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[Silas Vitalia]

reality shows

I seriously hope you're joking.

I might hesitate to call my mother a variety of synonyms for "fucking idiot" to her face for thinking "reality TV" is anything but scripted to the point that CCP's live events look like an improv troupe in comparison, but I've no such hesitation with anyone else.

No no no I'm talking late 80s and early 90s COPS on FOX.  Those were certainly not scripted.

Not today's variety for sure

I loved watching COPS, but I don't know what you were watching.  Back in the 90s, when they'd run people down, you'd see the cops chasing down and hammer-locking crack dealers so quickly you'd think they were just tackling them.  When the camera finally catches up, they've got suspects in one-handed stress positions while they search them.

Maybe you'd have to have tackled people in a retail store while they're tweaking to appreciate how hard that is.  Once, it took me and two 200 lbs security guards to hold down one methhead until he finally wore himself out.  We couldn't move him until then.

Like I said, it's not flashy or impressive looking, but one of the reasons I liked watching COPS was that, every now and then, you'd get to see a cop actually catch one of them.  Most of the time, by the time the camera caught up, the guy was on the ground.

And I like seeing people tasered.

I think that is my point, it's them chasing people down and tackling and then holding on to them with a few of their friends on top, not close-quarters martial arts.   but we way off topic

[Vic Van Meter]

reality shows

I seriously hope you're joking.

I might hesitate to call my mother a variety of synonyms for "fucking idiot" to her face for thinking "reality TV" is anything but scripted to the point that CCP's live events look like an improv troupe in comparison, but I've no such hesitation with anyone else.

No no no I'm talking late 80s and early 90s COPS on FOX.  Those were certainly not scripted.

Not today's variety for sure

I loved watching COPS, but I don't know what you were watching.  Back in the 90s, when they'd run people down, you'd see the cops chasing down and hammer-locking crack dealers so quickly you'd think they were just tackling them.  When the camera finally catches up, they've got suspects in one-handed stress positions while they search them.

Maybe you'd have to have tackled people in a retail store while they're tweaking to appreciate how hard that is.  Once, it took me and two 200 lbs security guards to hold down one methhead until he finally wore himself out.  We couldn't move him until then.

Like I said, it's not flashy or impressive looking, but one of the reasons I liked watching COPS was that, every now and then, you'd get to see a cop actually catch one of them.  Most of the time, by the time the camera caught up, the guy was on the ground.

And I like seeing people tasered.

I think that is my point, it's them chasing people down and tackling and then holding on to them with a few of their friends on top, not close-quarters martial arts.   but we way off topic

Well, I don't think we're so off topic.  It's really about what kind of martial arts capsuleers would probably know.  It doesn't look flashy or pretty and it's usually over in a few seconds, but I'd be more afraid of that than a tae kwon do expert.  That's probably the most common method of hand-to-hand combat capsuleers know.  To say they know martial arts isn't really that crazy, as long as everyone doesn't know ten forms of kung-fu.

[Gaven Lok ri]

I think a wide variety of martial arts being known makes a lot of sense, especially for the combat pilot types. Whether the martial art is functional or art/meditation is likely to depend heavily on the character.

For example: I have Gaven know swordplay and wear a saber on his dress uniform as a way of signalling the military aristocratic background. He would never actually use that in a personal confrontation, because in any situation where a personal confrontation might happen he is going to be surrounded by body guards. The family tradition of learning swordplay is more of a reference to the fact that the family traces its origins back to when the Amarr were using swords and then a form of meditation/exercise.

I would expect characters with more down to earth backgrounds to have more down to earth and functional martial arts. Similarly, I would expect people of some backgrounds to have no martial arts at all. From the sounds of things, this last group is a bit underrepresented.

[Lyn Farel]

Well no, they're not Chuck Norris.  They don't learn karate.  Hybrid styles aren't pretty, flashy, or fun to watch, really.  Like the most boring and effective parts of MMA fighting.  They probably don't look like martial arts experts because they aren't breaking boards with tae kwon do kicks.  But that really depends on what you'd define as a martial arts expert.  Most cops don't look or seem threatening, as Arista said, they're trained to not do their best Clint Eastwood impression.  However, it's logical that if your life would someday depend on being able to defend yourself from some drug dealer who had concealed a knife, you'd take it very seriously.

