Yesterday in single player, I was defending a planet with a Novalith Cannon from an enemy assault. One thought that crossed my mind was,
"Thank goodness they can't capture this thing."
Which got me thinking. Instead of being forced to destroy everything in sight, why not simply capture them? It seems fairly wasteful, for instance, to have to destroy resource extractors; only to rebuild them. Even if they were initially constructed by different races, this doesn't seem to really matter (read: Capture Extractor ability).
This would only apply to a few orbital structures. Advent forces capturing a Vitruska Imperial Lab would find it pretty useless (say, a thousand times worse than Windows/Mac portability). But Phase Jump Disruptors, for instance, are the same thing for all the races. And it would be pretty easy for a strike force to figure out how to work a Guass defense platform.
So, my proposal. All capital ships (except perhaps the planet seigers) and perhaps colonizers can send a strike team to certain structure types (listed shortly). There would be a percentage chance of success, depending on the planet's allegiance. This would probably be an ability. Like all abilities, it would depend on antimatter and range. The higher the level of this ability, the greater chance of success.
As the strike team fights the crew of the structure, the structure may take damage as the crew attempts to scuttle it. But the lower the planet's allegiance, the less the crew fights. If subdued, the crew agrees to show the enemy forces to operate the structure, or even assist them in doing so.
So, the structures that can be captured, cross-race (same-race structures can be captured no matter what):
- Defense platforms. These would be fairly easy to work out how to use.
- Phase Jump Disruptors. They're the same thing across all races, so the boarders wouldn't even have to interrogate the crew.
- Hangar Defense. These would be more tricky to capture. Advent versions would require a lot of crew cooperation, as it seems as if their strike craft are controlled telikenetically.
- Repair platforms. The basic idea of how they work is roughly similar across the races.
- Resource extractors.
- Trade Ports. They already accomodate ships from different races via Trade Alliances.
- Broadcast Centers. These would be harder to capture, but they all use the same basic phase technology to transmit.
- Refineries. Ore is heated and refined. This system can't be too different across the races.
- Super-weapons. These would be really hard to capture, but they could be considered enormous versions of Defense platforms.
I don't yet own Entrenchment, so I'm probably missing out on a lot of structures. But from what I've heard about Starbases, they probably can't be captured.
