Re: [GZG] John's Shipbuilding

["Thomas Barclay" <kaladorn@xxxxxxxx>]

Tom McCarthy and Mark Kochte both make excellent and contrary points. 

But keep in mind that a 'morale failure' and a choice to withdraw may not be surrender. It
may simply be the knowledge that, with the ship's current state and tactical situation,
the ship may not get a good return by staying in the fight. Surrender would only happen
when the ship cannot escape (dead FTL or the like), of necessity. It may happen other
times by choice, to avoid destruction while getting ready to FTL out (something I'm
experiencing in my current playtest). 

And how do you know if a ship is surrendering or leaving the fight? Well, leaving the
fight might be signalled by bearing off (in cinmeatic) or rotating away in vector,
genreally putting out some sort of surrender signal on all standard comm channels,
dropping your fire control sensors (his ESM suite would realize your firecontrol just went
inactive), and actions like that. Surrender would be the comm messages, ceasing to apply
thrust (thus stopping or drifting, depending on movement paradigm), and probably launching
various small gigs, shuttles, excape pods and such. That deals with the mechanics. 

Now, the feasibility:

People say ship's never surrendered in the age of iron/steel. Well, maybe not. But keep in
mind that generally, a ship could exit the battle (not alway) and that meant you often
weren't forced to surrender. Also, some ships did surrender (do I not recall several
fleets in port surrendering? And some commercial vessels surrendering to commerce
raiders?). And in the water, there is some chance fisherman or other neutrals might pick
you up or your own forces. 

In a losing space battle, there might not be an analogous situation. If you don't
surrender, or if you scuttle, you may die. Surrender may be what buys your survival. Of
course some of that depends on whose space you are in, how populous, what is at stake in
the battle, etc. But I could see withddrawal as a valid option and surrender if that was
not possible in some cases. And using the aforementioned ways to indicate either. 

Scuttling is a tougher one. You can probably easily render a ship a major yard job to
overhaul without doing anything more complicated than purging all the ship's various
drivers for the various types of systems aboard ("rm -r *.drv") and the backups. This
might render the ship utterly unusable until all new software is installed, and being
foreign gear with foreign specs and manufacturers, doing this may prove more costly than
the entire ship. So you *may* well be able to scuttle a ship without a charge or explosion
anywhere in sight. OTOH, a nuke does a good job of saying "goodbye" too. So, scuttling
could be a valid option, if you thought the other power or some 3rd party would rescue you
(or you could make it to a nearby habitable biosphere) even after you destroyed your
vessel. If the ship itself is sort of seen as ransom, then scuttling it might encourage
you to be abandoned. 

How strong are maritime traditions and international conventions on the treatment of
detainees and prisoners of war? That may factor in some responses to scuttling or
abandoning ship. Do you *have* to stop for enemy prisoners or is it only common courtesy?
Or is it just not done at all? 

A lot of this comes down to how you want your campaign to feel. I like the idea of
striking of colours, prisoners and perhaps ransoming of same, and a strong sense of duty
to save those who have fought the good fight and are now in need of aid. 

On the other hand, a more gritty and realistic world might hammer a foe until he is space
dust under all circumstances. The only way to be sure, as was said. 

So it just boils down to what you want to create. You can pretty much justify, from one
perspective or the other, most of the various options you could choose. If you impose some
of them (striking colours, withrdrawing, etc), this will have some impact on on-table
tactical points evaluations, but that's just mentioned as a 'watch for' not 'beware of'
point. 




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