Most of a police officer's success in that arena comes from tactical control of a situation.  You don't know it, but every routine question and traffic stop is carefully scripted and calculated to provide them with the most control of any situation they walk into so that, if someone they're dealing with decides to start a fight, they're always in a position to immediately fight back.  So you may not see pretty judo hip throws all the time, but you'll hear about bones being cracked, tendons snapped, that sort of thing.

I've known better than to give a cop any reason to think I might not be on the level, and I live in a pretty good part of Ohio.  They may not be Georges St Pierre, but cops are a lot more skilled than most people know.  There was a guy I lived next to in Houston who reached for his cell phone when he was supposed to have his hands on the wall while a cop frisked him.  He ended up having his wrist snapped and shoulder separated.  He was still in a cast and sling when he got out of jail.

Cops are like anyone else, they may know some tricks, it certainly does not protect them, even from the local dealer. I have watched many videos of my local equivalent of the criminal enforcement police / public safety. Those are selected over contests, are trained in self defense (hand to hand or firearms), carry semi automatic pistols, batons, some can carry shotguns or SMGs when needed, tasers, flashballs, etc. They often are seen in rough situations, but they will NEVER intervene when they are less than 5 or 6 of them (or more). To begin, they never are alone. Then, when they are just two of them, they NEVER intervene, it's forbidden for their safety. Even those guys can not, so why other cops would ? That sounds like stupid heroism to me. And those are part of the best (not counting specially trained police like SWAT teams, who are playing on another level). And they still don't do stupid things like counting on their skills alone, because no matter how good they are, it only works when conditions are in their favour.

Apply that to capsuleers now... Unless maybe if they are some kind of super augmented soldier...

It's not because you can neutralize the average joe/dealer that you are safe. In those situations, I am a staunch believer that the more resistance you show, the more quickly you will end up quite dead. Well, take that as a subjective and very biased opinion since I have never been able to understand the american mindset on firearms, it just sounds completely silly to me, like shooting oneself in the foot. So, maybe my inability to understand comes from there.

reality shows

I seriously hope you're joking.

I might hesitate to call my mother a variety of synonyms for "fucking idiot" to her face for thinking "reality TV" is anything but scripted to the point that CCP's live events look like an improv troupe in comparison, but I've no such hesitation with anyone else.

No no no I'm talking late 80s and early 90s COPS on FOX.  Those were certainly not scripted.

Not today's variety for sure

I loved watching COPS, but I don't know what you were watching.  Back in the 90s, when they'd run people down, you'd see the cops chasing down and hammer-locking crack dealers so quickly you'd think they were just tackling them.  When the camera finally catches up, they've got suspects in one-handed stress positions while they search them.

Maybe you'd have to have tackled people in a retail store while they're tweaking to appreciate how hard that is.  Once, it took me and two 200 lbs security guards to hold down one methhead until he finally wore himself out.  We couldn't move him until then.

Like I said, it's not flashy or impressive looking, but one of the reasons I liked watching COPS was that, every now and then, you'd get to see a cop actually catch one of them.  Most of the time, by the time the camera caught up, the guy was on the ground.

And I like seeing people tasered.

Do you think they just do it like that after snaping their fingers ? There is a whole preparation before, as you said above, it's tactically planned. They are not aggressed, they are the ones acting...

When you are the one aggressed, it most of the time ends up very wrong for you. Especially if you resist. The only case where you have nothing to lose is if you are sure that your aggressors actually want to kill you...

Not saying that capsuleers doing martial arts is wrong, of course not. It can prove interesting ICly. I have even had my character try it once of twice with corpmates. But most of the reasons invoked just seem so out of reality to me that... I don't know vOv

[Natalcya Katla]

The way I see it, any kind of close-quarter fighting in EVE developed for use inside a spaceship or for that matter a station would have to be primarily designed to defend against drones, not people, because drones are the kind of boarders you'd have any reasonable chance of facing. You don't send a man to do a machine's job, and you definitely don't send a bunch of meatbags encumbered by all kinds of essential survival equipment into the corridors of a hostile spaceship, where they're liable to be flushed out, or gassed, or shot to pieces, or have artificial gravity on defense settings fling them about like cats in a tumbledryer. You send a machine, a tough machine, and if meatbags are involved in the action at all, their role is to sit snug in their cozy work stations aboard their own ship, from where they can puppeteer their electronic friends in reasonable safety.

It's the way I envision internal security onboard ships or stations to work as well, tbh. You catch one whiff of trouble, you evacuate the area to the extent in which it's feasible to do so, you close the bulkheads, you pump the area full of knockout gas or whatever, you turn the gravity settings up to eleven if you have to in order to keep the troublemakers put, and then you send drones in to clean up.

