[SG] Boarding Party Considerations

Yes you read it right.	I'm planning to discuss
modelling boarding party operations as a stargrunt
game.

The best source we have for discussion of conditions
aboard ship is pages 43-44 of the Full Thrust
Fleetbook.

OPFOR:	Who's defending this thing, anyway?  On a NAC
Victoria class BB, there's a crew of 120.  The
breakdown is pretty clear that this does not include
Marines of any kind.  We can assume from this that
none of the crew numbers in the Fleet Book include
Marines.  The NAC Battleship includes quarters for a
Marine Combat Team of platoon-size.  I presume this is
the 32-man platoon listed in the Stargrunt book under
NAC Royal Marines.  This is approximately 1/4 the size
of the ship's crew, or 5 men per crew factor.  On the
other hand, the platoon listed under the VKF Naval
Infantry in the Stargrunt book is 38 men and is listed
as the complement of a "Cruiser-sized space warship". 
Now, let's assume for the sake of making my math work
out neatly that what is meant is the new
Voroshilev-class Heavy Cruiser, with a normal crew of
78.  We find then that this platoon is 1/2 the size of
the ship's crew and 8 per crew factor (rounding
screwiness intrudes here).  

What are we to make of this?  First, that Marines are
not part of the crew and that the proportion of
Marines carried varies from ship to ship (navy to
navy?  Possibly, no evidence here).  Because it works
out so neatly, let's take these two figures as the
extremes and say that you can carry Marines from
between 1/2 and 1/4 of the ship's crew.  

Who else is on this ship?  8 Line Officers and 24
Operations Crew who are actually needed to run the
ship.  You can take crew losses, but you can't drop
below this number without impairing operational
efficiency.  The rest of the crew are (apparently)
there to keep the ship running during normal
operations and are only needed in battle to repair
damage.  That's just over 1/4 of the total crew, but I
suspect it's a higher proportion on smaller ships. 
They are locked into crash couches and probably won't
be doing squat until/unless someone breaks into their
compartment and then they would defend themselves if
armed.	Otherwise they are trying to keep the ship in
the fight.

There's 47 Engineering and Damage Control personnel. 
We know from the rules that there are 6 damage control
parties (1 per crew factor) and we know from p44 that
the "Engineering personnel [are] in sealed suits and
locked into crash frames".  Since it makes me a happy
person, let's say for discussion's sake that there are
6 men per damage control party which makes for 36 DC
personnel and 11 Engineering crew.  Add the Chief
Engineering Officer, and it turns out that 10% of the
crew is engineering, while 30% is DC.  Now there's an
interesting thing about those DC guys--they are
running around all over the ship, doing God Knows What
(Give me the HYDROSPANNERS!) while the gravity is
being erratic, the ship is maneuvering, and the ship
is taking fire (or they wouldn't need DC, would
they??).  Lots of explosions, flames, and sparks.  You
know what I'd do with them?  I'd put them in Powered
Armor.	They wouldn't need it to be heavy, in fact it
might be a hinderance.	It wouldn't need to be
incredibly fast since they aren't going that far
anyway.  That gives us d10 PA with no doubled movemnt.
 This meshes nicely with a 6-man DCP since most
nation's PA squads are 6 men anyway, right?

There's 31 "Other"--sickbay orderlies, auxiliary craft
crew, galley staff, and general flunkies.  WTF are
they doing during a battle?  I don't know.  We have
any former/current aquatic-type people who can tell me
what these people are doing?  They aren't manning
secondary weaponry, or doing DC, so what do they do? 
I mean, I can assume the sickbay types are patching up
wounded as they come in, but what about everyone else?

Then you start getting into what weaponry does the
ship's crew carry?  Naval vessels who are assigned to
customs and patrol duties will have a certain amount
of small arms on board for arming boarding and
inspection parties.  They may even have arms lockers
for repelling boarding parties.  Does your average
crewman carry during a battle?	Probably not today,
but given the relationship between ranges and speeds
in the GZG-verse, it may become more likely.  NRE
certaintly does.  I'd still rate most sailors as green
in a Stargrunt game--although Coast Guard equivelants
who have done extended anti-piracy missions may be
regular.

Environmental Factors:

OK, by the time a ship is crippled enough to be
boarded, we probably won't have to worry about it
making sudden accelerations.  It probably won't have a
breathable atmosphere, but we are pretty much assuming
all naval personnel are at least in space suits (d6)
and all marines are in full body armor (d8) or PA. 
Now here's a fun question:  How to model decompression
of compartments the hard way (Plasma gun, demo
charge)?  What effects does it have on the crews
inside?  On the attackers outside?  

What happens if the defenders retain control of the
artificial gravity?  What if they can play with the
gravity in the compartments the invaders are in (Now
it's 0G, now it's 6G, now it's 6G but local down is
what was local up a minute ago, etc).?	What happens
if you shoot up the various computers?	What happens
if Joe Snuffy puts a 20mm grenade into the control
panel of a fusion reactor?

John

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