Boarding a vessel help

[Scotius]

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

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A head-on rendezvous at 10 km/s — and you're inside the ship.

 

Heck, your shp is inside the other ship. And everywhere around it in an increasing radius.

No. The method @mikegarrison described is the only one feasible way to get the group of people inside more or less intact. Otherwise you are sending them into a meatgrinder of chokepoints and killzones, any half decent shipbuilders and crew would organise in advance. Just consider the fact, that warships are (should be, logically) divided in sections by hermetic bulkheads of considerable strenght. Even after your boarding party breaches inside and takes control of the sections they started in, they will have to repeat the process multiple times to get to vital compartments of the enemy ship. It would be a nightmare.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

2 hours ago, Scotius said:

Even after your boarding party breaches inside and takes control of the sections they started in, they will have to repeat the process multiple times to get to vital compartments of the enemy ship. It would be a nightmare.

One well-trained cook is all you need.

 

[tater]

Boarding in an age of sail sense is not much of a thing. I suppose an entirely disabled ship (literally dead in space, no drives/power) could be boarded, and fought for. I'm unsure why the dead men walking (floating?) would want to fight, since it seems like a better rules of war paradigm would be for the victor to render aid. You either die in space in the cripple, or the ship is taken as a prize (assuming repair is cheaper than building a new ship), and you get to live as a POW.

Boarding an active ship is absurd, IMO.

[kerbiloid]

Weld the pod to the hull, then cut through.

[DDE]

4 hours ago, tater said:

Boarding an active ship is absurd, IMO.

TBH boarding wasn't much of a thing in the Age of Sail as well. As soon as gunpowder artillery entered the fray, it rendered the marines into specialists.

[Scotius]

True. Still, boarding persisted in naval warfare well into XX century. Last actions happened during WW II. And even today sailors train boarding in preparation for anti-piracy patrols. Several ships taken over by pirates near Horn of Africa were freed by strike groups deployed by warships patrolling the area either by helicopter or small boats. But at the same time many freighters successfully repelled pirate attacks using such simple methods as barbed wire barricades, water cannons and crew members armed with handguns

[tater]

8 hours ago, DDE said:

TBH boarding wasn't much of a thing in the Age of Sail as well. As soon as gunpowder artillery entered the fray, it rendered the marines into specialists.

Not true. Many, many actions ended in boarding, or were accomplished via boarding in the age of sail. Marines were not boarding specialists, they were in the tops, anyway. It was the regular crew that accomplished much boarding. This was in no small part due to prize taking being the principal way for captains to secure wealth and standing (their admirals got a share of prizes). Fleet actions were relatively uncommon, remember that the bulk of naval actions in the age of sail were small units actions. Lone frigates (and unrated ships/sloops) taking prizes, or small squadrons of a few smaller ships. Anyone in command of a smaller vessel was looking to distinguish themselves---at least in the Royal Navy. I'm counting cutting out, and other captures as boarding here as well.

Obviously once a ship struck, she also had to be boarded to be taken a prize as well, though this is not the same as some Errol Flynn movies swinging across on a line, lol.

[kerbiloid]

Iirc in the age-of-sails (as well as in the age-of-oars-and-somethimes-some-sails-too-but-not-really-required) the boarding happened when the ship to be boarded had lost its engine (either sails or oars).
Probably, this is also a condition for a space boarding too: first shutdown their engines.

[tater]

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Iirc in the age-of-sails (as well as in the age-of-oars-and-somethimes-some-sails-too-but-not-really-required) the boarding happened when the ship to be boarded had lost its engine (either sails or oars).
Probably, this is also a condition for a space boarding too: first shutdown their engines.

Boarding could also happen under sail. Come alongside, then grapnels are used. This would happen with taking merchants as prizes right out of convoys. Longboats could also be used (shows how slow age of sail was, that guys in a boat with oars could move between ships under sail). The RN was big on close actions, other navies were far less capable, and tended to try and stay at range. Nelson famously said something tot he effect that none of his captains could do much better than to put themselves right alongside an enemy (yardarm to yardarm), then batter them into submission.

[DDE]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Longboats could also be used (shows how slow age of sail was, that guys in a boat with oars could move between ships under sail). The RN was big on close actions, other navies were far less capable, and tended to try and stay at range.

Assuming they had the option of long-range attack in the first place.

[tater]

Long range for age of sail was anything past point blank (range with barrel level). A few hundred yards at most.

This was part of most naval actions on approach. If a squadron was pinned against a hazard, or downwind was the wrong direction, then a close engagement could be forced, and the above image is the result. Many times the French would run. Downwind (on a tack, not a stern chase), they’d be heeled such that their guns would be pointed high, and they’d try to harm rigging to slow their persuers. Those ships would also possibly be unable to use lower guns.

Anyway, boarding wasn’t uncommon. I’d think that in a SF universe where you want boarding, you’d make mission kills fairly easy, and repairs to those kills worthwhile, so prizes are a thing.

Super efficient radiators are a thing, and cover much of the hull. They are nexessarily fragile. Damage forces power reductions, else bad things happen. You now have very incremental damage as a thing. If the drives have some minimal power requirement to function, then the ship is adrift once X damage happens. Now boarding is a thing to capture before they can effect repairs to radiators. 

[magnemoe]

On 25.1.2018 at 10:12 PM, tater said:

So in your universe, ships ignore large "space junk" that are on trajectories that will hit them?

1. No intact vessel can be boarded. If it's intact, it moves, shoots down the boarding craft, or both. Assuming you are talking about warships.

