Boarding Actions: Do those really happen?

[Shadowfax]

How many of you think that boarding actions actually happen?

I mean, given the cyclic rate of fire for modern small arms and the narrow docking portals, I would rather shoot all the guns and the maneuver drive off of the enemy ship, take it somewhere quiet and negotiate with the crew for a surrender, while they slowly think about running out of food or air?

You would certainly have to destroy all of a ships weapons and its maneuver drive before you could try to board it.

If you had to board a ship through a narrow docking portal, then you would have to have like a 10 to 1 advantage. I can see pirates using warbots in the front line. (This makes me think of the kung-fu robots in the film Ice Pirates!) You'd have to do something like that if you were going to storm a ship. Even if you have breaching charges the crew is going to have cameras on the outer hull and an anti-hijack program with a bunch of camera's running. Its not like you will gain much of an element of surprise by boarding with a breaching charge and if you do the hull is breached and the ship is a write-off or at least worth a lot less.

My guess is that pirates try to hijack ships from within through treachery. The only other option to me seems to be the one mentioned above. Disable the ship and tow it out where no one is looking. Then negotiate and wait the crew out.

What do you think? Anybody have any opinions about this? I'd love to hear them.


-M

 

[sabredog]

With the caveat always in mind that you can do whatever you want within your universe I can tell you how it works in mine.

I run the sort of sword n’ blaster space opera game Dominic Flandry, Nick Van Rijn, and Falkenberg’s Legion would be at home in so, yes, boarding actions happen. They are even in the High Guard rules as a means of taking ships during battle and are one of the reasons you want to have Marines on board instead of just “ships troops”. So it is in canon if you care about that sort of thing.

Part of the problem with “just shooting off the guns and maneuver drive”, is that the other ship is probably shooting back and there is a certain random element involved (modified somewhat by Select program), so while trying to attempt such surgical precision shooting while ships are jinking about at 2G+ and all is iffy. The best way, in my opinion to take a ship as intact as possible is the good old fashioned boarding action. I’ve had players try the pick off the drive only to find they shot the ship too much and lost the whole thing.

And dang it, if there are going to be pirates and Marines, privateers and smugglers, there are going to be boarding actions.

I use the following house rule to determine if it’s even possible or if the target needs further softening up to slow it down:

Boarding Actions

In all matters concerning maneuver the ship with the highest agility rating will dictate the range between ships.

To board another ship, its vector and velocity must be matched. To force a boarding the attacking vessel must have a higher agility than the target. If this is the case then the pilot of the boarding vessel must roll 10+ (plus Pilot or Small Craft skill as DM) to match course and lock the craft together.

The high roll is to simulate any desperate maneuvering the target ship may try at the last minute to avoid a forced boarding.

Once the ships are locked together the boarding begins. The boarding crew blows a hole, forces the airlock, whatever, and away we go. Lots of bladework and shotguns, pistols and grenades. Add ballistic shields coated with reflec if you want portable cover (I always get a kick out of the shields I use at work), or send in the guy with the heavy armor first.

Its exciting, cinematic (no yardarms to swing down from with cutlass in hand but you can’t have everything, and fun. Fun is the key – the game I run has plenty of hard science already but I don’t want it to be 2001:Space Odyssey, I want it to be FUN. So do the same and don’t worry about if it is the same as everyone else’s game or not.

 

[BlackBat242]

I would have opposed rolls... 2d6 (plus Pilot or Small Craft skill, ship's agility, and computer size rating as DMs). High roll wins.

That way an evenly-matched ship, or even a less-agile ship, can still force a boarding action if luck/skill/tech/the stars' alignment line up just right.

Odds would still favor the more agile, better-equipped, and better-crewed ship.

 

[Max]

Given the relative prices of equipment and pay for marines and for starships I'm certain they happen all the time.

Compare how many vacc suit & SMG combos can you buy for the cost of one missile. As the ruler I'd be perfectly willing to trade a few MCr worth of marines for a small chance of capturing even a small starship. And how much will it cost to repair those engines and weapons you just shot up, is it less than the cost of equipping the boarding parties?

Starships are just so expensive that boarding actions are attractive. Of course if it were my life on the line instead of some other guys I might have a different priority. I'm pretty sure I could get volunteers though if I offered a 1 MCr bounty to the first person the reach the bridge and a 10% share of the value of the ship to be splint among the survivors of boarding party.

 

[sabredog]

Not to mention the commerce raider in a tradewar looking to maximize the value of a prize. Better to take some hostages for ransom and the cargo hold intact without losing all the cargo out the hole blown in the side by a missile.