[Elmund Egivand]

The way I see it, any kind of close-quarter fighting in EVE developed for use inside a spaceship or for that matter a station would have to be primarily designed to defend against drones, not people, because drones are the kind of boarders you'd have any reasonable chance of facing. You don't send a man to do a machine's job, and you definitely don't send a bunch of meatbags encumbered by all kinds of essential survival equipment into the corridors of a hostile spaceship, where they're liable to be flushed out, or gassed, or shot to pieces, or have artificial gravity on defense settings fling them about like cats in a tumbledryer. You send a machine, a tough machine, and if meatbags are involved in the action at all, their role is to sit snug in their cozy work stations aboard their own ship, from where they can puppeteer their electronic friends in reasonable safety.

It's the way I envision internal security onboard ships or stations to work as well, tbh. You catch one whiff of trouble, you evacuate the area to the extent in which it's feasible to do so, you close the bulkheads, you pump the area full of knockout gas or whatever, you turn the gravity settings up to eleven if you have to in order to keep the troublemakers put, and then you send drones in to clean up.

Sounds like my last playthrough of FTL.

I think you made a mistake of thinking all boarders or all ships are Gallente. The use of drones to board or deter boarders is something I imagine a Gallente would do. However, not all ships are crawling up to their necks in drones. Amarr ships are operated by slaves and labourers and are unlikely to use drones to board. More likely they send Kameiras or Paladins to do it. Caldari will, of course, send their fascist jackboots considering that they are no fan of automation either. Minmatar? Unleash the rabid Brutor!

[Natalcya Katla]

Sounds like my last playthrough of FTL.

I think you made a mistake of thinking all boarders or all ships are Gallente. The use of drones to board or deter boarders is something I imagine a Gallente would do. However, not all ships are crawling up to their necks in drones. Amarr ships are operated by slaves and labourers and are unlikely to use drones to board. More likely they send Kameiras or Paladins to do it. Caldari will, of course, send their fascist jackboots considering that they are no fan of automation either. Minmatar? Unleash the rabid Brutor!

If that is indeed the case, Gallente are the only ones who have a reasonable chance at all of succeeding in a boarding attempt unless the enemy ship has been blasted into a derelict state beforehand (in which case it still makes more sense to send in drones rather than people).

I don't buy that, though. The Federation may be the faction most known for extensive drone use, but they hardly have a monopoly on them. If you can afford a spaceship (especially one designed for combat), you can afford to have drones on it. If you can afford highly trained and possibly cybernetically enhanced marines or Kameiras or what have you, you can afford to hire drone technicians instead, probably for much cheaper, and save your meatbag soldiers for parades or for dirtside duty, where such things as direction and force of gravity, breathable air, etc are reasonable constants and not arbitrary values easily manipulated by the flick of a switch or a moment of a capsuleer pilot's attention.

[Elmund Egivand]

Sounds like my last playthrough of FTL.

I think you made a mistake of thinking all boarders or all ships are Gallente. The use of drones to board or deter boarders is something I imagine a Gallente would do. However, not all ships are crawling up to their necks in drones. Amarr ships are operated by slaves and labourers and are unlikely to use drones to board. More likely they send Kameiras or Paladins to do it. Caldari will, of course, send their fascist jackboots considering that they are no fan of automation either. Minmatar? Unleash the rabid Brutor!

If that is indeed the case, Gallente are the only ones who have a reasonable chance at all of succeeding in a boarding attempt unless the enemy ship has been blasted into a derelict state beforehand (in which case it still makes more sense to send in drones rather than people).

I don't buy that, though. The Federation may be the faction most known for extensive drone use, but they hardly have a monopoly on them. If you can afford a spaceship (especially one designed for combat), you can afford to have drones on it. If you can afford highly trained and possibly cybernetically enhanced marines or Kameiras or what have you, you can afford to hire drone technicians instead, probably for much cheaper, and save your meatbag soldiers for parades or for dirtside duty, where such things as direction and force of gravity, breathable air, etc are reasonable constants and not arbitrary values easily manipulated by the flick of a switch or a moment of a capsuleer pilot's attention.

I like you to read this page:
https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/New_Eden_crew_guidelines

By the logic displayed in this page, we can say that since the Gallente invest ALOT in automation technology due to low number of military personnel in respect of civilian pool, they will have the tech to coordinate drone activities in their hallways to fight off boarders or to board.