2. Civilian ships would be better hijacked, not boarded.

3. If piracy is supposed to be a thing, then merchants will be armed, see #1.

Standard for naval boarding in 20 century is that you force the enemy to surrender using overwhelming firepower, we board you or we sink you. 
You still want to go heavy armed as the enemy might be desperate and it might be fanatics among the crew. 
Its very hard to do otherwise, yes the Somali pirate method worked but only against cargo ships with small crew who was unprepared, If you have armed and alert guard it don't work, you are basically besieging an castle, defending force has attitude and cover. 
This is more true in space, now you could have an setting there the Somali method worked, say hitting an ship just after an jump with an jump drive, however it would only work if you was not very defended. 
Jump drives with fixed jump points like in the moth in the goods eye makes space piracy plausible, 
Or an ruse, you first capture or bribe an shuttle who will dock with ship and use it to dock.

[magnemoe]

13 hours ago, tater said:

Not true. Many, many actions ended in boarding, or were accomplished via boarding in the age of sail. Marines were not boarding specialists, they were in the tops, anyway. It was the regular crew that accomplished much boarding. This was in no small part due to prize taking being the principal way for captains to secure wealth and standing (their admirals got a share of prizes). Fleet actions were relatively uncommon, remember that the bulk of naval actions in the age of sail were small units actions. Lone frigates (and unrated ships/sloops) taking prizes, or small squadrons of a few smaller ships. Anyone in command of a smaller vessel was looking to distinguish themselves---at least in the Royal Navy. I'm counting cutting out, and other captures as boarding here as well.

Obviously once a ship struck, she also had to be boarded to be taken a prize as well, though this is not the same as some Errol Flynn movies swinging across on a line, lol.

This, merchant ships was soft targets, they was slower and would loose against an warship even an small one.
And note the other option was to get sunk.
Also before american civil war firepower was so low it was plausible to board an warship. later guns became far more effective and having longer range.

[GoSlash27]

I know the US Navy was still conducting forced boardings and sinkings as recently as WWII. Ex. USS Tirante and USS Cod. I don't know how much of that has gone on since.

Best,
-Slashy

[radonek]

Guys, I don't understand your obsession with naval methods. Seagoing ship is about as relevant in this context as moving train. Or clown on unicycle for that matter. Even aircraft is a far cry, and I'd like to see boarding action on THAT.

[magnemoe]

58 minutes ago, radonek said:

Guys, I don't understand your obsession with naval methods. Seagoing ship is about as relevant in this context as moving train. Or clown on unicycle for that matter. Even aircraft is a far cry, and I'd like to see boarding action on THAT.

This, note that forcing someone to surrender and with overwhelming firepower and then board has always worked. 
Note that this setting require both sides to be rational, if boarders eat target alive and your cargo is 50 ton antimatter:)
Same is target is to dangerous to capture alive (islamistst in real world) , you will use main guns even if enemy crew want to surrender. 
And yes it predates islamists, WW2 movie shots show an Japanese pilot blowing up himself and trying to get the rescue crew on an US ship. 
Same idiocy even if you want to go down fighting you force thousands to follow you. 

[GoSlash27]

16 hours ago, radonek said:

Guys, I don't understand your obsession with naval methods. Seagoing ship is about as relevant in this context as moving train.

radonek,

Jhorriga's sci- fi universe is very naval- themed.
Best,
-Slashy

[DDE]

20 hours ago, radonek said:

Guys, I don't understand your obsession with naval methods. Seagoing ship is about as relevant in this context as moving train. Or clown on unicycle for that matter. Even aircraft is a far cry, and I'd like to see boarding action on THAT.

It would be extremely painful...

[radonek]

22 hours ago, GoSlash27 said:

radonek,

Jhorriga's sci- fi universe is very naval- themed.
Best,
-Slashy

Naval? Board me a submarine then. Sorry, that statement does not make whole idea any less ridiculous. Forced entry of mildly uncooperative vessel, yes. Easy, even. Latch onto  airlock hatch or docking portal, blew or cut through the outer door, cycle in. If you want to minimize damage and target vessel can't defend itself, this is IMO about easiest and safest way to go. But marines spacers in a can going through at random? Come on…

[sevenperforce]

The only way you could have this sort of thing happen, from a world-building perspective, is if the martial engagement initiates under fairly unexpected circumstances, where a lot of preconditions are met.

For one thing, soft-boarding a vessel makes virtually no sense unless the target vessel has controls familiar enough that you can actually take control of it. For there to be any reasonable chance of encounters, the density of vessels has to be very high in the region of space where you are. There also must be an intrinsic value to taking over another ship, either because of some high-value soft target in the ship, or because the ship itself is useful to you. Finally, since it is fairly straightforward to harden a spaceship design against soft boarding, the available ships would need to have been built before the initiation of hostilities.

The only way these sorts of conditions could reasonably be met would be if you had literally thousands of manned civilian ships already in a constrained region of space, all with a liberal amount of onboard dV.

How could this happen? Well, suppose that the pure water ice in the rings and moonlets of Saturn turned out to be the best possible off-world source of propellant for a number of Saturnian colonies. Suppose further that numerous moonlets also contained precious metals and other vital construction materials. The rings of Saturn sweep out an area 50% larger than the surface area of Jupiter, but are constrained into a region of space only a few kilometers "deep". Under these circumstances, you could have a huge network of mining and trade vessels operating there, and each ship would only need a fairly small amount of dV to be able to visit numerous different locations over an extended period of time, since you only need a little dV to move from point to point in a ring system. All the vessels would have to be fairly standard so that crew could be swapped out. 

If some corporate mogul decided to seize control of the shipping lanes in the ring system, and one of the colonies decided to back him while others decided to fight, then you could find yourself in a situation where civilian vessels were being commandeered and retrofit to act as gunboats. In that instance, you'd actually have a decent reason to try and seize an enemy vessel, because building new ships is not a readily available option.