self-destruct mechanism

[Grav_Moped]

And even a half of a turn (10 min) its quite a lot of time in personal combat turns to take the ship. I guess none of my played boarding action (be it as player or referee; in RPG, Snapshoot or AHL) has lasted that much...

It doesn't have to. Put the self-destruct on a deadman switch and it doesn't matter whether you take the bridge, it'll blow up in 15 minutes anyhow. The attackers can try to mitigate the possible damage by interrupting the self-destruct sequence, but even the minimum credible damage (EMP burst, power surge, blast damage in at least the drive room from power plant fusion containment failure) doesn't leave much for them to loot even if they do survive it.

 

[Grav_Moped]

If that was standard practice, dissabling the PP would not leave the ship unpowered, as it could still use its stored energy in the sinks, and that's not the case, according damage descriptions...

I'm describing a partial attempt to charge the capacitors as though for Jump, but for only part of a turn. This wouldn't provide enough power to make a difference in space combat terms. However, it could be used to do something like throwing 440VAC into a typical 220VAC household circuit (on a much larger scale), and could be sustained for half as long as was spent charging the capacitors. You don't get "ship vaporized" out of it, but you'd probably get more than a few particle-accelerator internal damage hits worth.

Remember, this is an effort to intentionally destroy the ship using systems and procedures designed for this purpose. Any internal safeguards (fusible links, air gaps, self-closing bulkhead hatches, etc) will have been overridden at that point.

 

[McPerth]

A power plant equal to the jump drive can provide the energy over two turns, a power plant twice the rating of the jump drive can do it in one turn.

Agreed, that's what I said in my post (or what I intended to) when I wrote:

You need power equal ot the output of a PP twice the jump capacity to load them, be it because your PP doubles it or by using it two consecutive turns

The scenario is to scuttle a perfectly intact ship as per the original post, not engage in a battle of what ifs...

Well, ittalked about scuttling to avoid the ship being taken, and, for military ships, that does usually (I'd say never, except perhaps due to a mutiny or a situation like the scenario Enemy Aboard of AHL game) occur in intact ships

And as to the length of boarding actions and hijacking attempts in my games they can take 10 mins or more using Snapshot or AHL 15 second turns. How many turns does it take to walk a character from the cargo bay area of the Snapshot free trader to the bridge?
Have you ever run two teams of player characters, one team are the hijackers and one team are the crew? Try it and see how long it lasts

Players' time or character's time ?

I've never had players enough to try, but I guess it would be resolved in less than 40 game turns (as you say, each one represents 15 seconds). Of course, for the players that would be quite more than 10 min (probably a full gaming sesión).

 

[mike wightman]

If that was standard practice, dissabling the PP would not leave the ship unpowered, as it could still use its stored energy in the sinks, and that's not the case, according damage descriptions...

And yet if you have a black globe this is exactly what you can do.
There is nothing in the rules to prevent you storing energy in the jump capacitors prior to engaging in combat, and I am sure more than one TCS tournament has argued about it.
The black globe section gives you the rules for using this stored energy instead of power plant output (what you do with your power plant output is the mystery to me since powering down your power plant doesn't appear until TCS).

 

[mike wightman]

Agreed, that's what I said in my post (or what I intended to) when I wrote:

Fair enough, I wasn't clear on what you meant.

Well, ittalked about scuttling to avoid the ship being taken, and, for military ships, that does usually (I'd say never, except perhaps due to a mutiny or a situation like the scenario Enemy Aboard of AHL game) occur in intact ships

I agree, combat damage will influence stuff like this, and as you say a military ship can always just set off a nuke.

Players' time or character's time ?

Character, playing time can easily be an entire evening.

I've never had players enough to try, but I guess it would be resolved in less than 40 game turns (as you say, each one represents 15 seconds). Of course, for the players that would be quite more than 10 min (probably a full gaming sesión).

A group of players vs a group of players can take a lot longer than you think because they don't fudge stuff and come up with some pretty innovative tactics. If you ever get the chance I would recommend it.
Better still if you can have them in two rooms with two maps and only you refereeing can move between rooms (sometimes I miss the sunday gaming club )

 

[Condottiere]

If the capacitors actually work like batteries, you can slow feed them energy until they have enough for a jump.

