Re: [SG] Boarding Party Considerations

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Atkinson" <johnmatkinson@yahoo.com>

> Then you start getting into what weaponry does the
> ship's crew carry?

If boarding actions are a likely part of fighting, I would think
everybody
will be issued light weaponry, something along the lines of the
"personal
Defence Weapon" discussed on another thread. Rather like distributing
cutlasses to men in the Age of Sail.

And I would assume that people without direct battle tasks (cooks etc:)
might be detailed to defence/guard duties

> Environmental Factors:

Lots of PSB assumtions which you can bend to suit your ideas in the
following.
>
> 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.

Yes, they better be.

> Now here's a fun question:  How to model decompression
> of compartments the hard way (Plasma gun, demo
> charge)?

It will make sense to have ships decompressed as part of the clearing
for
battle routine. On the plus side, there is no risk of decompression. On
the
negative side, wearing spacesuits will reduce efficiency.

> What effects does it have on the crews
> inside?

Assuming they wear space suits and are buttoned up, they will not suffer
directly from the loss of air. If some have helmets open or similar,
they
still have a short time to lock it down. Some kind of reaction dice roll
may
be appropiate. perhaps similar to  a gas attack or so.

Then there is the effect of the air rushing. A small hole, from a rifle
bullet, perhaps is no big deal and can be patched. A big hole will let
the
air escape explosively. Loose items inside (including crew not holding
on to
something) will be sucked out. Somenbody sucked out will be unharmed,
unless
he hit something on the way out. What kind of jets etc does he/she have
on
his space suit ? Without some, he will just be drifting around.  With
adequate controls, he might be able to fight.

Note that the ship will be compartmentalized by bulkheads to avoid
decompresison spreading.

> On the attackers outside?

Think of a small to medium sized explosion centered around the hole.
They
might get hit by splinters or other objects, or the air rushig out might
push them off the ship. If they have taken cover or are some distance
away,
not much should happen to armoured Marines.

> 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).?

Depends very much on the capabilites you assume for the Artificial
gravity
(AG) system. Is it largely automatic, without possibility of manual
fine-tuning - jus an on/off switch ? Can it provide AG along any axis or
only "down" and compensation for engine thrusts ? How fast can it ramp
the
AG up or down ? You can think up a lot of variants, thouhg I would
suggest
to keep it simple.

The Invader's power armour might well include miniaturized gravitic
systems
to counteract any such fancy AG tricks. In fact, this might be otherwise
useful anyway - moving through space, walking on the ceilings of
corridors
etc.

> What happens if you shoot up the various computers?

Define that for each system. Realistically, most will just stop working.
There may be electric mishaps (sparking, fire etc.). Some
computer-controlled systems may go haywire (overheat etc.) but critical
systems should normally be built with sufficient fail-safe redundancies
to
shut down gracefully.

It may be more fun if you think of a lot of nasty stuff that happens if
a
computer is shot up. Say: You hit the entertainment system, and it
starts to
project Teletubby films accompanied by Scottish bagpipe music into
everybody's head.

> What happens
> if Joe Snuffy puts a 20mm grenade into the control
> panel of a fusion reactor?

Again, not that much probably. Shut down of the system. More
dangerously,
escape of hot hydrogen gas (inflammable), heavy electric sparking,
mechanical breakdowns. NO nuclear explosion.

Greetings