Naval Boarding - seizure of ships

[CheckTester]

Once upon a time, the idea of capturing a ship was presented on the forum.

https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/104332-naval-overhaul-alpha-27/

In my opinion, it is a great idea to provide the opportunity to capture an enemy ship.

My development of this idea is very simple:
Let's make it possible for one ship to be captured or seizured (intercepted, converted e.t.c) by another player's ship with a garrison.

For example: one ship that has no garrison (or fewer units) and another ship with a garrison (or two/three times more than the first) move very close to each other for a while, after which the ship becomes the possession of the player with a more powerful garrison. Much like taking over buildings.

After capture, the first ship will receive part of the second ship's garrison.

To do this, you don’t need to make animation, just add mechanics.
Of course, it would be better to take into account the forces of the units located in the garrison, but only if it looked like hand-to-hand combat (without representing the battle itself, only capturing the line, as for buildings).

And ships without a garrison could not be used for capture. Only for fights. Thus, the player can add units to the ship's garrison and go to capture another fleet.

This will add dynamics and unpredictability to naval battles.

Edited Friday at 16:54 by CheckTester

[CheckTester]

Of course, one soldier on a fishing boat should not be able to capture a large warship. But 10 warriors on a merchant ship, capturing an empty ship (conditionally empty, i.e. without a garrison) with close contact - why not.
If, of course, the boat can swim close and stay afloat for some time without being sunk.

Very suddenly, one player's unprotected fleet (without a garrison) can be intercepted by an even weaker fleet (but with a large garrison) of another. In my opinion, this would be very interesting and generally corresponds to the historical outline, when ships were captured on board.

Note: That’s why I wrote the idea about a two- or three-fold advantage of units in the garrison of a ship going on board, so that it would not be one soldier, but several.

And of course, there must be technologies that improve boarding practices. For example, “grinding hooks on ropes”, which could significantly reduce the time required to capture a ship. And vice versa, the technology “high sides” and “military commandant” to reduce the possibility of boarding a ship (increases the time for interception) even if there is no garrison. And if there is a garrison on the ship, these technologies make it very difficult or almost impossible (as with towers).

Moreover, “high sides” are only for wood. And the “military commandant” technology is only for metal.

 

.....

But these are all dreams... dreams.

 

However, maybe the developers will really like it and do it? 

Edited January 3 by CheckTester

[Arup]

I really wanted this feature of being able to capture ships, but how would one even go about implementing this? it would probably need drastic change in mechanics, and so much more. (oh yeah, cool historical balance: If this does get implemented, Kushites should get a bonus of capturing ships,due to Nastasen's historic victory against the egyptians that made him capture lots of ships)

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I think it could be done with a special boarding ship for the Romans: Corvus Quinquereme. It would come alongside the enemy ship and lower its Corvus onto it and slowly drain its loyalty. All other civs could have a late-game "Marines" tech to mildly counter this. Much like with capturing buildings, the more troops garrisoned aboard each ship affects the capturing rate (but never drops it to zero; we need to improve this with building capturing methinks).

I think showing men jumping onto enemy ships and battling it out is not feasible. Not only that, but would add tedious micro and we want to reduce the size of ships for better pathing, so the scaling would be wrong. Best to just show a capturing bar or loyalty bar slowing draining down like we do with buildings. 

[CheckTester]

@wowgetoffyourcellphone, please let us know  if there are some tickets in gitea for this idea or somebody should create it (for example me?)...

[Atrik]

I think there is no coding needed to make this. However will not look as good as you imagine: just one boat touching another, and some capture point going down for the victim boat basically.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, Atrik said:

I think there is no coding needed to make this. However will not look as good as you imagine: just one boat touching another, and some capture point going down for the victim boat basically.

I said there can be a capturing animation (the lowering of the corvus onto the other ship). Also, we can make the loyalty line show up above them and a "capturing" icon, complete with some ambient sound effects of battle. 

[Outis]

14 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I think it could be done with a special boarding ship for the Romans: Corvus Quinquereme.

So only Roman will be able to capture? Isnt that a bit odd for a civilization bonus?

