> Roger wrote:
I'm going to shoot back, mostly because I grew up with firearms. Most of the
people I knew in the Navy had the Navy bootcamp firearms training, 6 shots
with a 45 with an insert to shoot.22's, and if you looked=20 crosseyed they
kicked you out with no shots. I personally would be almost as afraid of the
Navy people on my side as I would be of my opposition.
** So we share one common theme - fear of having Naval personel with
firearms running loose.... (grin). Though I have a friend who was on our Naval
Reserve unit's Rifle Team and those guys could hit stuff with pistol and rifle
and they were trained for Boarding Actions.
> ** I just want to make one comment to what Oerjan wrote:
1. 100,000kg = 1 BF.... ouch. Even awake your marines must be wearing
unobtainium knickers. 1 Mass for a BF... how many guys do you imagine this is?
Under the worst rules I've seen, this would be 5 marines awake all the time.
Under the most liberal (and probably a little more to the point), I'd say it
was 25 marines awake all the time.
2. Sadly, in that same vein, crew units are what - 4 to ten guys? So
you can't justify a huge defence force on the FT ship. So a dedicated Marine
assault force is nasty nasty nasty! But it won't get used a
lot - probably get potted on a threshold before it can do its job....
Fortunately, it should be hard to board. When it does happen, if the boarders
are professional marines in PA with IPGs, Lasers, and various aides (been
discussing these with Tom Anderson lately), the defenders (if they don't have
Marines) are in a world of trouble. Attackers have firepower, armour, and
nasty dispositions on their side. The defenders have home field advantage, but
poorer troops and kit (as a rule, unless it is defending Marines).
On Thu, 9 Dec 1999 kaladorn@fox.nstn.ca wrote *but did not clearly denote*,
damn his worthless canuck hide:):
> ** I just want to make one comment to what Oerjan wrote:
here's a recap.
FT2.1 says: a mass dedicated to carrying troops gets you 50 CS, where 4 CS is
a fresh soldier and 1 CS is a frozen soldier; that is, 1 mass of troops
is 12 live men (plus a bonus man when you buy 4 mass - offer must end
soon!). a mass of general-purpose ship gets you 4 CS towards marines, ie
1 mass of ships is 1 live man. this gives you organic marine complements on
the order of 100 for hefty ships.
FT2.5 says: 20 mass of ship gets you 1 crew factor. 1 crew factor is
4-10
men, so at the outside, you get half a man per mass.
this is clearly incompatible: a mass 100 ship would get 100 marines and 50
crew. this does not compute. this is whence came various huuge debates on how
to modify the FT2.1 rules for FT2.5, most of which passed me by. a pointer to
a webpage or into the archives would be ideal at this point.
> 2. Sadly, in that same vein, crew units are what - 4 to ten guys? So
bear in mind that the assault force also has to provide transport; organic
marines (grown with only natural fertiliser) can use the ship's shuttles, but
a larger force has to bring its own rides.
> Fortunately, it should be hard to board. When it does happen, if the
> ** I just want to make one comment to what Oerjan wrote:
In the FB universe only. The amount of kgs per Mass depends completely.on what
background you're using.
> Even awake your marines must be wearing unobtainium knickers.
The main reason for the Mass cost is of course game balance. However, if
you're worried about it it also includes their power armour and weapons,
armoury and repair workshops, training areas (including gym, ranges and
possibly combat simulators as well), not to mention the
extra heads and kitchens... none of which are entirely mass-less. If
you don't provide at least the majority of those facilities, your
marines will turn into flabby-fleshed crew <g> in no time at all.
> 1 Mass for a BF... how many guys do you imagine this is?
About 5% of the crew of a normal SD in whatever background you're talking
about. In Starfire, it'd be about 50 humans; in Honor Harrington some 300...
completely arbitrary, as long as it scales with with the ship crew sizes in
the same background. In the GZG universe, about 10 people.
> 2. Sadly, in that same vein, crew units are what - 4 to ten guys?
In the GZGverse, each crew factor is 10-20 men (10 men only on Mass 21
ships :-/). However, not all of them are on DCP duty, so each DCP/crew
BF is probably around 8-10 men... in this particular background.
I also assume that most ships have at least some marines already included in
the crew (normally used for DC duties during combat), since most SF books I've
read has assumed that.
> you can't justify a huge defence force on the FT ship. So a dedicated
Using my boarding rules, you need on average 4 BFs (*marine* BFs, that is <g>)
to capture an undamaged DD. Less than that and you'll probably cause
considerable damage but are likely to lose eventually. But yes,
it has quite a lot of potential - that's the reason I put the cost of
the teleporters so high. The other systems have their own inherent
limitations - torps and shuttles use up lots of mass, individual
boarding is very difficult to set up unless the target is already crippled.
> But it won't get used a lot - probably get potted on a threshold
Or get shot down by point defence while it tries to reach its target.
