 2 destroyers, or 60 light fighters.
although it was more effective than building on asteroids, and you couldn't lose the MP (though I think you should have lost it if you lost your starbase).
3,000 RUs, just to get enough manpower to field 1 additional assault carrier.
Its even worse if you did the upgrades from Repair bases to Military bases, at 1000 RU for an extra 5 mp, then its 10,000 RU to field one additional assault carrier (5,000 for upgrading mining colonies to repair bases).

Now factor in all the other ships you need: freighters, unarmed carriers, fighters, repair ships, survey ships, I rarely had enough MP to field 3 destroyers + a good fighter screen, while still having a good economy going (as like WZ, upgrades were important and expensive, and it took a lot of research to be able to produce an assault carrier, and even more research to be able to produce one with a hyper drive, and IMO it was so slow, that it wasn't worth producing one without the hyperdrive)

Consider the map Forair cluster: 1 minable asteroid near each base. 4 in asteroid belt, 2 in the center, 2 more on the outskirts.
each one yielded +10 MP for a mining colony.
If you had half the minable asteroids on the map, you had 5 mining colonies: + 50 mp.
Start with 20 MP-> you've got 70 MP.
You want at least 4 freighters: -20 MP, 50 MP left
You want at least 1 basic unarmed carrier to dramatically speed up resource collection (like a HW resource controller): -15 MP, 35 MP left
You want about 30 fighters (or 40, but you may reduce this number later): -30 MP, 5 MP left.
At least 1 repair ship -2 MP, at least 1 recon/survey ship(preferably 2-3) -2 MP: 1 MP left.

Now you actually have to completely empty the mines of resources (hollow it out) before you can upgrade them to repair bases, and military bases, not to mention military bases took a lot of research, that you likely won't get to for most of the game:
Realistically, you'd have emptied 1-2 asteroids and upgraded to by the time the game has been decided (but still not finished): +10 MP.
11 MP left.
You probably would have gotten to the third level of academics research: + 30 MP
41 MP left, almost enough for 3 destroyers (45 needed)!

Oh wait.... you need to assign MP to research, lets call that -10 MP
If covert ops is enabled (it was in most games), you need to assign MPs to espionage and counter espionage, otherwise the enemy may steal your tech if you get a tech lead, gets info on the most powerful ships you possess, and routine sabatoge will lower your available MP and slow construction, lets call that -5 MP.
41-15 = 26 MP: almost enough for 1 armed carrier....
Oh, and you need to be able to put up 5 MP to make a ship to make a new mining colony for anything you capture (though you can temporarily reduce research staff by 5).
But in your favor, I think the initial starting mining colony ship + recon ship don't count toward your MP limit (so its actually 27 starting MP for a 20 MP start).

So you spend another 1800 to get the next 2 levels of "academics" to get +20 MP, and you can now just barely field 1 Assault carrier, and you win the game.

Needless to say, with all the fighting and attrition prior to this point (particularly before all the mineable asteroids had been colonized), digging up another 13 manpower to field a troop transport, and still win the battle so you could disable and capture the last few ships/ a major capital ship (which you would still need the manpower to crew after capture), was quite a problem in many games

Although for forair, a 50:50 split in the rings and outer 2 'roids is likely, but not so in the center asteroid cluster, so add +10 to one side, and -10 to the other, as the center 2 mineable ones will only go to one side.

Although I think you could set the slider as high as 60 starting MP, and there were some maps that had more mineable asteroids with less minerals in each one. I think the mineable asteroids could also yield up to +15 MP when a colony was built on them depending on the specific asteroid and the specific map (so you could make a map where all roids yielded +15 MP).

Also, by the time you get out an Assault Carrier with Hyperdrive, you probably don't have much research left to do, and can cut your research staff to zero.
But by that point, the game was won, and there were basically no techs left to steal, using a troop transport to steal enemy ships would have no point.

The Alyssian Assault carrier was very Aptly named "Victory" : get one of those out (with Hyperdrive) before the enemy got an Assault Carrier out, and Victory was yours.

Their mass rating was high enough that a Starbase could not survive being rammed (neither could your Victory class carrier).
First thing I'd do, is jump them right to the enemy starbase.
If they had adequate defenses and the shields were failing, or I could see an enemy assault carrier under construction in the enemy starbase: Kamakaze time!
Basically, a 7,000 RU anti starbase weapon: sure it could build 4 fighters/frigates at once, had enourmous armor, shields, and firepower, could store your entire dockable fleet, and serve as a resource drop off point, but it could also exit a hyperjump directly into an enemy starbase, obliterating both of them.
Your Manpower will recover, and at that point thats just 7 loads from heavy freighters to pay back the cost, the enemy can't produce any more capital ships, and its just a matter of cleaning up.

Of course, if the starbase is only lightly defended, and all the enemy forces are at forward positions, and its not about to launch its own AC at any moment, you might as well try to take it out without losing your assault carrier, and then it can stand and fight the enemy counter attack, while your forces that didn't/cant jump advance upon the remaining enemy colonies.
(Bonus points if your AC can charge its hyperdrive before enemy capital ships arrive, and leave to attack another colony:
Being the first to get hyperdrive equipped ships rocked)