Enemies On Deck - hijacking, etc.

[Willie Dewitt]

OK, when I first got introduced to Traveller as a young teen at the local game jobber, combat inside a ship was a very common scenario. Entire Trav based games such as Snapshot were being heavily played.

But for the life of me I can only think of a couple situations where enemies would get on a ship.

1) someone sneaks on board at port and hides.

2) somebody who paid for high passage has ill will on his mind and has smuggled weaponry on board, or improvises some.

It seems that it would be hard to just pull up alongside a ship and board it, but maybe that's a possibility too. I'm going to guess Snapshot might discuss it, but I don't currently have a copy.

Can anybody hip me to the most common, and the least common ways that enemies end up on a ship to engage the PC's in combat? Could you give some examples of such that have occurred in-game?

 

[flykiller]

Could you give some examples of such that have occurred in-game?

combat, uncommon. but it can happen. examples of boarding in my games are:

space, animal breaks out of cargo containment

space/dockside, police/rescue services coming in ("no" not accepted)

dirtside, cargo deck open to receive cargo, and suddenly take fire (would have been some borders too, but it was too sudden)

dockside, naval/port inspection

dockside, wild animals fleeing a forest fire traversing the landing field, almost gain entry to the ship

dirtside, ship picks up cargo load of firefighters, who turn out to be convicts

dirtside, wild animals fleeing a forest fire enter cargo bay under cover of smoke while player characters are retrieving casualties elsewhere

anywhere, a ship's mascot robot gets reprogrammed by remote comm link (virtual boarding)

 

[aramis]

In CT, the Select program imposes a penalty to hit, but all hits go to the desired compartment (Drives or Main)
The CT ship damage table:

Roll	System	Compartment
12	Critical	Both
11	Turret	Main
10	Turret	Main
9	Computer	Main
8	Hold	Main
7	Hull	Main
6	Hull	Main
5	Fuel	Main
4	Jump	Engineering
3	Maneuver	Engineering
2	Powerplant	Engineering

No mention is made of HOW to handle determination of which system when using select, but "reroll until the selected compartment is hit" was fairly common.

I've often used the following "by Compartment" table:

roll 1d	Engineering hit	Main Hit
6	Jump	Turret
5	Jump	Computer
4	Jump	Hold
2-3	Maneuver	Hull
1	Powerplant	fuel

In any case, a pirate comes in with Select 3 running (no penalty to hit) and always hits the drive compartment.... the first two hits are almost guaranteed to stop a Type A, and it only takes 4 to assure a stop on a type R or A2... And, once they have no maneuver drive, it's easy enough to force boarding upon them.

 

[Willie Dewitt]

dirtside, ship picks up cargo load of firefighters, who turn out to be convicts

Wow. Sneaky! Con Air scenario. I like it.

 

[Selandia]

Sabotage of engine, timed to occur on the way to J point. The Corsair obviously knows the work done by its accomplice and wait

I used sabotaged Lowberth,
The crew does not know that it is a trap, they just figure there is a break and need to emergency unfreeze the psgers ( emergency unfreeze is build in my low berths in case of critical break) . When they are warm, things get nasty.

False patrol stop to search,
"noble" guest aboard your yatch that are really rogue

have fun

Selandia