If those that charge within two rounds, and the energy leak can cause damage to ship's systems, things will get exciting.

 

[whartung]

and in civilian ships (where this can come from a hijacking attempt) don't use to have such large PPs…

You better have a pretty sociopathic engineer that's willing to override the safeties on a civilian vessel to wire it to "self-destruct".

Arguably, much time and effort and engineering, over time, has been put in specifically to prevent ships from "self-destructing", especially a civilian ship. Really, it shouldn't be an option.

If you want to plunge it in to a sun or whatever, great, can't really stop that (well, the computer could, but…). But, crossing the streams in the engineering bay? No. Should be Really Hard™.

 

[Whipsnade]

Fascinating topic with thoughtful posts by all.

I believe any answer will - and should - depend solely on the needs of the referee and group in question. I also believe that the many self-destruct methods already suggested are all more or less plausible. Finally, I believe that the term "self-destruct" can encompass a spectrum of outcomes ranging from "ship vaporized" to "damage that isn't repairable given the time/parts available".

The last plays off the concept "mission kill"; damage that prevents an asset from accomplishing it's mission is operationally equivalent to damage that destroys an asset. A 'self-destruct" protocol might more likely involve "spiking" or "slagging" computers and/or other systems which make controlling, operating, and/or salvaging the ship not worth the time and/or effort available to the hijackers or other forces boarding.

One example I feel might be interesting is the Battle of Kagukhasaggan during the Solomani RIm War in 1002. That battle includes one of the few, if only, boarding actions in canon. Bard Endeavor was the centerpiece of an Imperial task force ambushed by a Solomani strike group while refueling at the system's gas giant. The ensuing battle saw those Imperial vessels who had refueled racing for the jump limit while those with dry tanks, primarily Bard Endeavor, fought a delaying action. Battle's end saw the AHL cruiser as "a glowing wreck in the decaying orbit over Kagukhasaggan 2, one of the small inner worlds of the system."

Let me emphasize the most interesting part of the story for those of you who didn't catch it; the battle began off a gas giant and ended up at a small inner world.

A battle that began off Jupiter or Saturn and ended off Mars, Earth, or Venus. That's a delaying action lasting for days. Days after those Imperial warships that could jump away had already done so. Days as the cruiser lured it's opponents deeper into the system and away from the jump limit. Days in which the crew aboard Bard Endeavor knew they'd never escape.

And days in which the Bard Endeavor's crew never scuttled their ship or initiated any kind of "self-destruct" protocol.

Just some food for thought...

 

[Jame]

I would expect civilian starships to be built with safety interlocks to prevent self-destruction (not that they couldn't be overridden, but it'd take advance preparation to defeat the interlocks and those modifications ought to render the ship uninsurable). Military ones, however, would have the capability built in.

I would think that most civilian ships don't have self-destruct devices as a mattet of policy.

Though that doesn't mean one couldn't be jury-rigged!

 

[flykiller]

I would think that most civilian ships don't have self-destruct devices as a mattet of policy. Though that doesn't mean one couldn't be jury-rigged!

engineering skill, 12+ to succeed, 2- catastrophic failure ....

 

[Condottiere]

That would mean that once the Confederation Marines boarded to claim it as a prize and prise away Imperium technological secrets from the newly developed Azhantis, the crew should have blown up the ship.

 

[Jame]

engineering skill, 12+ to succeed, 2- catastrophic failure ....

Oh, so either way it goes BOOM.

 

[Whipsnade]

That would mean that once the Confederation Marines boarded to claim it as a prize and prise away Imperium technological secrets from the newly developed Azhantis, the crew should have blown up the ship.

Exactly. If "vaporize the ship" style scuttling was the norm, Bard Endeavor's crew should have done so when the Confederation spacers and marines boarded.

In fact, if you read the description of the battle closely, the Bard Endeavor's crew should have scuttled her days before the ship reached orbit around Kagukhasaggan-2. Once the Imperial ships that could have escaped had escaped, the reason for the battle was over. The crew should have scuttled her there and then.

 

[Lycanorukke]

Another possible way may to use a quirk of Traveller reactors.