Compared to the very, very old fashioned Amarr or Caldari. Amarr and Caldari systems use alot of human resources, and by diverting resources to human labour pool instead of automation, it means you are far more likely to find humans stalking their hallways. The Minmatar are not exactly very good at automation either, so they rely more on human resources.

And yes, contrary to popular belief, ship resources are not unlimited, so you can't just install drone defenses and then go home and get some snacks. What you can put in your ship is still very much limited by powergrid and CPU, as well as places to put the necessary devices for said systems. That means, yes, some ships may allow for efficient control of gravity and what not, but not ALL ships. Amarr ships probably doesn't have that in place at all and probably just throw slaves and Paladins at boarders until they go away. Minmatar is more likely to engineer deliberate workplace 'accidents' to screw with boarders. Caldari? Evacuate personnel to designated defensive position (chokes and armoury) and open fire. 

[Natalcya Katla]

I like you to read this page:
https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/New_Eden_crew_guidelines

By the logic displayed in this page, we can say that since the Gallente invest ALOT in automation technology due to low number of military personnel in respect of civilian pool, they will have the tech to coordinate drone activities in their hallways to fight off boarders or to board.

Compared to the very, very old fashioned Amarr or Caldari. Amarr and Caldari systems use alot of human resources, and by diverting resources to human labour pool instead of automation, it means you are far more likely to find humans stalking their hallways. The Minmatar are not exactly very good at automation either, so they rely more on human resources.

And yes, contrary to popular belief, ship resources are not unlimited, so you can't just install drone defenses and then go home and get some snacks. What you can put in your ship is still very much limited by powergrid and CPU, as well as places to put the necessary devices for said systems. That means, yes, some ships may allow for efficient control of gravity and what not, but not ALL ships. Amarr ships probably doesn't have that in place at all and probably just throw slaves and Paladins at boarders until they go away. Minmatar is more likely to engineer deliberate workplace 'accidents' to screw with boarders. Caldari? Evacuate personnel to designated defensive position (chokes and armoury) and open fire.

The article you linked says there's quite a lot of automation onboard Amarr ships, actually. In any case, none of this really challenges my argument much. If you don't have boarding drones or even shipboard drones, fine. The sensible thing to do in that case is not to send human boarding parties. The sensible thing to do in that case is to not engage in boarding actions at all, because you don't have the tools required for the job. And if human soldiers are your primary defence against getting boarded yourself, the sensible thing to do is not to teach them how to disable other people, but how to disable boarding drones - because if they ever do get boarded, that is exactly what they will face. A few possible exceptions might occur in, say, Caldari vs. Caldari faceoffs, but I'd still put my money on the defenders coming out on top in most of those situations, too. Even with little automation, it seems incredibly easy for defenders to turn their ship into an absolute death trap for any hostile human boarding party that dares to set foot onboard.

[Elmund Egivand]

I like you to read this page:
https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/New_Eden_crew_guidelines

By the logic displayed in this page, we can say that since the Gallente invest ALOT in automation technology due to low number of military personnel in respect of civilian pool, they will have the tech to coordinate drone activities in their hallways to fight off boarders or to board.

Compared to the very, very old fashioned Amarr or Caldari. Amarr and Caldari systems use alot of human resources, and by diverting resources to human labour pool instead of automation, it means you are far more likely to find humans stalking their hallways. The Minmatar are not exactly very good at automation either, so they rely more on human resources.

And yes, contrary to popular belief, ship resources are not unlimited, so you can't just install drone defenses and then go home and get some snacks. What you can put in your ship is still very much limited by powergrid and CPU, as well as places to put the necessary devices for said systems. That means, yes, some ships may allow for efficient control of gravity and what not, but not ALL ships. Amarr ships probably doesn't have that in place at all and probably just throw slaves and Paladins at boarders until they go away. Minmatar is more likely to engineer deliberate workplace 'accidents' to screw with boarders. Caldari? Evacuate personnel to designated defensive position (chokes and armoury) and open fire.

