Valles: the thing that you suggest for dogfighting is a workable kludge, but I think the question more becomes whether we *want* all that much in the way of space dogfights at anything more than the "you're trying to board, and I'm trying to stop you" level - or pehaps "I want to board, but I'm trying to soften you up first." As far as I can tell, the majority response to that is "no."
Personally, my vote goes for "boarding parties yes, force tubes no." If nothing else, it means that different raider ships will tend to come up with different ways to board, and Fenspace thrives on variety.
Incidentally, the "unfriendlies with hull-cutters" idea means that people are going to *need* to have ways of dealing with sudden loss of hull integrity on their craft, or else they'll die from the vacuum before the raiders even get to them. Alternately, you could figure that at least some of the raiders are out there to capture people and vacum-vulnerable things, and would have designed ways to take the ship without venting it.
For example: a sort of limpet assault pod. you get into the pod, hook it on to the ship, and cut your way in. The pod prevents the interior from losing air pressure - or at least from losing it too quickly. pods designed to fuction off a wide variety of handwaved adhesives/megamagnets/etc, and are well gooped on the contact edge.
Also - a nice, solid reason for Reavers to be mostly focused on capture rather than kill.... Aside from the obvious experiments in biomodding, reavers tend to be pretty unpleasant people, often with a lot of blood nd death on their minds. Their ability to make handwavium devices that work well is limited. Thus, they seek to capture other, more peaceable types, so they can chain them to the floor, and force them (under various threats of unpleasantness) to make devices that the reavers can use and/or pervert. As a bit of a balance, once they've *got* something, their literal bloody-mindedness often means they can force it to do what they want it to more readily than most Fen, which in turn makes them appropriately threatening on the battlefield. Sure, the gear breaks down faster, but you can always grow more handwavium.
Personally, my vote goes for "boarding parties yes, force tubes no." If nothing else, it means that different raider ships will tend to come up with different ways to board, and Fenspace thrives on variety.
Incidentally, the "unfriendlies with hull-cutters" idea means that people are going to *need* to have ways of dealing with sudden loss of hull integrity on their craft, or else they'll die from the vacuum before the raiders even get to them. Alternately, you could figure that at least some of the raiders are out there to capture people and vacum-vulnerable things, and would have designed ways to take the ship without venting it.
For example: a sort of limpet assault pod. you get into the pod, hook it on to the ship, and cut your way in. The pod prevents the interior from losing air pressure - or at least from losing it too quickly. pods designed to fuction off a wide variety of handwaved adhesives/megamagnets/etc, and are well gooped on the contact edge.
Also - a nice, solid reason for Reavers to be mostly focused on capture rather than kill.... Aside from the obvious experiments in biomodding, reavers tend to be pretty unpleasant people, often with a lot of blood nd death on their minds. Their ability to make handwavium devices that work well is limited. Thus, they seek to capture other, more peaceable types, so they can chain them to the floor, and force them (under various threats of unpleasantness) to make devices that the reavers can use and/or pervert. As a bit of a balance, once they've *got* something, their literal bloody-mindedness often means they can force it to do what they want it to more readily than most Fen, which in turn makes them appropriately threatening on the battlefield. Sure, the gear breaks down faster, but you can always grow more handwavium.