Assuming radiation kills some aliens. Water might be enough. It depends on their chemical makeup, if they are made of chemicals. But yes, the killing of crew could have an interesting effect.Crimson wrote: Your post actually got me to thinking that "Crew" might in fact be a pretty tactical feature of ship to ship combat. If one heads in the MOO2 individual ship direction over the MOO1 stack of ships direction - adding the ability to pack weapons design to kill crew members instead of destroying ships might be a rather interesting dimension to integrate into ship to ship combat. Radiation weaponry and such could provide an interesting alternative to missiles and railguns.
Yes, if you were a fleet if uber evil humans that liked killing crew, then they would deserve to die at the hands of the invinvible Meklon fleet.Crimson wrote: So a path that designs multiple distinct ways to lose a fight also creates multiple distinct strategies by which you could win a fight. Having to scramble to refit your ships because you run into a fleet of unmanned ships that your radiation weapons are powerless against would indeed be an interesting dimension to gameplay.
It seems that Machines races have lots of bonuses, no crew, no food (although they would need some kind of sustainance to get energy).
If you think of a large ship, it is like a animal, but big and mechanical. It may have vains, and sections that allow the flow of chemicals or energy. There may be areas that are able to be walked through, although not necesarily friendly. Some marines could just cut their way in there. If its purely thick steel, then they'll be cutting a long time. But if it comes to a clearing of some kind, whatever is there eg wires, etc the Marines will get a shock by whatever is their.Crimson wrote:I'm gonna nitpick that since I'm good at it. If a ship was controlled by a central computer, why would it have decks at all. Nobody can board a ship if there is nothing inside the ship to merit boarding it, so I figure automated marines would be wholly unnecessary for a mechanical / computer directed race. Getting hacked sure would be a bummer though.Some ships that are controlled by some central homeworld computer, eg hive mind would have no crew, except terminator robots for ship boarding defense.