I tried the dueling roll thing for forcing a boarding but it worked better without it. It might be sloppy, but it makes the differences between ships in my game more diverse. The civilian ships from Book 2 are more workaday and less agile, the hot rods from HG are more expensive but more like what the commerce raiders and military have. I want the players' hair to stand on end when they encounter one that they can't run from and they have to run for the weapons lockers. It also gives them another goal to work towards.

For instance in the last week's session they were escorting (as a raider in a tradewar) a freighter to the jump point when they heard a distress call from a Free Trader flying the same corporate flag as they were. They sent the freighter ahead to jump and went to the rescue.

The opposing commerce raider was more agile but the players still managed to destroy one of its turrets, nonetheless they were out manuevered since the raider manuevered around them with greater agility and was hitting them harder while keeping the damaged and burning Free Trader between them as a shield. No way they could risk forcing a boarding without chancing a lot of pain from the ship's fusion guns. The captain told them they were free to leave if they wanted to but the prize was his. He said, "Today I win, next time you might win - either way you owe me a turret and next time I'm going to collect."

A bitter pill for our heroes but after they looked around their damaged ship and figured they were out maneuvered they swallowed it and left.

They left but have been plotting to figure out some way of lying doggo next time and luring that raider in close so they can try to board without the wear and tear from his close-range fusion guns.

 

[sabredog]

The last ship they carried by boarding the players had the air/raft - cargo lift redesigned with a hydraulic ram that would rapidly push the whole 4 ton platform out from the cargo hold. A shaped charge was run around the perimeter of the lift along with heavy explosive spikes like the kind used to sink ringbolts into asteroids for lashing them together for hauling around in the belt. They rigged up some steel sheets coated with reflec and welded them to the front of a small forklift.

When they found an enemy raider they matched vector and made the roll to force a boarding. They locked the ships together with the lift platform against the other raider’s cargo bay (larger than theirs) and fired the bolts. These punched into the enemy hull and locked the two together, firing off the shape charge around the lift perimeter.

The lift’s ram was activated and it pushed down into the enemy hold. Standing on the lift were 2 mercs stacked behind the forklift and the four players in the back with ACR’s to cover the rear. As the forklift rolled forward to block the iris valve heading to the bow of the ship, the players peeled off and headed aft to secure the engine room. Once they secured that they offer the captain a deal: surrender the ship or they’d rig it to blow the power plant and leave them adrift with life support. The captain surrendered.

Naturally tricks like this only work a couple of times before word starts to get around, but they are a creative bunch.

 

[Shadowfax]

Max said: "Starships are just so expensive that boarding actions are attractive. Of course if it were my life on the line instead of some other guys I might have a different priority. I'm pretty sure I could get volunteers though if I offered a 1 MCr bounty to the first person the reach the bridge and a 10% share of the value of the ship to be splint among the survivors of boarding party."

-------------Ok I could see you maybe conning some desperate people on some "Somalia-like" planet into doing it, but they would be cannon fodder and I would have serious doubts as to their quality and their loyalty. You'd have to get them aboard in numbers, lie to them convincingly, and then somehow keep them from taking your ship over until you found the right target.

I think that everyone would know what a blood-bath a boarding action can be and would try to avoid it if possible. I see them making wide use of warbots, heavy armor and riot shields like Sabredog mentions above.

---------------------However, realistically speaking, I find it hard to imagine anyone matching vectors and linging up to board a not completely disabled ship during a space battle. I just don't see that happening (not realistically anyway). I could see a pirate with a 3 to one advantage taking a ship and pulling it out of the shipping lanes to a quiet place and then slowing softening up the crew with negotiations and threats, while they worry about running out of life support. I could also see a pirate with a 6-1 advantage disabling a ship and attempting a boarding action, but it would be a bloody affair and I doubt that this pirate would get very many recruits if the word got out.

----------------I realize of course, that it is a fantasy game and that boarding actions are cinematic and incredibly fun. I just like to think about realistic fantasy - probably more than most, because my gang likes it that way.

---------------Another thing I wonder about is whether or not crews and borders avoid, LAGS, Lasers, Plasma guns, Fusion guns and hell maybe even gauss rifles for fear of destroying too much cargo, instruments, conduits, hydraulics, equipment, etc. etc. on the target ship. This makes a great argument for mêlée weapons in boarding actions.

 

[rust]

How many of you think that boarding actions actually happen?

Well, I do.

