Naval Infantry

[Burocrate]

The D Cell Flash light: one of the un-sung Hero of the LEO world

And techincally not considered an actual weapon.

Dave Chase

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the ever versital 'Tonk". Light source, pacifier (for the owner and for the person it is being pointed at with) and a surprising number have been lost when used to 'mark' a vehicle for others LEOs to spot in traffic when said vehicle runs a check point.

"All units, be on the look out for a late model LTD with no rear window."

I believe I also read somewhere that a metric ton of handcuffs have been lost, one pair at a time, when they ran off into the night.

Rookie: "Damn, those were my new cuffs!"
Old Hand: "Hope you didn't pay too much for 'em, cause they're gone now."
Rookie: "Aren't we going to go chase him into (enter name of any place where the other guy has friends and your friends are none too keen about entering)."
Old Hand: "Nope, lets keep patrolling. Maybe we'll get lucky and our friend will come to us."

 

[Carlobrand]

...Boarding actions (i.e. involving combat) really don't make sense unless the defending ship is still able to fight...

Per both High Guard and Mt, boarding is only possible if:
...
2) the target no longer has functioning offensive weapons;
...

I distinguished between boarding actions as opposed to (peaceful) boarding. Perhaps I'm misusing the term. If so, please tell me the correct term and I'll use that (I'm not trying to redefine anything in order to score cheap points).

???

The High Guard boarding rules set forth a system of combat for troops boarding a ship against a resisting crew. I presume that's what you mean by "boarding action", and now I'm very confused. Boarding simply isn't possible within the rules while the defending ship is still able to fight.

 

[rancke]

The High Guard boarding rules set forth a system of combat for troops boarding a ship against a resisting crew. I presume that's what you mean by "boarding action", and now I'm very confused. Boarding simply isn't possible within the rules while the defending ship is still able to fight.

In the Age of Sail it was possible to run up alongside a ship and board it while it was still able to work its guns. If you could overwhelm the crew, you could capture the opponent using your superior manpower before it could defeat your own ship with its superior firepower.

In a Traveller space battle, you can't board a ship while it can still maneuver and fire its guns. By the time you are able to board it, there's no immediate urgency. It can't fight and it can't run. It is therefore much simpler to give the crew of the target the choice between surrendering and being destroyed at long distance without any boarding action involved. So most boardings (those not involving suicidal fanatics) will be after the target has surrendered and therefore not "hot". As I said before, you'll be on the lookout for treachery, naturally, but you're not going to use breaching charges or softening up the rooms with grenades, because the target crew has already surrendered.

As for not being able to see if the defenders are preparing to blow up their ship and take the boarders along with them, every captured warship during the Age of Sail had the ability to self-destruct (by striking a match in the magazine), yet most of them didn't do it.


Hans

 

[aramis]

???

The High Guard boarding rules set forth a system of combat for troops boarding a ship against a resisting crew. I presume that's what you mean by "boarding action", and now I'm very confused. Boarding simply isn't possible within the rules while the defending ship is still able to fight.

The rules not withstanding, it's quite possible for a ship with no MD left to have weapons that don't bear on the approaching ship. It's an outlier case.

Likewise, it's possible in the case of a PP out hit that they might get the PP back up just as you're closing to board. These are NOT things that one can readily tell at a distance. (Well, PP by lack of neutrinos, sure.)

The most common boardings will be customs and safety inspections. By a couple orders of magnitude.

The most common military boardings will be those of surrendered vessels, in order to take engineering and hold all non-LS power. Taking the bridges and holding them clear is a secondary objective. Disarming the crew is tertiary, and the most manpower intensive.

Non-surrendered vessels will be boarded like surrendered ones post-battle. For both HumInt and Humanitarian reasons. Most of the crew will be in soft-suits; expect the NI and Marines in at least reinforced vacc suits, if not Combat Armor.

Actively Hostile ships can only be boarded with psionicists... and the Zhodani have elite Noble/Intendent units that do exactly that.

 

[Carlobrand]

The rules not withstanding, it's quite possible for a ship with no MD left to have weapons that don't bear on the approaching ship. It's an outlier case.

Likewise, it's possible in the case of a PP out hit that they might get the PP back up just as you're closing to board. These are NOT things that one can readily tell at a distance. (Well, PP by lack of neutrinos, sure.).

Ayup, in a role-playing context it makes for a very dramatic moment, very exciting. Try that in a wargame setting, though, and you'd have one heck of an argument on your hands. Possible or not, players in that context expect everyone to be playing by the same rules.

The most common boardings will be customs and safety inspections. By a couple orders of magnitude.

Ayup, and I suspect you're conservative in that "couple orders of magnitude" estimate.