[Fabius]

2 hours ago, Outis said:

So only Roman will be able to capture? Isnt that a bit odd for a civilization bonus?

No as the reference is to the Corvus that Rome utilised against the Carthaginians, most boarding would just be people jumping onto the other ship, The Romans decided to drop a whole bridge on them and board that way instead. But the corvus did pose a risk to the ships safety due to it unbalancing the vessel, so I would expect the boarding ship to be more fragile in some capacity. I quite like this as Civ bonus, it is very distinctly Roman, and as far as possible I would like to see this for all civs, things that are distinct and defining for that civilization.

[Outis]

IMHO the ability to board is too generic to be accessible to one civ only, i would rather have it available for all civs with Romans having a bonus that enhances it.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

17 hours ago, Outis said:

IMHO the ability to board is too generic to be accessible to one civ only, i would rather have it available for all civs with Romans having a bonus that enhances it.

That's fine. You could see the boarding ship throw ropes onto its target.

[LienRag]

On 04/01/2026 at 2:36 PM, Outis said:

IMHO the ability to board is too generic to be accessible to one civ only, i would rather have it available for all civs with Romans having a bonus that enhances it.

Indeed.

The Corvus ship (or tech) should be way more efficient at boarding, but not the only way to board, as it was a common tactic of the ear.

[Perzival12]

This is easy. Add capture points to ships, with ships also having a (empty) capture damage. Units can then have an aura that works on garrisoned ships, giving them capture attack.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

balance-wise, it could be good to let boarding ships fulfill a role almost identical to ram ships, but for civs that don't have ram ships (that way we don't have to be historically inaccuracy of giving ram ships to the gauls for example).

Then we could add fire ships to civs that lack those to properly build out the balance system for water.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

balance-wise, it could be good to let boarding ships fulfill a role almost identical to ram ships, but for civs that don't have ram ships (that way we don't have to be historically inaccuracy of giving ram ships to the gauls for example).

Then we could add fire ships to civs that lack those to properly build out the balance system for water.

My brother in Christ... the fire ships were supposed to be the "ram ships" for those without ramming ships, but you invented something else. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

19 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

My brother in Christ... the fire ships were supposed to be the "ram ships" for those without ramming ships, but you invented something else. 

With the price change, that is mostly true now. Also, they were not exactly the same to begin with anyway.

But you are missing the point. What I outlined above would allow for 3 main warship types to coexist for all civs, rather than forcing the fire ship and ram ship to be so similar.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

They wouldn't be 'similar,' they'd fulfill the same 'role' which is "melee ship." A boarding ship would be a fourth option (monkey wrench) outside the RPS. But, this is your show. My show is elsewhere!...   

[real_tabasco_sauce]

8 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

They wouldn't be 'similar,' they'd fulfill the same 'role' which is "melee ship." A boarding ship would be a fourth option (monkey wrench)

yeah, but you can't have RPS with two members. Trying to make siege ships participate in that system doesn't make sense, since they are available in p3 and would fulfill two roles too effectively if they countered some other ship in addition to working as siege.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

3 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

yeah, but you can't have RPS with two members. Trying to make siege ships participate in that system doesn't make sense, since they are available in p3 and would fulfill two roles too effectively if they countered some other ship in addition to working as siege.

I mean, my original design took this into account. Civs without Siege Ships have 'Naval Oxybeles' which grants some crush damage to Arrow Ships. At least they did unless that's been changed. I know you changed a lot from my initial patches. 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

3 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I mean, my original design took this into account. Civs without Siege Ships have 'Naval Oxybeles' which grants some crush damage to Arrow Ships.

yeah but that does not cut the mustard in terms of fulfilling a role in a counter system.

Overall, I think we are at a decent position for the next release, but I think we really need to scale down ships going forward. If/when someone with the talent to design such a boarding ship actor steps up to the challenge, we can resume this debate.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

29 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I think we really need to scale down ships going forward.

This has got to be done. I might work with @Stan` and try to do it. Unless someone like @nifa would be willing to take a crack at it.