Depending on the size, training, equipment and morale of the defending ship's
crew, a boarding action does not necessarily have to become a bloodbath,
and with the right training and equipment even a warship can be boarded.

You would certainly have to destroy all of a ships weapons and its maneuver drive before you could try to board it.

If your boarding shuttle - or whatever you use - is significantly faster than
the ship you intend to board and has the means to attach itself to the hull
of the attacked ship, that ship's maneuver drive is only a minor problem.
Undamaged weapons that are unable to fire at the boarding shuttle's position
are also no problem.

If you had to board a ship through a narrow docking portal, then you would have to have like a 10 to 1 advantage.

Agreed, this would be a silly idea - and no professional force would attempt
anything like that.

The task would be to enter the ship where the defenders do not expect an
attack, and to establish a position before the defenders can organize their
defense good enough to counterattack.

So, imagine a heavily armoured, stealth equipped boarding shuttle with high
speed and agility that basically "rams" the enemy ship and attaches itself to
its hull.
Even before the shuttle hits the hull, the breaching charges are fired onto the
enemy ship's hull and create openings, and once the shuttle has touched the
hull, the soldiers leave the shuttle, enter the ship through the newly created
openings, and secure a position.
If they do not have extremely bad luck, there will be not much immediate de-
fense, because the defenders first have to move enough troops and equip-
ment to the site.
And once they arrive there, they may well be the ones that have the "narrow
portal problem" while entering the room (e.g. the cargo hold) the boarders are
in.
The boarders meanwhile have five directions to choose from for their next at-
tack move, and can use breaching charges to open the way in any of those
directions - and the defenders have no idea in which direction the boarders
will move, and will hardly be able to prepare defenses for all five directions.

And from there, you have what is basically a normal "urban combat" scenario,
not more and not less dangerous as that kind of combat tends to be.

 

[atpollard]

Ships under 1000 tons typically have a crew of less than 10, say an average crew of 5.

Even if the ship required 10:1 odds to board and overcome the crew, it could be done with 50-100 marines.
Any Mercenary Players out there who can give a 'per month' cost for 100 marines for hire?

The typical merchant ship is only 1-2 G with an agility of 0-2.
A 6G, agility 6 small boarding craft with a Pilot-3 should be achievable and affordable and grant a reasonable chance to deliver the marines to the target intact. This is particularly true if the target is more focused on the corsair (function not ship class) closing in on them with anti-missile laser fire degrading the target's attacks.

This also ignores many trojan horse like strategies:
Pirate Ship attacks Merchant Ship perhaps scoring a fuel hit.
A Planetary Navy Patrol ship chases the Pirate off and matches course and speed to transfer damage conrol and medical staff to the Merchant Ship.
When the ship's dock, both the Merchnat Ship and the Pirate Ship are pirates and 100 marines are waiting to storm the Navy Patrol Ship.

... or both the Navy Ship and the Pirate ship are Pirates and 100 marines are waiting to storm the Merchant ship.

... or the Navy ship is a Pirate and the Merchnat Ship is a Q-Ship and 100 pirates are about to meet 200 Imperial Marines.

 

[mbrinkhues]

IMHO they won't happen against a ship with a live crew

+ Military vs. Military the loosing crew will likely scuttly the ship by overloading reactors/activating a missile warhead => Nothing left for boarding

+ Military vs. Pirats won't happen (after all Pirats can't exist as has been shown) but just in case the Navy will simply finish of the non-existing pirat with a nuke

+ Military vs. Civilians will be a "behave or become re-labeled as a pirat"

So, no boarding actions. Only Bwaps and Bureaucracies

 

[far-trader]

...If your boarding shuttle - or whatever you use - is significantly faster than
the ship you intend to board and has the means to attach itself to the hull
of the attacked ship, that ship's maneuver drive is only a minor problem.

I have to strongly disagree, any maneuver left will make it bloody dangerous if not downright impossible to even get close. All the defending pilot has to do is touch his thrust at any time and you have how ever many dtons of momentum swinging and smacking you hard. Very very hard. Sure if will damage his ship as much as yours (relative to size and armor), but they're not the ones with much to lose at that point.

It's hard enough matching to board with a randomly pitching and rolling ship that isn't changing that dynamic at whim.

Even the mentioned idea of an extendable boarding and latching system isn't going to be strong enough to withstand such maneuvering. It'd snap or tear a chunk out of one of the ships.