The most common military boardings will be those of surrendered vessels, in order to take engineering and hold all non-LS power. Taking the bridges and holding them clear is a secondary objective. Disarming the crew is tertiary, and the most manpower intensive.

Non-surrendered vessels will be boarded like surrendered ones post-battle. For both HumInt and Humanitarian reasons. Most of the crew will be in soft-suits; expect the NI and Marines in at least reinforced vacc suits, if not Combat Armor..

Caveat: a non-surrendered ship is by tradition expected to resist. Blast your way onto a surrendered ship and shoot the first person you meet, and the surrender is null, they're entitled to resist, and you have committed a war crime. Blast your way onto a nonsurrendered ship, and you may want to give serious thought to shooting the first person you meet before he fires his own weapon. And then shoot the second and the third and so forth until you've found and neutralized any possible scuttling charges and you're reasonably certain you're not going to be vaporized in a nuclear blast; fanatics often look just like ordinary people until that last moment.

Actively Hostile ships can only be boarded with psionicists... and the Zhodani have elite Noble/Intendent units that do exactly that.

"Actively hostile"? How is that differentiated from "non-surrendered"? I can't see a teleport successfully placing himself on an actively maneuvering ship, so can I assume you mean immobile but armed?

 

[Carlobrand]

In the Age of Sail it was possible to run up alongside a ship and board it while it was still able to work its guns. If you could overwhelm the crew, you could capture the opponent using your superior manpower before it could defeat your own ship with its superior firepower.

Ah yes, those were fun times.

In a Traveller space battle, you can't board a ship while it can still maneuver and fire its guns. By the time you are able to board it, there's no immediate urgency. It can't fight and it can't run. It is therefore much simpler to give the crew of the target the choice between surrendering and being destroyed at long distance without any boarding action involved.

Soooooometimes ... and sometimes not.

For example, the odds of you getting your hands on an intact enemy computer with its valuable intelligence, along with the men who know the right passwords, lies somewhere between "slim" and "none". They trash the computer right before they surrender or the instant you blow your way into the ship. Odds are pretty good they'll trash the whole ship, setting a nuke on a timer and then abandoning ship before they surrender to you.

However: there's a cruiser dead in space, not responding to hails, very good chance most of the crew is dead in the meson blast that left it drifting. Go in, you might get lucky and find the computer intact, or intact enough to draw useful intelligence from the surviving memory banks. Wait, and one of the few survivors might get there with a bomb first. Or, it could be a trap. Gambling risks a couple hundred men against the possibility of finding vital intelligence.

... every captured warship during the Age of Sail had the ability to self-destruct (by striking a match in the magazine), yet most of them didn't do it.

True, but the crippled ships of WW-II that couldn't be towed back to port or didn't sink outright were generally abandoned and scuttled by their own crew or fellow ships. Better to give her to the sea than to give the enemy the chance to learn something useful from her.

 

[aramis]

"Actively hostile"? How is that differentiated from "non-surrendered"? I can't see a teleport successfully placing himself on an actively maneuvering ship, so can I assume you mean immobile but armed?

Ability to bring weapons to bear.

And FYI, ZTM's can board a maneuvering ship. Even one that's firing at you. It's more an issue of range - and a cooling pack. Have the ZTM's a bit hypthermic, the targeter is a clairvoyant and telepath; he visualizes the bridge, and shows the team, and they go.

 

[rancke]

Soooooometimes ... and sometimes not.

Of course. As I've already said, there are situations where the usual rules do not apply. (That would be unusual situations ).

For example, the odds of you getting your hands on an intact enemy computer with its valuable intelligence, along with the men who know the right passwords, lies somewhere between "slim" and "none". They trash the computer right before they surrender or the instant you blow your way into the ship.

Which is why it makes no difference if you board the ship hot or wait for it to surrender. You don't get the secret data either way. (Since TCS rules do not include one about having to replace the computer on all captured ships, I assume that actually destroying the computer is not usually done. But I do assume they "throw the recognition signals into the sea with a lead weight tied to them" in some suitable ultra-tech fashion).

Odds are pretty good they'll trash the whole ship, setting a nuke on a timer and then abandoning ship before they surrender to you.

Those odds are exactly what we're debating. I think the odds are that they will do no such thing for the same reason that the crews of Age of Sail ships didn't usually put a fuse to the powder magazine and take to the boats.

However: there's a cruiser dead in space, not responding to hails, very good chance most of the crew is dead in the meson blast that left it drifting. Go in, you might get lucky and find the computer intact, or intact enough to draw useful intelligence from the surviving memory banks. Wait, and one of the few survivors might get there with a bomb first. Or, it could be a trap. Gambling risks a couple hundred men against the possibility of finding vital intelligence.