Given that Trav reactors use raw hydrogen as fuel (aka P-P fusion), dump a lower fusing temp material into them for some fun effects.

Flood the reactor chamber with a Deuterium/Tritium mix which fuses at an order of magnitude lower temp than Hydrogen, and it would be like pouring petrol on a fire. This gives you the 'high temp plasma burn' which trashes the ship when the reactor bursts. Probably not enough to vapourise it completely, but is would be messy none the less.

As an added bonus, while P-P fusion is aneutronic, D/T fusion is neutronic - that is it spits out neutrons. So in addition to the plasma burn, the entire ship is irradiated by a neutron blast - killing living things, trashing electronics, and making the ship glow.

 

[flykiller]

Flood the reactor chamber with a Deuterium/Tritium mix which fuses at an order of magnitude lower temp than Hydrogen

so, an induced mini-nova?

 

[Enoki]

While this can be a good idea, if the situation is a military boarded ship, it is unlikely an option, a in HG2 the more usual way to cripple a ship so that it can be boarded is pecisely due to lack of fuel (be because sattered fuel tanks or because many small leacks).

See that for a J4 ship jump fuel is likley to represent over 80% of its fuel. So, unless it has refueled after jump (and having used at least one week of PP fuel, that usually represents 25% of It), it would have just about 10-15% of its tanks full, so 15 fuel hits will leave them dry...

The problem is that crippling the ship generally means the power plant, maneuver, and jump drives no longer work. That in turn makes it pretty hard to use them to accomplish a self-destruction.
On the other hand, it won't take a lot of hydrogen on the whole to flood the ship sufficiently for a nice fuel-air mixture to detonate. Since the ship would have lots of separate tanks rather than one big one, it's going to be likely that one or more survived. You'd only need battery or emergency power to operate the valves and sensors. Adding extra oxygen only makes it even easier to do.

The mix doesn't even have to be that precise to get an explosion, and if you're off a bit you still get an nice fire that burns the compartment out.

Of course, in the OP scenario wouldn't it just be easier to set the ship on a "death spiral" into a gas giant or star and have some sort of control disable that means the boarders either get off or ride the ship down to its destruction than some sort of blow the ship up device?

 

[Grav_Moped]

Oh, so either way it goes BOOM.

Wait... if you roll a critical failure at trying to make the drive fail, shouldn't that make it work perfectly instead?

 

[aramis]

Another possible way may to use a quirk of Traveller reactors.

Given that Trav reactors use raw hydrogen as fuel (aka P-P fusion), dump a lower fusing temp material into them for some fun effects.

Flood the reactor chamber with a Deuterium/Tritium mix which fuses at an order of magnitude lower temp than Hydrogen, and it would be like pouring petrol on a fire. This gives you the 'high temp plasma burn' which trashes the ship when the reactor bursts. Probably not enough to vapourise it completely, but is would be messy none the less.

As an added bonus, while P-P fusion is aneutronic, D/T fusion is neutronic - that is it spits out neutrons. So in addition to the plasma burn, the entire ship is irradiated by a neutron blast - killing living things, trashing electronics, and making the ship glow.

There really isn't a lower temp fuel for fusion that can be readily found aboard a ship.

 

[Lycanorukke]

There really isn't a lower temp fuel for fusion that can be readily found aboard a ship.

Mmm, perhaps. Though I would think that there would be some D/T (or D alone as its easier to get and safer) aboard simply for the purpose of starting the reactor in the first place, and for 'idling' when it is put in "park" mode. IIRC MT had 'warm standby mode' which was between 'off' and 'full power'.

Even if there wasn't a D/T or D/D 'start' mode, P-P fusion in a transportable form would need some Deuterium doping to make it work. CNO fusion doesn't need deuterium, but the temps are even higher than P-P fusion.

 

[flykiller]

Oh, so either way it goes BOOM.

Wait... if you roll a critical failure at trying to make the drive fail, shouldn't that make it work perfectly instead?

I can hear the captain. "YOU'VE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO MAKE IT WORK RIGHT BEFORE, AND YOU FIX IT _NOW_?"

personally I'd have the failure result in, not a controlled detonation, but an uncontrolled detonation, perhaps a squib and perhaps eliminating the one making the attempt.