The article you linked says there's quite a lot of automation onboard Amarr ships, actually. In any case, none of this really challenges my argument much. If you don't have boarding drones or even shipboard drones, fine. The sensible thing to do in that case is not to send human boarding parties. The sensible thing to do in that case is to not engage in boarding actions at all, because you don't have the tools required for the job. And if human soldiers are your primary defence against getting boarded yourself, the sensible thing to do is not to teach them how to disable other people, but how to disable boarding drones - because if they ever do get boarded, that is exactly what they will face. A few possible exceptions might occur in, say, Caldari vs. Caldari faceoffs, but I'd still put my money on the defenders coming out on top in most of those situations, too. Even with little automation, it seems incredibly easy for defenders to turn their ship into an absolute death trap for any hostile human boarding party that dares to set foot onboard.

I can give reasons for 'why board ships'. Amarr and Blood Raiders will want slaves. Might not have the drones suitable for the job therefore send human boarders. Sansha wants genetic stock. Probably send True Slaves to do it, which is still pretty vulnerable to CQC considering that they are still mostly flesh. Caldari might send human boarders if the ship they are boarding happens to belong to a rival corp and is carrying trade secrets.

And yes, turning ships into death traps is easy. There are so many ambush points and chokes it's not funny. However, when has that ever stopped the use of humans for the siege? If the boarder's only resources are humans, they will have alot of humans to throw into the firepit. Expect the boarders to outnumber the defenders by a significant number, and possibly very well armed and well armored. Anything less is doomed to failure.

[Druur Monakh]

The way I write it, Druur has received melee combat training during her time in the military, but due to disuse she's no longer really good at it. Good enough to fight off a drunk or two in a bar, but not good enough to take down an experienced brawler. Similar, she still has the reflex to reach for her sidearm (a pistol of some kind, I left it intentionally unspecific), but she no longer carries one as she does not have the time to keep being good with it (though that might change).

Yes, pistols are tricky to handle - it's surprising how hard it can be to reliably hit a non-moving target only 10m away.

She misses her sidearm, though. And her military-grade combat body enhancements.

Apropos, one thing I noticed in the Wikipedia article about Combatives is that one of the three possible options to take is "disengage to regain projectile weapon range". And later on: "It is made clear that while combatives can be used to kill or disable, the man that typically wins a hand-to-hand fight in combat is the one whose allies arrive with guns first."

[Vic Van Meter]

I like you to read this page:
https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/New_Eden_crew_guidelines

By the logic displayed in this page, we can say that since the Gallente invest ALOT in automation technology due to low number of military personnel in respect of civilian pool, they will have the tech to coordinate drone activities in their hallways to fight off boarders or to board.

Compared to the very, very old fashioned Amarr or Caldari. Amarr and Caldari systems use alot of human resources, and by diverting resources to human labour pool instead of automation, it means you are far more likely to find humans stalking their hallways. The Minmatar are not exactly very good at automation either, so they rely more on human resources.

And yes, contrary to popular belief, ship resources are not unlimited, so you can't just install drone defenses and then go home and get some snacks. What you can put in your ship is still very much limited by powergrid and CPU, as well as places to put the necessary devices for said systems. That means, yes, some ships may allow for efficient control of gravity and what not, but not ALL ships. Amarr ships probably doesn't have that in place at all and probably just throw slaves and Paladins at boarders until they go away. Minmatar is more likely to engineer deliberate workplace 'accidents' to screw with boarders. Caldari? Evacuate personnel to designated defensive position (chokes and armoury) and open fire.

The article you linked says there's quite a lot of automation onboard Amarr ships, actually. In any case, none of this really challenges my argument much. If you don't have boarding drones or even shipboard drones, fine. The sensible thing to do in that case is not to send human boarding parties. The sensible thing to do in that case is to not engage in boarding actions at all, because you don't have the tools required for the job. And if human soldiers are your primary defence against getting boarded yourself, the sensible thing to do is not to teach them how to disable other people, but how to disable boarding drones - because if they ever do get boarded, that is exactly what they will face. A few possible exceptions might occur in, say, Caldari vs. Caldari faceoffs, but I'd still put my money on the defenders coming out on top in most of those situations, too. Even with little automation, it seems incredibly easy for defenders to turn their ship into an absolute death trap for any hostile human boarding party that dares to set foot onboard.

There's a few problems with that though, the first of which comes to mind that while the outside of the ship is heavily armored and shielded, the inside is a different story.  Boarders don't need to rush to the center immediately to do significant amounts of damage.  Second thing that comes to mind is that I'm assuming that, if you're piercing the hull in order to board anything, you've done so in some sort of suit that is resistant to the harsh vicissitudes of space.  You can turn your ship into an automated death trap that you can activate at will, but odds are that before you've evacuated the ship, boarders would simply cut the power.

