Ship boarding would be fun, and exciting. It would offer players a new type of environment to enjoy (freaken space ships IN SPACE!).
[THE PROBLEM OF EVE PLAYER SHIP BOARDING]:Many have imagined systems in which mercs could be hired to cripple, destroy, steal, or steal from an EVE ship, while the ship's owner hires a defensive team of mercs.
Such scenarios would require disabling of self destruct sequences of EVE ships (though self destruct would benefit the invaders if the goal is sabotage or destruction, and would be a guaranteed economic loss, while simply hiring defense mercs gives a good chance of stopping the invasion while still keeping one's ship intact).
Conditions would have to be devised under which ship boarding could happen; like the ship must have no shields left, expensive CRU or drop uplink missiles must be fired by another EVE ship to penetrate for boarding (which means it would require coordination with EVE and Dust players).
EVE ships are insanely more expensive than merc gear, so it would be very unfair and financially imbalanced for us mercs to be able to board EVE ships, though this could be balanced out by the need for uber-expensive equipment, and coordination with an allied EVE ship.
Even with all that, there is still the problem of how to keep other EVE players from interfering (maybe cloak device to hide the ship?).
There is also the problem of how to transfer the looted ship cargo to the contractor (or war barge of the merc's corp), and how to transfer control of the ship to the contractor (or desired capsuleer). Those problems would require that the boarded ship does not escape (like temporarily paralyzed) so that an EVE ally or contractor stays nearby to receive the war spoils, or else the mercs might find themselves on a fleeing ship in the middle of nowhere with no one nearby to carry the stolen goods, or no one to transfer the ship to when its done.
As you can guess from reading this so far, doing PVP ship boarding on EVE ships would be EXTREMELY complicated, difficult, and messy (though if it can somehow work, I would totally support it). There are 2 alternatives for ship boarding left:
1) Boarding NPC ships and doing PVP: This has been suggested before in a great thread by Laurent Cazaderon in which he proposes war barge boarding as an NPC-contracted attack/defend mode.
2) Boarding NPC ships, and doing PVE: This is my suggestion. I want to invade hostile NPC ships full of PVE enemies.
SKIP HERE IF TL;DR
[SHIP BOARDING PVE MISSION]:I did some Googling earlier, and stumbled upon some pretty pictures of EVE NPC ships, like rogue drone ships (click
here,
here, and
here for the coolness). We will already be getting
rogue drones on planets as a PVE enemy in the future for Dust 514, but why not take the battle to space? These rogue drone ships could be carrying planetary rogue drones as a defense against mercs boarding them. This could lead to such a great PVE mode much more interesting than fighting off some horde infestation; we can be the infestation, and fight our way through a series of objectives and disable and entire ship, set up a bomb, and boom. This would give the sense of progression that Skirmish 1.0 had, since you have to move through the "map" (ship), and unlock more of it by completing the objectives. Objectives can include hacking doors, disabling indoor defensive systems (like a computer controlling turrets and cameras), fighting our through to the ship's "brain" to plant a bomb, all while fighting past all the hovering killer drones patrolling the corridors. Another plus could be the lack of artificial gravity, meaning that can drift through with some kind of boosters on our backs.
This kind of NPC ship boarding could also apply to
Sansha's Nation. We could board
Sansha ships, and fight our past the enslaved mind-controlled cyborg armies await us inside.
[RELATED THREADS]: EVE ship boarding (too many threads too link)
War barge fights (Laurent Cazaderon's idea)
Wildlife PVESansha's nation PVEThank you for reading.