What if when ships are defeated they crash to the planet and can be scavenged by anyone who gets their first adding concepts to the game like tracker beams and hooked chains to pull enemy's closer to your territory and if the pilot is still alive when crashing he can try to steer towards his territory or land on enemy's
I would like to preface this by saying that I AM for this, but only after the devs get the initial release out, and deal with any immediate issues they find in that period before moving on to something like this. Now, I have a couple points to address here; I'll try to keep it brief, but I make no guarantees on that account. Point the first: I should like to address whatever gent said he was afraid of combat being too slow. Space combat is actually mind-numbingly fast if you are looking at the velocities involved; it is the absurd distances at which it occurs that makes it appear slow. In confined areas, such as around a planet, things appear to move markedly faster, though this is mainly a function of their being so much less space between everything. Mind you, huge battleships aren't going to be accelerating quickly or anything like that, but once it gets moving it's doing so at impressive velocity. Point the second: "space combat" is a very loose term, and could be handled any myriad of different ways. It could play out that most of the combat is managed in ship-to-ship boarding/breaching pods, with defenders either manning point-defense weaponry and others defending the actual decks and halls of the ships; fighters could be thrown into the mix, allowing forces to shoot down approaching pods, as well as engaging other fighters; the most complex and dev-intensive (read: taking a long time and great deal of dev manpower/resources) iteration has the potential to be really scaled up-- those rooting for Battlefleet Gothic could have their precious battlefleets engaging in all-out space combat including the previous options but also pitting the ships themselves against each other, allowing commanders to decide which ones to try to board and capture and which one to just blast apart with their mighty guns. This last option might even include tactics like ramming, which apparently is a thing that happens with terrifying frequency in 40K space combat. Honestly, I would love to see something as scaled-up as this, but I would say it should be a project for when the devs are bored or not busy or something. Honestly, none of the core gameplay should suffer for this. Point the third: Space Hulks or assorted derelict craft could more reasonably be added in as PvE elements (I believe this was mentioned) as an introduction, if the devs were inclined to implement it. Honestly, this would be the simplest way to go about it, as none of the complicated things that would go into "space combat at large scale" would be necessary. There's even no need to show getting to or from the Hulk; just accept the mission, go to your faction's equivalent of a landing area and you are assumed to have been transported without incident to the entry point of the hulk. Combat at this point would proceed similarly to what it would in any other PvE dungeon or hive, with the addition of particularly cramped corridors and fighting spaces, and possibly some areas where gravity is questionable. Boom, boom, boom. Good idea, (comparatively) minimal effort required for implementation, shiny new aspect of the game to explore either on its own or as a placeholder for more advanced space stuff if it were added. ...and that's about it for now. I had more to say, but as I typed, the containment field around my thoughts apparently lost integrity and they escaped. I'll be back with more, both to follow up on where this thread goes and to add more as I think of it or it comes back to me.
Don't expect it on launch, but this would be a huge and very awesome DLC if they spend enough time perfecting it.