That wouldn't always be a problem, as if you're the one defending the ship, you've got goons for that kind of thing.

That's not always the case if you're the one trying to take the ship and what you'll do when you're on it.  EVE the game may be very limited in the scope of things you can do, but EVE the setting is rife with cool stuff you could RP.  Say you want a cool backstory for your ship, and you decided to stow on board, sneak and fight your way to the front, and take off in it rather than say, "Yeah, I bought it for 50m ISK I got from doing the same job for the same agents over and over again."  A character could have originally been one of those boarders, and made his bones doing one of the most dangerous jobs in space warfare.  Maybe while affecting repairs, a character had to kill a set of boarders starting with a piece of sharp shrapnel with electrical tape wound around one end.  Blood Raiders and Sansha have a need not only to board ships with living hosts, but to then incapacitate them.  There are lots of reasons for the interested storyteller that boarding scenarios and hand-to-hand combat might be important.

Mostly, if it comes up in the context of one of our capsuleers, it's a characterization element.  Some people see the capsule as a haven, as a way to cheat death.  So they're very paranoid about security and find time outside the capsule to make them feel vulnerable.  Those people would likely not practice or need hand-to-hand combat.  But to do that says something about the character.

Likewise, if your capsuleer has no problem braining a boarder with a spanner and had a long, storied career in doing things the personal way, your character probably knows and routinely utilizes those skills.  That says something about a character, as well.

In all honesty, this stuff is a characterization element.  We're not going to find unarmed combat to be useful in the actual gameplay of EVE, so I think it's important more to know this stuff from the standpoint of a character's background.  I'd imagine the people with some kind of training to be high, though, as so many had military or police training or learned some style of combat or two by heritage.

[Silas Vitalia]

There are plenty of reasons to want to board a ship in a hostile manner in the EVE universe, and plenty of factions that probably have a lot of experience in these matters.

We have to get a little past the 'doesn't make sense' part of it sometimes, though;  if we peer too deeply into that rabbit hole a lot of the IP falls apart immediately.


What makes for a good story usually trumps the 'what would likely happen' for me every time.

Vader and stormtroopers boarding the rebel blockade runner and having a shootout in the corridor is much more exciting than vader flooding the blockade runner with poison gas and a drone running in to finish everyone.


In my little corner of the universe I'd put the 'combat' on ships as a mixture of close quarters gun fights, occasional automated defensive systems or 'special' things happening, and lots of people being shot.  It's all about balance for a good story, a few cool things and lots of cannon fodder. 

I really need to get to work on my 'pirate' combat stuff I've been kicking around for a while

[Druur Monakh]

Yes, I'm late to the thread.

I believe the technology exists - there are in existence comprehensive virtual reality devices, capable of simulating to the user a convincing set of sensations - the chronicle "Particle Tracks" features this in the meeting between Yani and Muryia.

My take-away from that story (one of the few which I read and enjoyed) was that while this technology exists, it is anything but widespread. In fact, I can imagine tha plugging your ship into your nervous system only works because the total information flow is less than what a normal body produces. Capsuleers need training because the information is different, and of course because they need to learn how to reconnect to their own body upon unplugging, but I don't think that volume is the issue.

But even if we assume that there is technology capable of sustaining the information flow from the controlling human towards the remote puppet - you still need the technology to create such a meat puppet. As far as I read it, "Particle Tracks" covered only the capturing and mental replication of mental telemetry, not actual control of physical bodies.

[Vic Van Meter]

There are plenty of reasons to want to board a ship in a hostile manner in the EVE universe, and plenty of factions that probably have a lot of experience in these matters.

We have to get a little past the 'doesn't make sense' part of it sometimes, though;  if we peer too deeply into that rabbit hole a lot of the IP falls apart immediately.


What makes for a good story usually trumps the 'what would likely happen' for me every time.

Vader and stormtroopers boarding the rebel blockade runner and having a shootout in the corridor is much more exciting than vader flooding the blockade runner with poison gas and a drone running in to finish everyone.


In my little corner of the universe I'd put the 'combat' on ships as a mixture of close quarters gun fights, occasional automated defensive systems or 'special' things happening, and lots of people being shot.  It's all about balance for a good story, a few cool things and lots of cannon fodder. 

I really need to get to work on my 'pirate' combat stuff I've been kicking around for a while

What would be awesome is if the Sansha just built a few brain-slaves into ten-foot tall walking killer Borg for boarding missions.