And forget about sending boarders over in vacc-suits once you're close enough, they'll get splatted and batted even worse. Or if you're luck enough to attach a line they get to play crack the whip at velocities they've never dreamed of, until they can't hold on and then they become soft high velocity unguided munitions on random headings.

Nope, at the very least you need the ship to have no maneuver capability at all before attempting boarding of any kind. I'd allow boarding a ship with active weapons but it'd be pretty hazardous (multiple automatic hits for weapons that bear) unless your pilot can keep to a safe zone out of weapon fire arcs. And you probably wouldn't be able to get all your weapons into fire position while attempting it to make your own shots, besides which if you want to board it you don't want to blow it up, especially as you come up nice and close.

 

[far-trader]

IMHO they won't happen against a ship with a live crew

I'd tend to agree with much of your assessment.

But you missed a couple at least:

+ Pirates vs Civilians: The civies may surrender or fight on against boarding depending on the pirate's reputation or nature of same in ytu, and the pirates would be wise to approach the situation cautiously

+ Civilians vs Pirates: Especially if it's PC civies, you know they're going to be thinking about the salvage of the pirate ship and all the MCr they'll get for it, and some of the pirates may decide that fighting and dying by combat is as good as captured and dying by the executioner (or spending life on some Imp Prison Planet)

 

[rust]

I have to strongly disagree, any maneuver left will make it bloody dangerous if not downright impossible to even get close. All the defending pilot has to do is touch his thrust at any time and you have how ever many dtons of momentum swinging and smacking you hard.

This would depend a lot on the type of drive and the agility of the ship. If the
ship can move "sideways" at any reasonable speed, you are right, but if it can
only accelerate "straight on" with minimal agility in other directions I do not
see the problem.

As for "wet navy" ships, they are very difficult to board because they are in
a moving environment (the sea), while starships are in an environment that
does not move perceptibly itself, so I do not think that the situations can be
compared.

 

[far-trader]

This would depend a lot on the type of drive and the agility of the ship. If the
ship can move "sideways" at any reasonable speed, you are right, but if it can
only accelerate "straight on" with minimal agility in other directions I do not
see the problem.

I suppose, but Traveller drives don't seem to imply straight only acceleration* even for those without dedicated agility. But that could be a mtu / ytu difference of interpretation of the otu

* full power straight only yes, but some attitude control and off axis thrust is required

As for "wet navy" ships, they are very difficult to board because they are in
a moving environment (the sea), while starships are in an environment that
does not move perceptibly itself, so I do not think that the situations can be
compared.

Nope, my comparison wasn't meant to be to wet navy, but to the 3 dimensional problem. A spacecraft can have motion not just of pitch and roll of surface ships but also of yaw like aircraft. Combine all three at once and you have a death tumble. There's no safe way to approach a object in space with motion in all three axis because you can't match them all. Granted if the object is big enough (a large asteroid) there may be a spot on it that will have very low relative motion that you can touch down on if you're quick. But something ship size, no.

 

[mbrinkhues]

I'd tend to agree with much of your assessment.

But you missed a couple at least:

+ Pirates vs Civilians: The civies may surrender or fight on against boarding depending on the pirate's reputation or nature of same in ytu, and the pirates would be wise to approach the situation cautiously

+ Civilians vs Pirates: Especially if it's PC civies, you know they're going to be thinking about the salvage of the pirate ship and all the MCr they'll get for it, and some of the pirates may decide that fighting and dying by combat is as good as captured and dying by the executioner (or spending life on some Imp Prison Planet)

Na, the pirats where all hunted down by the Navy

That's my main reason NOT to play 1105/Spinward Marches: If one plays that scenario realistically (Impies as NATO, Zhos as WP) than there is absolutely no chance for Pirats to survive. That's like trying to smuggle cigaretts across the BRD-DDR border back in the good old days. The Impies MUST patrol heavily and station tripwire forces far out so they will "by accident" hunt down pirats by the score.

If one leaves CT-Timeline the things change. In HardTimes it's a pirats paradise and even Gateway/Sollie Rim offers some nice Pirat action

 

[rust]

There's no safe way to approach a object in space with motion in all three axis because you can't match them all.

I agree that one would need sensors, computers and a control system that
are significantly better than the ones currently used for things like terrain
following flight or catching space telescopes in need of repair, but I would
hesitate to call the task impossible at TL 12.

 

[the angle]

I'm with Rust.