Or there's a convention of war in place that makes it the default assumption that if a ship can neither maneuver nor fight, it has automatically surrendered. Just as a ship with no flag flying was assumed to have surrendered.

True, but the crippled ships of WW-II that couldn't be towed back to port or didn't sink outright were generally abandoned and scuttled by their own crew or fellow ships. Better to give her to the sea than to give the enemy the chance to learn something useful from her.

And if that is the convention, there's still no need for a hot boarding action.

The TCS rules suggest that such a convention is not in place in the Islands Cluster. Canon is silent on the subject when it comes to other parts of Charted Space. I'm merely suggesting it as a possibility.


Hans

 

[Carlobrand]

...Which is why it makes no difference if you board the ship hot or wait for it to surrender. You don't get the secret data either way.

Unless you're lucky. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

(Since TCS rules do not include one about having to replace the computer on all captured ships, I assume that actually destroying the computer is not usually done. But I do assume they "throw the recognition signals into the sea with a lead weight tied to them" in some suitable ultra-tech fashion).

Yeah, my though was to isolate key information - codes, plans, etc. - in a certain location and then make sure that location is rigged so it can be destroyed quickly. That way, you can turn a set of servers into molten scrap when you need without damaging the systems responsible for the rest of the ship.

Those odds are exactly what we're debating. I think the odds are that they will do no such thing for the same reason that the crews of Age of Sail ships didn't usually put a fuse to the powder magazine and take to the boats.

I'm not sure how much Age of Sail applies. On the one side, we have a crippled wooden ship with large numbers of crew, many now seriously wounded, and the enemy close at hand and presumably moving in to board their prize. Unless you're about to abandon your wounded and force your men to swim (and there's a rather nasty incidence of drowning associated with that kind of debarkation), leaving the ship quickly enough to be able to deny it to the enemy's a rather difficult trick.

On the other side, we have 20 minute turns with ranges measured in 25 thousand kilometers per square and men already in vacc suits taking their environment with them and presumably reasonably safe so long as the O2 holds out. The thrust needed to get away could be met by a soda bottle and a few Mentos - kidding, but you get the idea. I don't see any reason the entire complement can't be off inside of 10 minutes or less, and their suits are a good deal better than any boat an age-of-sail sailor might have taken to, at least while the O2 holds out.

Or there's a convention of war in place that makes it the default assumption that if a ship can neither maneuver nor fight, it has automatically surrendered. Just as a ship with no flag flying was assumed to have surrendered.

Barring something in canon on the subject, that would be an IMTU kind of decision and thus not really debatable. It's a good thought, the kind of thing some future Geneva Convention would come up with.

How did they handle it if the ship was dismasted or the flag and its mast section blown away by some wild shot? I can't imagine a captain surrendering just because someone was lucky enough to shoot down the flag, but I can imagine captains holding fire and yelling back and forth until they agreed on who was and who wasn't a combatant - there was a pretty heavy emphasis on honor.

 

[Barsanuphius]

:rofl:

What, you mean like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS5R6ztNTqc

Back to naval infantry...

Just what I needede! :rofl:

 

[Barsanuphius]

A Baton like a cattle prod/ stun stick. same thing if you put the electro-stun at the two ends of the quarter staff...oh wait Star Wars calls them force pikes...all ready done...darn!

 

[aramis]

A Baton like a cattle prod/ stun stick. same thing if you put the electro-stun at the two ends of the quarter staff...oh wait Star Wars calls them force pikes...all ready done...darn!

The force pike looks more like a pole arm version of a lightsaber.

 

[Jame]

A Baton like a cattle prod/ stun stick. same thing if you put the electro-stun at the two ends of the quarter staff...oh wait Star Wars calls them force pikes...all ready done...darn!

I wouldn't mind CT and MGT variations of this, actually.

 

[Barsanuphius]

The force pike looks more like a pole arm version of a lightsaber.

Does not look like a light saber but a long stick...

 

[aramis]

Does not look like a light saber but a long stick...
Take a look in the Dark Empire comic - they have the blades off in that image.

Or in the Lego Star Wars games...

 

[Barsanuphius]

Does not look like a light saber but a long stick...
Take a look in the Dark Empire comic - they have the blades off in that image.

Or in the Lego Star Wars games...

Yes those are a form of Light Saber made for Elite Royal Guard, who are force users were the standard Guardsmen are just elite Storm Troopers with Pikes.
as shown above.

 

[Barsanuphius]

Another example of a force pike

This is Gen Grevious Guard Droid with very powerful force pike.

 

[Barsanuphius]

Saber Pike

Aramis,

This is what you are referring to,

the Shadow Guard's Saber Pike. Shadow Guard are force users.

 

[Blue Ghost]

The Star Wars version of Naginata.