I wonder if anyone has brewn up some house rules for "full scale boarding".

Will RT ships even be capable of fully boarding an enemy ship with tens of thousand of crewmen?

Well there'd have to be different (or combined) rules for a Teleportarium, Assault Boats (or shuttles, et al.), and Ramming (a favoured tactic of Orks).

Found the rules.

While I am stil interested in house rules to it, the questions about the RAW are in a new topic in

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=161&efcid=3&efidt=216557

Gregorius21778 said:

Yes, if they ever include Galaxy Class Troop Carriers.

Extrapolating from Space Fleet, a Galaxy Troop Carrier has 4 "Barracks" and each can hold a Regiment of Troops. The size of a Regiment varies depending on the type, but averages 5000 troopers. It says they could be up to 6k (assuming a pure Infantry Regiment), so a ship with 4 Barracks could hold up to a grand total of 24,000 troops....which (in Space Fleet) could all be used for boarding a ship.

Mind you, that Galaxy-class is made of sacred duct tape and blessed gum, so you might not want to have it as a ship involved in combat, unlike the Space Marine heavy lander I seem to recall from SF.

BaronIveagh said:

Actually the Galaxy was pretty tough with 4 Voids on each facing except the rear. I had BB Guns for armament though. SF was a crappy game, so it's almost impossible to translate any ship stats to BFG or RT. Good background fluff though. I don't remember (can't find that is) any Space Marine ships for Space Fleet. I'll keep looking.

Maxim C. Gatling said:

Don't bother, I've been rereading the old articles and there weren't any. The only fleets that got any attention in Space Fleet's brief run were Eldar, Tyranids, and Imperial. To be fair, it's possible that the Imps were intended to double as marine vessels, although it was never explicitly stated to be the case.

Gregorius21778 said:

Why would you want to?

I mean, if your intention is to steal the enemy vessel then it would be more of a matter of killing off the relevant key personel (acting officers and/or enemy Rogue Traders on board) and simply press gang the remaining crew into doing your bidding.

It doesn't really concern most ship ratings anyway whose in control of the ship they're on unless the owner of the vessel has made them fanatically loyal through some method, so as long as you make sure the enemy vessel is crippled enough not to be able to run away or defend itself, taking the enemy vessel over should be an easy matter.

But if your goal is all-out extermination of the crew of the enemy vessel then remember that there are several results on the critical damage table that will bring permanent reduction to a vessel's crew. Just send waves of boarding parties (i.e Hit and Run attacks) until the combined results have lowered the enemy vessels crew number to zero.

So why would you ever want to board an enemy vessel with tens of thousnads of crewmen when it is by far more effective not to kill off all of the enemy crew, and even if you want to do it it is by far more safer to send several waves of Hit and Run boarders instead?

Well, if you can control the Bridge and Engineering sections, it should be a 'breeze' to depressurize the rest of the ship, eliminating the crew without wasting precious ammo or endangering 'loyal' lives.

Maxim C. Gatling said:

There is that option as well. And it would be safe to assume that only a minority if the enemy crew would actually have access to void suits at such close proximity.

That being said, taking control of an enemy vessel will have many other difficulties. For instance it is far from uncommon for the owner of any ship to have the controls be under the influence of several advanced emergency protocols. So if there is a risk of a hostile takeover, the ship could at best have all the controls locked out, taking anything between weeks to years to decode the cogitators and bring controls back online. At worst, the ship self destructs.

Quite simply, it is at the beck and call of the gamemaster to decide whether he or she actually want the players to be able to steal someone elses vessel. Though when im the GM I would rule that certain tactics are more helpful when you want to do that than others (Murder Servitor Spamming being one of them).

I don't see it happening too often in RT, as ships are treasure...

But in Star Fleet Battles, the rules could be manipulated to over-use the Corbomite Maneuver as a savage weapon. I.E. you send one of your smaller, crappier ships into the midst of the enemy, guns-ablazin' and then self-destruct on purpose.

Check out my post on Tractor Beams

www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_temas.asp

It's more questions than answers, but it has a definite application to the topic of Boarding another ship.

Of course, the crew of the Voyager (who all sucked except for the doctor) had their ship stolen right out from under them so many times that everyone stopped watching the show. Shameful!

Maxim C. Gatling said:

Luckily this isn't Star Trek, this is 40K. In Star Trek, humans are stupid and gullible enough to actually INTERACT with aliens and let them aboard their ships, along with quite a few other basic mistakes.