Boarding actions have always been fraught with risk, yet they've occurred throughout all of naval history. Sailing ships were boarded while the guns were still manned and blasting away with the muzzles practically touching the enemy's hull. Romans stormed Carthaginian galleys across what amounted to narrow bridges. Pirates on small, low vessels scaled the hulls of larger, taller ships. In the future, as in the past, techniques and tools will be adapted to the situation to mitigate the risk. Boarding a ship is essentially a frontal assault, but those can be carried out with preparation, elan, and a willingness to accept a certain level of casualties.

Matching vectors would seem to be biggest obstacle. Disabling the enemy's engines would clearly be desirable and may be required. Even 1G is a lot of acceleration, and it's hard to picture a means of grappling to a ship in a way that could withstand that amount of force. But just because I can't imagine it from a 21st century perspective doesn't mean that someone in the far future, faced with this problem, won't come up with a solution for it just as the Romans came up with the corvus to give themselves an advantage when fighting faster, more maneuverable Carthaginian ships. Necessity and desperation are great triggers for creativity.

Steve

 

[aramis]

Privates Cr400/mo
So probably KCr 15 for those hundred marines, per month plus LS of 200K... plus ammo, initial training outlay, and equipment outlay.

 

[Max]

I just realized no one has adressed the hijacking theme. In general, yes I agree hijacking would make more sense, especially with treachery if possible. The question is, how possible is hijacking?

Lets consider hijacking without treachery. No doubt there is a constant war between hijacking technologists and anti-hijacker technologists. Sometimes pirates manage to get the upper hand with a new variation breakdown gauss pistol concealed in an ordinary seeming educational holo-projector or such, but it will always be iffy. Certainly the crew is not going knowingly to allow passengers on board with weapons and are not going to ship warbots with the power plants functioning - cargo and passengers are no doubt screened with the best anti-hijacking technology the owner can procure. The biggest problem is numbers, the type M is possible as you can potentially get 21* hijackers on a ship with a crew of 9 (no gunners) but on most other ships you are going to be at near equal odds against a crew with the ship's armory versus whatever weapons you could sneak aboard. What would be a nice trick would be to time a hijacking attempt with a piracy alert so the crew is spread out at battle stations (and probably armed) so that the hijackers could pick the crew off isolation and arm themselves at the same time. However the low cost of hijacking attempts compared to the high value of starships will make this attractive even if it has a low probability of success, so yes hijacking is no doubt a common type of 'piracy' and a wise captain keeps a close watch on the passengers and a well stocked weapons cabinet on the bridge.

* (low passengers may take too long to defrost and become coherent to be usable in the hijacking. this may be merchants using quick prep/long recovery low berths instead of long prep/quick recovery low berths used by the military. if you allow for quick low recovery than you can increase the number of potential hijackers and make hijacking more likely.)

Treachery really changes the picture, and preventing it may be part of why starship crews get paid so well. Even with the extravagant pay of starship crews (a merc Sargent-Major who's life is on the line makes about 1/3rd of what the lowliest engine-wiper makes on a starship) starships are worth so much that a hijacker can afford to pay 1 or 2 MCr to bribe a member of the crew. This would only work if the crew member could be reasonably sure that the hijackers would pay in Cr instead of in a bullet to the back of the skull, so the pirates would have to have a known policy of paying treacherous crew members which would in turn create a policy among shipowners of killing treacherous crew members to discourage treachery**. Kidnapping family members, blackmail and such are possibilities but those are too situational to figure out the ramifications of, just enough to note that sometimes crew can be suborned into aiding piracy. I can see treachery happening but I don"t see how it could work as a long-term business model for piracy. If ship crews start betraying thier ships too often then ship owners will find ways to prevent this.


** ("Is this seat taken?

"So have you heard the latest, it seems that Engineer Rothchild, formerly of the ISS Moneymaker, who took a bribe to bring hijackers weapons onto the ship and to sabotage the maneuver drives has been located here on Moria. Unnamed local shipping interests are rumoured to be interested in making a terminal example of her.

"I deal with most of the local shippers and I am sure these rumours are false. In fact I am so sure they are false that I will bet you Cr100,000 she doesn't die in the next 2 weeks and throw in a further bonus of up Cr200,000 she doesn't die in a brutal horrific manner.

"Well, if she does die I'll be in this bar from 6-9 the evening after it makes the news with cash to pay off the bet. This is just a friendly wager between two person about current events, nothing illegal or unscrupulous about it.

"No one has ever said that I welsh on bets like this, you can ask around, goodness knows I asked about you before I decided to make this bet with you.")

 

[mike wightman]

In Traveller 'reality' - none

In a game for the purposes of telling a story - as many as you want