> Fortunately, it should be hard to board. When it does happen, if the
Home field advantage (a powerful equalizer, as witnessed by every instance of
city fighting and guerilla war in history to date) which includes control of
blast doors (useful for cutting enemy groups off temporarily) and securicams
(to keep track of where the enemy is); probably some marines of their own
mixed into the "crew" BFs to lead
the defence, possibly automated or semi-automated defence weapons...
there are plenty of ways to make life unpleasant for the intruders even if
there are no pure marine BFs among the defenders. Sometimes those ways even
make a difference <g>
<snip>
> Home field advantage (a powerful equalizer, as witnessed by every
Plus gravity control, remotely opening airlocks, life support etc.... Home
field = killing zone
A couple of points:
1) PA for combat vs. PA for DC/Engineering:
Engineering PA will be armoured somewhat -
sufficient to run the risks of penetration an engineer might face in ops
around damaged ship bits. It will be fitted with a standard tool mount which
has power and control feeds (or more than one). It will have probably a
_greater_ strength boost than conventional PA,
although a slower reflex enhance. The way it would use the strength is a
gradual application for lifting or jacking, not in HTH or breaching.
Engineering PA might have a laser torch or welder, a plasma cutter, some demo
packs, fire suppression gear (ugly for an infantry guy they get close to),
power drills, etc. Plus of course some nasty crushing manipulators. I wouldn't
even give Engineering PA _close_ range. Close
range is from 10m to 40/60/80/100/120m
depending on unit quality. Sorry, but a plasma torch does not have that range.
I'd let their weapons work ONLY in CC. And I'd give them
the +2 die shift (good CC weapons) but no dice
doubling. D10 armour sounds reasonable. I don't supposed they'd have 2d12"
movement, but I'd want faster than a walking man (especially if I'm the
casualty clearing guy). 2d8" would be what I'd give them (8" base, like light
infantry).
2) I just saw an episode of Andromeda last night (two actually) where they
faced "Magog
Swarmships" - boreing boarding fighters.
They'd land, and start hammer drilling their way through your hull to inject
boarding parties. Probably BS, but it looked good.:)
3) Would you really fight evac'd? (Yes, probably, but...). That means that you
either have to sacrifice your atmosphere (good god, but do you carry that much
spare LOx aboard?) or remove it from the compartments
with a suction pump/airlock kind of system. ALL
COMPARTMENTS. This makes the ship design significantly more complex I'd say.
And it would not be the case if you were surprised, certainly. I'd have my
crew wear vacc suits, but I'm not sure if I'd be depressurizing if that cost
me one atmosphere load for the entire ship! And if you do try to suck up all
the atmosphere, how long do you think that would take? My guess would be
evacuating fair sized cabins might take 30 minutes!
4) In traveller, ships crews used to make extensive use of shotguns, snub
pistols, and lasers. They didn't want large explosions that might damage key
systems (most of the time), so usually explosive projectile chuckers and PGMPs
and FGMPs were out. They didn't want overpenetration in most cases either
because of the risks of atmosphere leakage.
5) Also, you have to think that the defending crew has control of the ships
computers and can vary the grav plates, and any system that can compensate for
X gees of thrust must be able to exert X gees in the direction of its choice.
Imagine flipping floor and roof plates
back and forth beteen +4G and -4G at about
0.3 Hz. Something tells me the enemy boarding party won't like getting slammed
from celing to floor (each impact being about the equivalent
of dropping 800-100 kg a distance of 6-8
feet). Not to mention any internal anti hijack
systems (shrapnel charges, pop-down
weapons, microwave or EM fields - pulse EM
weapons to kill attacking PA, etc).
6) Rating sailors. Hmmm, although it is tempting to suggest (as a gropo) that
all
sailors get a yellow-3 chit in SG2 terms, it is
(admittedly) unfair. Only most of them...:) Seriously, most sailors would get
a green chit in boarding combat. But not all. Senior POs and anyone who
composes the normal boarding party (On Canuck ships, there are no Marines, so
we have a bunch of crew members trained in
boarding actions with rifles/pistols/carbines and
led IIRC by the Bosun - who I think has keys to
the arms locker). These guys should rate blue
chit quality as they are very well trained for on-
ship combat actions. So even if you have Marines, some of your other crew can
argue for Blue chits. The question is can you get them to anything better than
improvised weapons.... it depends how sudden the boarding action is and if
anyone could get weapons to them. As someone pointed out, who has weapons will
vary from Navy to Navy and probably with the level of alert.
7) I'd rate a normal Vacc Suit at D6, and a combat Vacc Suit (non PA Marine
gear) at D8.
8) Boarding actions: In order to board, you'd need to: 1) stop the ship from
manouvering 2) stop the ship from shooting
#1 is accomplished by: Killing the main drive (and presumably jump drive) or
by having a Bridge Hit core system result. #2 is accomplished by: Killing all
facing weapons (see point 1 as to why this is not all weapons) including (or
perhaps especially!) PDS, or by said same Bridge Hit core system result.
At that point, it should be a matter of matching vector (something computers
can do far better than human gamers....) and then grapplying (magnetic
grapples? penetrating grapples? tractor beams?) or sending out boarding troop
carriers (pods, torpedos, fighters, whatever).
If you have a Bridge Hit, I'd suspect _all_
onboard systems are offline, including the grav
plates (zero G!), the anti-hijack system, etc. So
you'd only have to deal with crew. But hatches might also be a lot harder to
open if you aren't
wearing PA (they may all auto-lock when power
goes down). If you just knocked out weapons and drives, boarding will be a
much uglier prospect!
Also, note that once boarded, some locations should be designated as points
where 1) an
explosvie charge will disable parts of the anti-
hijack systems and 2) places where your computer intrusion guy can interface
and attempt to suppress the ship's defensive programs. These are key points,
and always defended. They also make for some focus to the boarding action. Oh,
and don't forget to try to get the bridge or engineering, as they may be
rigging the ship for a big bang.
Tomb.