A captain of a WH40K vessel would laugh at the crew of any star trek series for their gullible and easily fooled nature and way past borderline incompetence.

There's a YouTube vid about that somewhere...

See, that's just it. People didn't hate Janeway because she was a woman...they hated her because she was totally incompetant. Add incompetance to the namby-pamby desire to "communicate" without phasers and the misperception that all alien cultures are equally valid and if they don't like you, it must have been your own fault...and what do you get?

Stranded on some moon with your ship infested with human-looking aliens with gum on their noses and really bad haircuts...like dreadlocks gone bad, ya' know? Laughing at you as they sail away at warp speed...your only chance at getting your ship back relies on the holographic doctor who incidentally is the only competant member of the crew, even though he isn't even real....

Don't get me started. I've always wanted to take Janeway and feed her to a Catachan Face Eater or offer her up as a sacrifice to Nurgle...

Maxim C. Gatling said:

To be fair, Star Trek's posterboy Jean-Luc Picard tended to suffer from the same mindset quite a few times over the Star Trek: TNG run, along with the rest of his soft crew. Of course, Data had the valid excuse of being programmed to think and act in a certain way, but the rest of them could be quite naive.

Of course, you could use that for a story idea. The Rogue Traders, while exploring the Koronus Expanse, discover a small warp anomaly. On further investigation, they discover that it seemingly doesn't lead anywhere. Then they're hailed by a tiny ship of unknown design.

"This is the USS Enterprise. Unknown vessel, please identify yourselves."

Yes, they've appeared in the Alpha Quadrant; it's where the Segmentum Obscurus is in the Star Trek galaxy.

nick012000 said:

Here's a pretty acurate description of a Star Trek/Warhammer 40.000 crossover:

Maxim C. Gatling said:

I strongly doubt that Imperial ships have such levels of centralized controls over the pressure doors. Like everything else, these likely need to be manually operated throughout the ship.

HappyDaze said:

If these doors can slam shut automatically in the event of depressureization, then it would be safe to assume that entire sections can be controlled from the bridge.

Also in the part of the rulebook describing crew morale and outbreaks of mutiny, they do mention the threat of "voiding" entire crew sections as a viable tactic to beat down mutiny, this implies that controls for pressure doors and the like aren't necessarily located next to the door in question.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Not really. I doubt they'd skip straight to Purging, especially if it's a human that's the Captain. A Rogue Trader certainly wouldn't; he'd realize that he's dealing with heathens who are allied with Xenos and promptly attempt to work out some way to get more Profit out of it, and maybe attempt to conquer them for his own wealth and glory. Even the Inquisition wouldn't skip straight to Purging, though; that's the last step of the process. They'd need to investigate to determine how widespread the rot is first, at the very least.

Varnias Tybalt said:

The rules also specifically allow the officers on the bridge to vent burning components into space to extinguish a fire from a critical hit, with predictably negative results on morale. There certainly seems to be some central control by canon.

Varnias Tybalt said:

It would feel more appropriate to Imperial tech if each door held its own pressure sensor and closing mechanism. if you want to space sections of the ship, you have your Archmilitant lead a team of void suit wearing tough guys down there and manually open the doors as you fight through the mutinous opposition. IOW, it's essentially a boarding action within your own vessel. Seems much more appropriate to the setting to me than just solving problems with the push of a button.

Argoden said:

Does it specifically say this is done by a button push from the bridge? Many of the starship actions are merely ordered from the bridge and then direct action is taken from someone more local. in the case you mention, repair crews seal the area and vent the fire and any unfortunates that were isolated by the fire - the button push isn't the direct cause anymore than someone on the bridge directly controlling a gun battery.

nick012000 said:

Uhm, all the Inquisition would need is ask one of the techpriests aboard their vessel about the U.S.S Enterprise outside the window and the Techpriest would easily be able to deduct that whoever is piloting that ship is commiting gross technoheresy. A techpriest would, for instance, see any Tau vessel as unhallowed and an outright heretical insult to the Machine-God (this happened in Sandy Mitchels "Scourge the heretic"). But the Tau are aliens so it is to be expected of them to ride around in technoheretical ships. If humans did the same thing however, any contingent of Grey Knights, Deathwatch, Adepta Sororitas and of course Skitarii of the Adeptus Mechanicus would have all the reason they need to board the heretical vessel and slaughter everyone on board. ESPECIALLY if it were humans piloting the vessel in question.